Page 103 of The Weight Of Falling
Another sharp silence falls.
Only Gaby risks a glance at me. And I swear what I glimpse in her eyes is concern.
I look at Joel. His face has completely closed down.
“Kenzie, thank you for stopping by,” he says, and the remoteness in his voice curves my shoulders with mortification.
It’s painfully obvious he doesn’t want me interacting with them. It feels like he’s embarrassed by me. Hurt floods my chest.
“Sure, no problem. I have to go anyway. I need to get back to my dog.”
For the first time, Gaby shows interest. “You have a dog. What kind?”
“A beagle,” I tell her. “Joel helped me train him.”
The strangest thing happens. Gaby’s face goes white. And Phil’s lips tighten even more until they practically disappear.
“You should keep your beagle away from Joel,” she blurts out.
“That’s enough,” Joel says in a low, cold voice. A tone I’ve never heard from him.
A chill lifts the hairs on my arms.
Phil looks up at me. “Joel is allergic to dogs,” he says.
I suck in a tiny breath. He’s lying. Joel has spent hours with Turbo, and never once shown a reaction. Unless he’s been taking antihistamines every time. But that wouldn’t explain the times Turbo and I bumped into Joel unexpectedly, and he showed no symptoms.
Why would they warn me to keep Turbo away from Joel?
All I want now is to leave.
“Goodbye. It was nice to meet you both,” I manage, forcing the words past the knot in my throat.
I know the hurt is written on my face. I know Joel can see it. He’s able to read me better than anyone. I wait, hoping he’ll say something, maybe apologize, maybe invite me to sit, but he does none of those things. He lets me go. And that hurts most of all.
It’s only when I’m out on the street, breathing air not weighted with unbearable tension, that I realize what disturbed me most about that whole encounter.
It was the way his foster parents behaved around Joel.
They acted like they were afraid of him.
42
Two hours later, my phone lights up. Tess.
I drop onto a bar stool and swipe to answer. “Hi.”
“Hi, Kenzie.” There’s a pause. “Hold on. Grandma’s asking me something.”
I reach for the pen on the kitchen counter and start doodling in my notebook, trying to soothe the raw spot left by that strange and horrible encounter with Joel and his foster parents. I’m still reeling, my thoughts and emotions skidding everywhere, like tires on black ice. Turbo sits at my feet, like he knows I need the company.
On the other end of the line, I can hear muffled conversation, then a choked sound from Tess that might be laughter she’s trying to smother.
“Sorry about that,” she says when she comes back on the line, her voice amused and exasperated.
“What happened?”
“Grandma asked Google to play calming ocean sounds,” Tess explains. “But it started playingBaby Sharkinstead, and she absolutely lost it.”
