Darkmoon(64)

“Sounds like a plan.”

And that’s exactly what we did — headed to the family room, booted up Netflix, and watched World War Z. Strangely, it made me feel a little better. I might have a curse hanging over my head, but at least I wasn’t trying to fight off a planet filled with zombies.



* * *



Since cooking breakfast was out of the question, the next morning we went down the hill and met Lucas for breakfast. I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask for a little advice.

“So should I call, or just show up on her doorstep?” I asked after taking a sip of orange juice.

Both Connor and Lucas were drinking juice as well, since the smell of coffee still made me want to throw up. Once or twice as the waitress passed by our table with a pot in her hand, going to refill someone’s cup, I felt a slight twinge of nausea, but it quickly passed. The problem was having it right in front of me, or filling the house with its scent as it was brewing.

“I wouldn’t call,” Lucas said, setting down his glass of grapefruit juice. “After all, she’s taken some pains to disappear, to disconnect herself from the Wilcox clan. Calling and claiming to be her long-lost granddaughter might just make her take off again.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way. Neither had Connor, apparently; he nodded as he listened to Lucas’ advice, but then remarked,

“And knocking on her door is better?”

“Well, at least then you have the element of surprise.”

True. “Okay, so we drive out to Williams and hope she’s there. What if she isn’t?”

Connor shrugged. “Then we take a look around, grab something to eat. It’s a cute little town.”

I wasn’t sure I could take such a setback quite that calmly, but he had a point. Sometimes you just gotta make lemonade.

“I’d say go ahead and give it a try today,” Lucas told us. “I don’t see how waiting is really going to help you.”

Connor and I exchanged a glance. Yes, I’d known that we would be driving out to Williams, and soon, but…today? Was I mentally prepared for that?

“Well….” I hedged.

Perhaps misunderstanding my hesitation — or not; Lucas seemed to be a pretty shrewd judge of character behind that air of breezy cheerfulness — he said, “And don’t worry about me. I did book a second night at the B&B, just in case, but I don’t have to stay. What you two need to do is far more important.”

There didn’t seem to be any way to argue with that. I shifted in the booth, turning toward Connor. “Are you okay with it?”

“Of course,” he replied at once. “As Lucas said, this is important. Even if it turns out that your grandmother doesn’t think she really knows anything, she could say something that makes sense to us, even if it doesn’t make sense to her.”

That seemed to clinch it. “Okay,” I said. “We’ll go this afternoon.”



* * *



It was a longish drive, a little more than an hour and a half. We wound down the western slopes of Mingus Mountain, moving toward Prescott, and then turned due north to go through Chino Valley and hit I-40 in Ash Fork. Connor drove, since he knew I was tense enough without having to maneuver over unfamiliar roads. Well, some of it was unfamiliar; of course I’d been to Prescott and even Chino Valley, but no farther north than that, because then you’d start to run into Wilcox territory.

Funny how those arbitrary lines had now been more or less erased.

We pulled off I-40 into Williams, running along Route 66. Connor was right — the downtown area did look fun, full of restored buildings and shops and restaurants. In other words, not so different from the historic section of Flagstaff, although much smaller. From there we took a road that wound through a modest residential section, mostly of vintage homes that seemed to date from around the turn of the twentieth century, a little newer than most of Jerome, although not by much. The houses got bigger as we drove up the hill, and eventually Connor stopped his FJ Cruiser in front of a large farmhouse-style home painted white, with green shutters. The front lawn was brilliantly green, and bordered by carefully tended roses blooming in shades of red and yellow and pink.

All in all, it looked very respectable, the sort of place you might expect your grandmother to live.

Connor laid his hand on top of mine. “You ready for this?”

“Probably not,” I admitted. “But we’re here. If she slams the door in my face, we can turn around and go back downtown, and you can take me to that diner we passed and buy me a chocolate milkshake.”

He smiled, heavy lashes almost concealing the green of his eyes. “Deal.”