Page 98 of Missed Sunrise
At the nursing home this morning. I thought about waking you, but you were dead to the world. So glad you got some sleep.
Cher
And no, this is not me treating you like a toddler
I snorted as I read Vinh’s text next.
Vinh
There are coffee cake muffins on the kitchen island. Help yourself.
That made me…. Well. Frankly, it made me want to cry. Instead, I forced myself to smile. Smiling was a normal reaction to such a kindness. A family on a morning walk paraded by then, all of them waving at me in a neighborly way.
I kept my smile in place and forced myself to wave back.
This was the price of letting your scowl slip, I supposed.
It returned, though, when I realized there wasn’t a text from Liem, but as if the thought summoned him, my phone buzzed in my hand.
It was a picture of the sunrise from the gazebo. The one that had already happened.
I’d missed it.
When my phone started ringing in my hands, I was almost overtaken by my distress enough to decline it immediately, but then I saw his name.
Then I almost declined it anyway in my haste to answer.
“LL?” I said hopefully, pushing the phone against my ear as if it would bring him closer.
He breathed a sweet laugh, and my body immediately relaxed enough for me to take my first full breath of the day.
“Good morning, Dezi.”
He was in a car, that much was obvious. Even though I knew he wouldn’t be there, I pushed off the sign and continued toward the town square as I responded, “Good morning. Are you driving?”
“No, Aunt Ari is. We’re about an hour from Gulf Shores now. Where are you headed?”
That answered my question, and I hated it. Yesterday, he’d offhandedly mentioned going back to Gulf Shores today at some point. I just didn’t think I’d be so tired that I’d miss him leaving my arms.
“Downtown,” I answered vaguely.
There was silence between us until I made it to the empty gazebo, and I hated that too. I walked up the steps and sat down but immediately stood back up and started pacing.
“How’d you know I was going somewhere?”
Liem hummed. “I saw the security system notification when you left. That’s why I waited to message you.”
I vaguely recalled the sensors in the house and the app they all used to control the system as I walked figure eights on the worn boards.
I wasn’t sure what to say and definitely wasn’t enjoying this sudden almost awkwardness between us with him in a car with his aunt and me here without him.
Not after a night like last night.
“I didn’t want to wake you,” he said quietly.
My steps faltered, and I raised my gaze to the gazebo’s rafters as I took in his words, absorbing the apologetic tone he’d said them in. “Wake me next time. Please.”
“I will, Dezi,” he assured me, his words like a vow. “Next time.”
