The Fate Series Box Set (Robin and Tyler Book 4) Read online

  Miranda and I stand at the front desk for a few minutes, looking around for someone to help us. Elizabeth had said a woman named Shelly was waiting for us, but we are a little later than expected. Miranda checks out everything in the room with a child-like curiosity, picking up glass figurines and admiring them for a moment before moving on when something else catches her eye. The place looks like something out of an old movie. Dark wooden floors creak under our footsteps and hand-woven rugs and runners soften the sound.

  I’m about to give up and suggest we sleep in the car. Miranda’s eyes narrow and she goes up to the front desk. She reaches over the counter and grabs an envelope with the name Carter written on it in delicate handwriting. She raises an eyebrow and opens it.

  Inside is a key, a real metal one not a plastic card one like Houston hotels have, and a note written on Salt Gap Inn stationary. I read it aloud.

  ‘“Ms. Carter, thank you for choosing to stay with us this afternoon. Unfortunately my arthritis is acting up and I must turn in early tonight. Please see yourself to your room at the end of the hallway to your left. If you need any assistance, do not hesitate to call my nephew at extension 519. Thank you and I hope you enjoy your stay, Shelly Singleton.”

  I picture a portly old woman with thick glasses writing this note to me before she went to bed. Now this is the kind of southern hospitality I’d expect from a town with twelve hundred citizens.

  Miranda leads the way to the end of the hall and unlocks our room. It’s small, with flower print wallpaper, a bay window decorated with pillows and a queen sized bed in the middle of the room. It’s exactly what I’d expect for a mere eighty dollars a night and it’ll have to do. Luckily, it has its own bathroom which is what Miranda needs more than anything right now.

  She showers for a long time while I lay on my back on top of the flower-print comforter. There is a single glow-in-the-dark star stuck to the ceiling above me. When I was a kid, my whole bedroom was full of them, minus one empty spot in the corner where I peeled off the stars that spelled out my crush’s name. I guess I should have known back then that relationships were a bad idea.

  Miranda sings an off-pitch version of some Katy Perry song. It’s distracting to have another person in the room with me after having lived alone for so long. We’ll have to sleep in the same bed since the only chair in here is a wooden rocking chair and the floor is cold and creeps me out. I’m not about to sleep on the floor and I can’t make a pregnant girl do it either.

  It occurs to me that this is the craziest thing I’ve ever done. I once went skydiving while drunk and I let my college boyfriend talk me into getting a bird tattoo on the top of my foot—which now I hate because it reminds me of him—but those are nothing compared to this. My car is smashed, a pregnant teenager is in my care, I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere without a home to go back to, and oh yeah—I don’t have a job.

  There was a time in my life when I thought money would solve all of life’s problems. I’ve pretty much always felt that way, back when I was broke in college and even when I had some money in the bank. But now I have loads of money and everything feels wrong, like it can’t be patched back together with wads of cash, or held down with a stack of gold coins.

  I reach for my phone on the nightstand, unlock it and scroll down my contacts list to the—oh, shit…G section. Grandpa’s number is still here, but I can’t call him. A heavy sinking feeling consumes me as warm tears pool to the corner of my eyes. Realizing that I was about to call a dead guy to ask for advice makes my cheeks flush. It’s not like T-Mobile will redirect your cell number to heaven when you die. Not only have I lost my job, I’ve lost my mind too, apparently.

  The bathroom door swings open and Miranda walks out in a new set of pajamas and a towel wrapped around her head. Her nose isn’t bleeding anymore, but it’s three times its normal size and completely black.

  I sit up in bed. “God, Miranda. You look terrible.”

  She cocks her hips and strikes a pose. “I take it you don’t like my new nose job? I hear they are all the rage in Hollywood.” She snorts at her own joke and then her face crinkles up in pain. “Oww, shit this hurts.”

  “I tried getting cell service so I could Google broken noses, but I have zero bars out here,” I tell her, attempting to be helpful. I really do feel terrible that I can’t help, having never had a broken nose myself. I have heard that if you punch someone hard enough in the nose, their cartilage will shoot through their brain and kill them. I have no idea if that’s true or not, but I’m glad it didn’t happen to Miranda.

  She sits next to me on the bed. “My boyfriend broke his nose playing football. They just put some tape on it and he was fine in a few weeks.”

  “Weeks?” I blurt out, not wanting her face to look like black water balloon for that long.

  She shrugs. With slow movements, she brings her middle finger up to her nose and touches it lightly. “I don’t know, I think it looks kind of badass.”

  My shower is lukewarm thanks to a certain someone rudely using all the hot water, so I have to shampoo my hair quickly. The bathroom has a claw foot tub and porcelain pedestal sink. People in Houston would pay a lot of money for original pieces like this in their luxury lofts.

  I can tell by the sound of the bed squeaking, then Miranda groaning in pain over and over that she’s having a difficult time finding a comfortable sleeping position. It will be a miracle if I don’t roll over in my sleep and bop her in the face with my arm. Maybe I should sleep on the floor.

  After my shower, I find her lying on her back under the sheets, her arms wrapped around two pillows that are squished to the sides of her face. I grab an extra pillow out of the closet and lay down next to her. My feet sink into the cool, crisp sheets and loosen them from the corners of the bed. Nothing feels better than crawling into a professionally made bed after one of the worst days of your life. I can only imagine that Miranda feels the same.

  “You comfortable?” I ask. She mumbles something that I can’t hear from over her fluffy face guards. Never, in a million billion years would I imagine that I’d be going to sleep next to my niece in a town called Salt Gap.

