Page 11 of Austin
“Damn it, Whit—”
“No. You don’t get a ‘damn it’. And you don’t get to be angry. You get to eat humble pie and get your ass home.”
Now Kristen sighed. “I will.”
“Let me know when you leave…and how you’re traveling. I want dates and times.”
Those were orders. “Yes.” Whit still felt protective, but she wasn’t going to make things easier for her. Not until she cooled down anyway. That worked, because Kristen didn’t want things easy. She felt like crap and she needed to pay some penance.
The connection ended and Kristen found herself holding a dead phone to her ear.
One enraged sister to deal with when she got home. To be followed by trusting parents, who would be no happier to have been kept in the dark than Whit had been.
It’s your life. You’re an adult.
True, but she hadn’t acted like one. Now she needed to go home, do damage control. Get her life back on track…somehow.
The bus schedule was a nightmare. The ticket cost close to two hundred dollars, which she didn’t have because the Silver Bow hadn’t paid her yet, and the trip took forty-three hours. She could get as far as Butte in twenty-three hours, and then she had to wait twenty hours to transfer to another bus for the three-hour trip to Marietta.
That made a hell of a lot of sense.
Who did she know in Butte who might give her a ride to Marietta? She’d lost contact with her old friends during the years she’d been to college and started her job. Most of her closest friends were off conquering worlds in far-flung cities. And they probably still had jobs.
“I tallied it up.” Her roommate, Lynn, came out of her bedroom and set a paper on the table. “I’m sorry you’re paying for next month’s rent, but it’s too late to get someone else and you know I can’t swing this alone.”
Kristen didn’t expect her to.
“That’s okay. I need a place to keep my stuff until I make arrangements to take it…somewhere.” Presumably back home.
“I’ll prorate the rent if things move faster.” Lynn was trying hard to help and Kristen appreciated the feeling of support.
Kristen worked up a smile. “You’ve been great. I wouldn’t have been able to work forsixwhole days if you hadn’t lent me your car.”
Lynn smiled back and reached out to touch Kristen’s arm, which brought her close to breaking point. She was going home with her tail between her legs, to make peace with her sister and to confess to her parents. The winner was going home a loser. She’d made one poor decision after another after being laid off and it had all caught up with her.
“How did things go with your sister?”
“Not good. And I can’t blame her. I broke trust. Now I need to smooth the waters. In person.”
“You’re going homenow?”
“I…think I’d better. For the sake of family relations.” And her finances. She couldn’t keep living in the city.
“If you can’t make it back before the end of May, Jason and I will pack up for you. Take your stuff to storage.”
“I’ll make it back.” She had almost forty days to figure out what to do with the storage warehouse full of the furniture she’d bought during what she now thought of as ‘the good times’—the time when she was employed. She could probably borrow a truck and trailer from her Marvell cousins and put things in storage on their ranch. Or she could sell it, but that would take time.
Lynn took a seat on the other side of the table, moving aside the vase of colored daisies to make room for her elbows. The flowers, coupled with the golden glow of the setting sun slanting in through the blinds, made the apartment feel warm and cheery—the antithesis of Kristen’s life. “How are you getting home?” Lynn asked.
“The bus.” She explained the trip without mentioning the part where she was going to use the last of her available cash for the ticket, focusing instead on the ridiculous twenty-hour layover, which she’d probably end up enduring, to pay penance, if nothing else.
“Your sister won’t pick you up?”
“I’m, uh, kind of afraid to ask.”
“And there’s no other way?”
There was probably a way. There was always a way, if one looked hard enough. Someone who could help without being put out.
