I popped a piece of bread into the toaster and in the microwave reheated some kind of sauce from the fridge. When the toast popped up, it was burnt. Like, set off the fire alarm level. Yeah, that was more like my skill set. And then, a loud pop! sounded from the microwave. The lid had blown off the Tupperware and the sauce dripped from every surface inside the little oven.
Yeah, this was a lot more like my cooking skills.
Obviously, someone else had been inhabiting this house. I sounded like one of the three bears right now: who’s been cooking in my kitchen?
No more attempts at snacking. I finished cleaning up the mess and then wiped down all the counters and the inside of the microwave oven. My head was hurting—a lot. I opened the freezer to find an ice pack for the back of my head, or a bag of frozen peas, or—
What was that? A cake? With ice cream as the center layer?
Joy. Joy. Joy!
In no time flat, I was devouring the piece of cake I’d cut for myself. Mmm. Creamy, chocolaty, sweet, bitter, delicious, amazing. Who had made this? The person was a baking genius.
Why do I feel like I made it?
Because of wishful thinking, obviously. No way on earth could I bake something. I should be prohibited from setting foot in kitchens other than to procure the odd glass of water or juice.
I took one more slice of the cake and put the rest back in the freezer. Genius to layer it with the ice cream. The Dairy Queen herself had been visiting, apparently. With a sigh, I wandered to the living room and put on some music and ate the cake slowly. Soon, my head stopped throbbing. Chocolate has healing properties, I swear.
I should call Angelica and wish her luck with her surgery. Unfortunately, I took a huge bite of cake as I dialed, and she answered before I could swallow.
“Danica?” Angelica said tentatively through the phone. “Are you doing all right? I’ve been so worried.”
Finally, I muscled down the cake. “I’m the one who’s worried about you,” I sputtered. “Tell me all the details of your upcoming surgery. Is it really happening? Are you emotionally prepared? What can I do to help? I’ll come down to Reedsville, stay at your house, be your live-in physical therapist, feed your dog. Anything you need.”
“Danica!” she stage whispered. “You’re back!” Squealing ensued, and a fair bit of threatening to call Mom with the news, and a whole bunch of other stuff I didn’t really follow.
It must have something to do with my blank-out for the past couple of hours. Long enough to go shopping and fill my fridge, to hire someone to cook dinner, and to temporarily go insane enough to allow Jeremy Hotston to set foot in my house. I’d put it at six hours.
“And so, I told Brady, my husband in case you forgot, that I was praying for you, and he said you’d come back to yourself any day now and not to worry too much because worrying was putting too much negativity into the stratosphere, and I said is that where negativity lives, or is it a different layer of the atmosphere, and he got all philosophical, and then he said it’s fine if I pray harder, as long as I quit worrying all the time, and now, voilà! You’re yourself again!”
“Yay,” I said halfheartedly. What was that diatribe supposed to mean? How long had I not been myself? Hadn’t it just been a matter of hours? I ripped my phone from my ear and moved to the home screen, which should display the date and time.
What? September? Late September? My stomach clenched. I rested a hand on my abdomen, where the muscles felt weaker than usual. How was my strength elsewhere? I tested a few muscle groups. Definitely soft.
“Angelica?” My voice trembled. “I feel like something’s off.”
“It’s not off. Not anymore. You’re back. And as soon as my surgery is over, you and I are—I don’t know—signing up for a sisters cruise. Brady won’t mind. He’s been really worried about you, just like the rest of us.”
A chunk of time two calendar pages long was missing from my life. Now was the time they should be worrying about me. My breath started to come in large gulps. “I have to call you back.”
“Just whenever. Love you, sister.” Angelica hung up, just in time for me to race to the back yard, where a bracing blast of fresh air entered my lungs. When had it turned cold? I’d missed the last part of the summer. I love the summer. It was now full-on autumn, if the temperature were my guide.
In the distance, a skiff of snow decorated the top of the mountain with the ski resort already. This was too weird. Too terrible.
I needed help. But who could tell me what was going on? It was like I had amnesia or something.
The door bell rang. I went back in the house and answered the front door, bracing myself to see someone I didn’t recognize, or another face from my distant past like Jeremy’s. What person had I become in the past couple of months?
Instead, it was Tennille. “Danica.” Tennille came bursting into the house, her arms full of black plastic bags. “You’re not going to understand this, I’m sure, but no matter what’s been going on, I feel like I at least have to okay the costumes for the recital with you.” She opened the top of one of the bags and dumped the contents onto my sofa. “Oh, I wish you could understand all this. I’m drowning in paperwork. The lawyer just keeps shoving it at me. He didn’t”—she looked at the floor and then the ceiling—“mail you anything, did he?”
“Lawyer?” I rubbed the back of my head. Tennille’s voice sounded like it was coming at me down a metal tube. “I haven’t received anything from a lawyer.”
She exhaled and looked around the room. “It’s messy in here.” Her gaze landed on the table. “What’s that dinner plate? It looks like chicken. Did you cook? Girl, you’re really changing.”
“I—do you want to try it? It’s pretty good.” I brought the plate I’d missed while doing dishes to her and held up a forkful of the chicken. “If you like chicken.”
I said this with a little smirk. Tennille loved chicken. It was her favorite food. She went to every chicken place when we traveled for gymnastics competitions with the older kids. We never went for seafood or beef or vegetarian. Always, always chicken.