Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76713 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
My fingers closed over it as I pulled it out.
I wasn’t even aware of my legs giving out on me until I felt myself bouncing on the edge of the bed.
All I could focus on was the thing in my hand.
The shiny, multi-colored bracelet in my hand.
The women’s bracelet.
“Did you find—what is it?” August asked as he came in the door, seeming to sense something had just gone really fucking wrong really fucking fast.
I was vaguely aware of him moving into the room and Aurelio in the doorway as I turned the bracelet over and over in my hand.
It couldn’t be.
Could it?
My mind was flashing through memories so quickly that I felt nauseated and dizzy.
My free hand moved out, pressing onto the bed like I could keep myself from spinning.
But it was impossible.
Not as I was looking down and seeing what I was seeing.
“Trav,” August said, squatting down in front of me, his hand grabbing the wrist of my hand holding the bracelet. “What is it? What does this mean?”
It meant a lot.
A fuckuva lot.
It meant my father wasn’t the only one betrayed.
It meant I was a terrible judge of character.
It meant I’d been swallowing lies spoon fed to me for years.
Years.
“Traveler,” August’s voice barked, trying to snap me out of it. “Your father’s life is on the line right now,” he added, and that seemed to penetrate. “What is that? Do you know who it belongs to?”
I did.
God, I wished I didn’t.
I wished it could be anything else but what my mind had settled on.
But I did.
I’d seen that bracelet a hundred times.
A thousand.
More.
Every single goddamned day for years.
“This belongs to Sheryl,” I said, looking down into August’s eyes. “This is her bracelet.”
It had been right there, tightly wrapped around her wrist the last time she handed me cash for her tea. It had been there when I helped her cart her produce out of her trunk to set up her stand at the farmer’s market. It had been there when she stood next to me at the soup kitchen, scooping out meals to the less fortunate. It had been there, patting my hand and telling me I’d made the right decision when I’d told off the developers for the second time.
It had been there, day in and day out, on the wrist of a woman who was a friend.
My only friend.
“Sheryl,” August repeated, mind rolling through the names of people I may have mentioned over our time together. “The farmer?” he asked.
“Yes.”
But… Stan and Sheryl?
They made no sense.
Sheryl with all of her loud, colorful, and gaudy ways. Stan with all of his black and neutral, all of his understated and carefully curated ways.
They didn’t work.
But here it was.
Her bracelet.
Proof that she had been here.
Right?
Wait… no.
It didn’t prove anything, did it?
Just that Stan was in possession of it.
Stan who was clearly more in someone’s pocket than my father could have realized. Stan who was maybe sick of Sheryl sticking her nose in his business, causing problems.
Did Stan have Sheryl too?
Or was she in danger?
“We have to go,” I said, jumping up fast enough that I almost knocked August on his ass before he could react and stand as well.
“Wait, okay,” he said, following behind me as I charged into the hall. “Go where, Trav?” he asked as I stormed through the apartment, then out into the hall.
I didn’t have the patience to wait for the elevator. I took off down the stairs at a dead run.
“To Sheryl’s,” I said, all but rolling my eyes at him. “She might be in danger too,” I told him.
“Let’s stop and think—“
“No,” I said, voice tight. “No. There’s no time to stop and think about anything. My dad is out there. Bleeding. Sheryl clearly has the attention of Stan. We need to be doing something, not thinking.”
I threw myself into the car, slamming the door to cut off any more objections.
I was rattling off Sheryl’s address as August and Aurelio climbed into their seats, and Milo took off, seeming not to understand that there was any debate about where we were going.
Anything August might have been thinking right then, he kept to himself, and we drove in painful silence back across town, almost to the shop.
Where Sheryl’s farmhouse was located on a roomy corner lot with a tall fence to keep anyone from throwing garbage or peeing into her carefully tended flower beds.
I’d been to her farm more times than I could count, had walked the rows of tomato plants that would have been hanging over with the weight of their ripe fruit if not for the pole system she’d set up to keep them upright.
I’d run my hands over the tops of the herb beds, my hand coming away smelling of dill and basil and rosemary.
I’d knelt down beside her at night with headlamps on, both of us picking off hornworms before they destroyed her crop. I’d pulled weeds and picked beans and helped her haul dirt after she’d come into the shop with an elastic bandage wrapped around her head from some mishap or another.