“What are the donuts for?”
Oh, thank you, God, a scapegoat. “I’m going to eat them. What of it?”
“Three jelly donuts?” Cameron’s disapproval and his peppermint essence enveloped Max as she parked the Miata on the gravel drive outside her studio apartment. She had one small room on the second floor of an old Victorian within walking distance of Santa Clara University.
She liked the anonymity among the constantly revolving score of students housed in the other rooms. She liked the fact that she had her own bathroom, her own entrance, and her own separate, distinct life. She mailed her rent. No one talked to her. No one knew her name. In short, she was isolated. She liked her life that way. God, she sounded too much like Bethany Spring.
“You didn’t answer about the three jelly donuts,” Cameron pushed.
The porch light had come on with the motion of her car. She climbed from the seat with the fragrant white bag clutched to her chest. “That’s because my eating habits are none of your business.”
“I wasn’t referring to the food.”
Her high heels crunched angrily on the gravel. Food? Whoever called donuts food? They were luxury, gratification, comfort, and love, but certainly not food.
“Who’s talking out of your mouth, Max?”
Duh. Bethany. She needed comfort. After all, she’d just died. One deserved a little something special after enduring an experience like that. “You told me to ‘run with her.’ That’s what I’m doing. I’m indulging her, trying to draw her out. Using my psychic skills.” Like you keep hammering at me to do, she added silently.
He heard that, too. “I didn’t hammer at you to let her take away your common sense. You’re not used to eating like that, and you’re going to make yourself sick.”
She wasn’t used to reconstituted turkey, potato buds, and cardboard peas either. Her stomach had begun to rebel, but she wasn’t about to drop her sack of sugar-coated confections. Or maybe she was rebelling against Cameron’s unvoiced threat earlier in the car. He couldn’t be grooming Witt as his replacement. He wouldn’t. Like a coward, terrified of understanding what he really meant, she’d avoided bringing the subject up again. Better to forget the conversation, better to be angry with him and pick a fight. Better to pretend he’d never leave her.
Digging in her purse for her keys, she stepped up on the plank decking outside her front door, and almost squashed the small package lying on the mat.
She recognized the bold script instantly, and her heart seemed to seize up. “Sutter. She’s been here.” Sutter Cahill. Her best friend.
“You mean the former best friend you’ve avoided since my memorial service.”
She bent to pick up the parcel. “I didn’t want all the drippy sympathy.”
“You didn’t want anyone who might have the ability to make you cry it all out.”
Two years later, she still hadn’t cried. What was there to cry about? Cameron had never actually left her. Except in corporeal form.
“Open it,” he urged.
Her hands shook. She set her purse and the bag of jelly donuts down. The package was wrapped in an old cut-up paper bag. Sutter was excessively frugal. Max’s fingers got down to the bubble wrap. She squeezed, soothed for a moment by the air-pop.
“Open it,” Cameron now commanded.
She pulled at the scotch tape, felt the ungiving bulk of metal encased inside. She’d opened the packet upside down. A silver picture frame. She held it that way, picture-side down, for long, long seconds, absolutely terrified to turn it over.
“How did she know where I lived?” Max had moved, left no forwarding address, though she had forgotten to tell the phone company not to give out the new number. Sutter had called every few weeks since. Max had never returned those calls.
“She’s psychic.”
“She sees ghosts, she doesn’t see addresses.”
“Look at the picture, Max.”
She slowly turned the frame in her hand, and looked at the slightly unfocused photo. A black cat with wide, yellow eyes. She almost lost it then. Louis. She’d adored Louis. After Cameron died, well, she couldn’t take care of a cat. Couldn’t feed him, couldn’t change his litter box, couldn’t pet him, hold him, or love him. She’d left him on Sutter’s front stoop with a note, like an abandoned baby.
“Why doesn’t Sutter give up?” Her words were a mere whisper.
“She’s an eternal optimist.”
“She’s delusional.”
“She wants you to come back.”
Max didn’t say she couldn’t. She didn’t say she wouldn’t. What she said was far more than she’d given Cameron on the subject in two years. “I’m not ready yet.”
Chapter Seven
Max gathered her purse, her sack of donuts, and the picture to her chest, then unlocked her front door. The steps above her looked too long and too steep, but she climbed them to her small second-story room. Her sanctuary.