Chapter Forty-three
Tori
The sound of my phone buzzing wakes me up. With my eyes still shut, I fumble around and squint at the screen. It’s Leah.
‘Yeah,’ I mumble.
‘Are you feeling as bad as I am?’ she asks morosely.
‘I don’t know. I’m not awake yet.’
‘Well, wake up and tell me.’
I sit up. ‘Why are you up so early?’
‘My bed’s too comfortable. I couldn’t sleep.’
I manage half a laugh. ‘So sleep in your sleeping bag then.’
‘Might have to do that tonight.’
I yawn.
‘Want to meet for lunch or something?’
‘I don’t know if mom’s got something planned. I’ll call you later?’
‘OK, speak later.’
I close my eyes and fall back to bed. I never got to sleep until late. I had to creep downstairs and cut two cucumber slices to put on my eyelids because I didn’t want to wake up with swollen eyes and have everybody know I’d been crying all night. I push my bedclothes away and go to stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom. The cucumber trick worked. My eyes look normal.
As I stare at my own reflection a dream I had last night breaks. Weird. I dreamt Cash and I were sitting in a boat. It must have been a lake because the water was calm. There was no sadness or perpetual pain. In my dream he’d forgiven me. With a sigh I turn away from the mirror.
I use the toilet, wash quickly, and go downstairs in my PJ’s. The whole house smells of Italian roast coffee and bacon. My dad has already gone to work, but my mom has got her rubber gloves on and is busy cleaning out one of the shelves.
‘Good morning,’ she says brightly as she takes her gloves off.
‘Morning, Mom,’ I reply with fake brightness and a fake cheery smile.
I pour myself a cup of coffee, sit at the kitchen table, and yawn.
‘Awww, honey. You’re still jetlagged aren’t you?’
‘I guess so.’
‘I knew you’d be missing out on your Southern breakfast so I made the works. How about a nice plate of bacon, ham, sausages, grits and gravy with sunny side up eggs to dip your toast in?’
‘Oh no, Mom. I can’t today,’ I groan. ‘I just want cereal.’ I get up to take a bowl from the cupboard and my mom steers me back to the chair.
‘Bull puckey! You’ll do no such thing. I made you a good breakfast this morning and you’ll eat it and be grateful for it, young lady. Didn’t you say last night how those poor beggar children were starving?’
‘You’re not going to start using that against me,’ I grumble. ‘It’s not like me eating a big breakfast is going to make a blind bit of difference to them.’
However, mom is already putting a plate on the cooker top to warm it. With a resigned sigh I watch her put the skillet on the stove and lay two thick cut slices of bacon on the black iron.
The bacon has just become limp and mom has just pushed it to one side to make space for the eggs when the doorbell goes. Both mom and me look at each other.
‘Who on earth could that be?’ mom says.
‘I’ll go,’ I say, and hop off the chair. I peep out of the window and it’s a delivery man holding a box. I open the door, sign for the package that is for me and come back in.
‘Who was it?’ mom calls from the kitchen.
‘It was a package for me.’ I put the package on the kitchen table.
‘Who is it from?’
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t say.’
‘It’s not ticking, is it?’ she laughs.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well, open it then,’ she says giving me a knife.
I slit through the string and brown paper and open the box inside, and stare at the contents.
Mom comes to peer over my shoulder. ‘What on earth is all that?’
I look at the measuring tape, the knife, the scissors, clothes pins, and thin and thick rods and I start to laugh.
My mom looks at me strangely.
‘These are the items you need for basket weaving, Mom,’ I tell her grinning happily.
‘Basket weaving? Why in heaven’s name would someone send you basket, uh, why’re you crying?’
‘Mom, your eggs are burning,’ I half sob.
She rushes to the skillet and takes it off the stove just as we hear music coming from the back garden. I rush to the back door and wrench it open, and without warning my legs give way. I sink to my knees. My body goes into shock and my little heart feels as if it will burst with happiness.
Cash Hunter is standing in my garden playing the guitar and serenading me! Can this even be real? All those years when I stood in front of the TV and pretended he was singing to me! And now this. Oh my!