Up front, he heard Father Billy chuckle.
“I’m definitely going to pick up dinner, though,” he warned. “I’m starving.”
“I’ll bet you are. You get yourself a treat.”
“I intend to.” His eyes drifted out the window as they passed a very familiar gas station. The pumps were gone, the door boarded shut. The lawn where the limo sat was overrun with weeds. It looked like no one had been there for decades.
Except that he glimpsed through the window a shiny new Coke can sitting on the corner of the desk, right where he’d left it.
“Huh…”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just tired. Listen, I’m going to have to go for the night. My cell phone battery is almost dead.”
“Oh. Well, I guess I’ll see you in the morning then.”
“Yeah. Try and get some sleep.”
“I’ll try. If you’ve got any charge left when you get back in town, call and wake me up.”
“I really don’t think I’ll have any charge left. Besides, I think I broke it at some point. It may be a lost cause.”
“Oh no.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I’d better say goodbye now.”
“Okay. Goodbye. I love you.”
“Love you too. Bye.”
Eric disconnected the phone and stared at it. He had always hated these things. Stupid, annoying little devices that people took far too seriously. How ironic was it, then, that he’d had to rely on it all day long as a compass for this strange journey and a connection to those he loved?
A new text message from Isabelle flashed across the screen without waiting for him to answer.
DO IT!
Laughing, Eric rolled down the window and gleefully tossed the phone out into the night.
# # #
It’s not over.
Eric’s adventures continue in
Rushed
The Unseen
Keep reading for a preview of the second book in this thrilling series.
Chapter One
Two dozen pink Gerbera daisies. Hailey’s favorite.
The girl at the flower shop smiled too much. Eric found it distracting.
It wasn’t an unkind smile. It wasn’t even that there was nothing to smile about. It wasn’t a solemn occasion. The flowers weren’t for a funeral. Precisely the opposite, as a matter of fact. They were for a baby shower. A celebration of happy expectations. The joyfully imminent arrival of a beautiful, baby girl. There was no reason not to smile, really…but it felt a little bit like she was laughing at him.
As she swiped his card, he eyed the bouquet. It was bigger than he’d expected. And so brightly colored… He might as well walk out of the store with an armload of lit sparklers.
It was a silly thing, really. Stupid, even. Just some childish streak of macho pride nagging at him, asking him if he really intended to be seen in broad daylight cradling this big, pink bouquet of daisies.
It didn’t help that the girl was so young. She looked about the same age as his high school students, barely old enough to drive a car. And it never failed to impress him how cruel kids could be at that age, how easy it was for them to ridicule others. And they could be especially mean-spirited toward adults. At that age, looking out at the world, you knew everything. Looking back from that world, from the other side of Eric’s thirty-two years, it was obvious that you really didn’t know anything. Those differing perceptions, from two completely opposing perspectives, sometimes made it difficult to communicate. It created a gap between them, a fissure of sorts.
Eric knew a thing or two about fissures.
His phone came to life in his pocket, buzzing urgently against his thigh. That would be Karen. Again. Begrudgingly, he fished the annoying device from the depths of his front jeans pocket and answered it: “Hello?”
“Did you get the flowers?”
“Paying for them now.”
“How do they look?”
“Very pink.”
The girl’s smile broadened. It looked warmer now, friendlier, less mocking. Perhaps it really had all been in his imagination.
“Hailey’ll love them. Don’t you think?”
“Definitely. Nothing celebrates a new life like decapitating some pretty plants.”
The girl giggled a little at this as she handed him back his debit card.
“Out with the old, in with the new,” declared Karen.
“One way of putting it, I guess.” Eric punched in his PIN number and asked, “How are the cupcakes coming?”
“First batch is done.”
“Awesome. You girls having fun?”
“Yes, we are.”
“That’s good.”
Eric returned his card to his wallet and lifted the bouquet off the counter. How was he supposed to even hold this stupid thing? They looked so delicate, yet they were heavy enough to demand a firm grip. And while he was talking on the phone, he couldn’t even handle them with both hands. He’d never really developed that knack for holding the phone in the crook of his neck like other people. He always dropped the damned thing.
Maybe he had an abnormal neck.
He hated cell phones. He hated the way people were always talking on them, as if everything they had to say was far too important to wait until they returned home. Talking and talking and talking, in their cars, at restaurants, while checking out in stores…like he was doing now… But Karen insisted he carry one. She was a firm believer that everyone should have one on them at all times. In case of emergency. Or, you know, in case she just wanted to talk to her husband right now.
Personally, he’d rather just ignore the stupid thing. But if there was one thing he’d learned as Karen’s loving and devoted husband, it was that she hated for her calls to be ignored.
“Diane keeps asking me to have you bring home tequila, though.”
“That doesn’t seem like a good idea. Won’t the cupcakes get more lopsided as you go?”
“That’s what I keep telling her.”
From the background, Eric heard Diane say, “Everything’s more fun with margaritas.”
Eric smiled at this. “She does have a point.”
“Don’t encourage her.”
Karen met Diane Shucker at college, where they were roommates. They’d been best friends ever since. Today, Diane was helping prepare for the shower. Although Eric had noticed on previous occasions like this one that “helping” usually meant little more than keeping her company. Karen always did the vast majority of the work. Diane would hand her things and help keep the kitchen tidy, but she would mostly just sit with her, the two of them gossiping and giggling like schoolgirls.
Karen earned a fair amount of spending money as a freelance cake decorator and caterer. Her cakes, pies and cookies had won awards at every county fair for the past six years. As a result, she spent most Fridays and Saturdays in the kitchen, preparing for one gathering or another.
Eric thought she should just open a business and hire some real help, but she didn’t care at all for the idea of turning her hobby into a career. She was convinced it would take all the fun out of it, and he supposed she might be right about that.
Satisfied that the bouquet wasn’t going to topple out of his grip, Eric nodded goodbye to the overly-smiley, too-young florist and quickly made for the door.
“I just got off the phone with Hailey, actually,” Karen informed him.
“Oh yeah? How is she today?”
“Good. Her family got here last night.” Hailey was his and Karen’s sister-in-law. Her husband, Andrew, was Karen’s baby brother. This would be their first child, and the first grandchild for Hailey’s parents. It was a big event for the entire family. They drove all the way down from Northern Minnesota for this shower.
“That’s good.”
“It is. But they all showed up.”