  Exhaustion tugs at my eyelids, but suddenly I feel like talking. “I’m tired, but I feel like I can’t sleep tonight.”

  Miranda pushes down a pillow and looks over at me. “I don’t want to sleep either. I’ve done enough of that in my life.”

  I eye her, using the small bit of light in the room to focus on her dark, now clean of makeup eyes. “You say the weirdest things,” I tell her.

  She breathes in through her mouth and lets out a long sigh. “Today was one asshole of a day.”

  “Yeah, it was.”

  “Did you expect this to happen when you packed up all your stuff and decided to move far away?”

  That’s a good question. I think back to two days ago when I got the brilliant plan to move. I remember being pissed off that Jason seemed to have zero interest in me after our night of drunken love making, and I remember the sickening nagging feeling of my promise to Grandpa. But did I ever actually sit down, make a pros and cons list and rationally decide to pack up and leave? Yeah, that’s a big negative.

  “No, I didn’t expect this to happen.”

  “I’m sorry if I’m a worthless pain in your ass that does nothing but drain you emotionally and financially,” she says. And for once her voice doesn’t have that sarcastic undertone it always has that makes her giggle after she says something completely bogus.

  “You aren’t that at all,” I say. “Why would you even think that? I like having you around.”

  “Heh,” she says sarcastically like she’s trying to find another way to snort without using her nose. “You don’t even know me, remember?”

  “I’m sorry I said that.” Silently to myself, I add the words: I am such an asshole. “I do know you, a little. You threw up on me when you were a baby. It was disgusting and smelled gross and it got in my ears.”

  “Wow,” Mir
anda says, abandoning her frozen gaze at the ceiling and turning her head toward me. “How did it get in your ears?”

  “You were sleeping on my chest on the couch. I was seven.”

  I hear her swallow in the silence that follows. “Now you have me thinking about babies.” It’s scary the way she says babies, like it’s something to be feared and run away from. It’s probably the saddest way I’ve ever heard the word spoken. Although babies cross my mind every so often for some reason or other, I know the subject has been stuck in Miranda’s head every moment of today.

  “Are you sure you’re pregnant?”

  “Three of the most expensive tests at the pharmacy say I am. I had to bum money off the cashier to buy the last one. He told me three out of three was enough confirmation anyone needed.”

  “What a jerk,” I say, just for the sake of saying something.

  “No, he was alright. My friend Jess went with me to buy the first one, and as he was giving me my change back he goes, ‘Good luck!’ and I was so embarrassed I turned to leave but Jess goes, really loud so everyone could hear, ‘I’m going to be a daddy!’”

  She does the heh snort again. “I guess that part was funny.”

  “Sounds like a good friend.”

  “She is. We’ve been friends since fourth grade. I know she won’t tell anyone in school, but it’s not like I care about them anymore.”

  The bonds of our friendship are raw and new, but I’m dying to know the answer. “How did this happen?”

  Her face turns slightly toward me but I can only see the pillows surrounding her head. “Uh, I had sex. Duh.”

  My cheeks burn again. “I know that,” I say sarcastically. “But how did the pregnancy happen? You should know better.”

  “I do know better. We used a condom and everything. Trust me, I thought we did it right.”

  “And the guy?” I ask, feeling the boundaries like a tangible force between us as I push them apart. It is none of my business, but by the way she showed up at my house this afternoon, she can probably use someone to talk to. And also, wow. How has it only been a few hours since I left my condo?

  “He just got a scholarship to play college football. His parents didn’t think it was right for me to ruin his chance at playing professional football with an illegitimate child, so…”

  “So? What do you mean so?”

  She stares at the glow-in-the-dark star. “So, I mean that I agreed to stay out of his life and let him get famous. He promised he’d send me money when and if he gets drafted into the NFL.” She fidgets with the comforter. “But…I don’t really care. I mean, if I’m not good enough for him now, I don’t want to be with him if he decides I’m good enough later on.”

  “I think you’re making a good choice,” I say.

  Miranda sits up on her elbow for a moment before falling back to the bed. “Let’s stay here in Salt Gap. Let’s find our soul mates and live happily ever after.”

  I roll my eyes in the dark. “I think you have a little brain damage to go along with that broken nose. There is no such thing as soul mates.”

  “That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard,” she says.

  I can’t bring myself to disagree, to spout off a ton of facts that will prove her wrong and me right. Crushing her delusional dreams of love and romance wouldn’t solve anything, plus I am confident that life will take care of that on its own. We lay, face up in bed, side by side for what feels like hours, both of us trapped in our own mind, thinking things that only make us feel worse.

  I don’t know how I’ll ever fall asleep, but eventually, I do.

  Chapter 8

  My car will be in the body shop for three to five days. Because it’s a foreign car all the parts had to be ordered from a warehouse in Anaheim, California. My insurance company could probably send me a rental car, but what’s the point? It’s not like I have anywhere to go.

  “Let me guess, the place is called Salt Gap Body Shop?” Miranda says, climbing up on a stool next to me at the bar of the Salt Gap Diner the next morning. After scavenging through the bottom of my purse for quarters, she just dropped a handful of them in the jukebox. I already regret it as a Kesha song starts to play.

  “No, actually,” I laugh and eat a bite of my pancakes. “It’s called Joe’s Body Shop. It was right next to a place called Hudson Armory and Tactical.”

  “Nice. At least someone in this town has a creative spark.” Miranda tears her bacon into bits and mixes them with her grits. I’ve never had grits until this morning, and mixed with salt and butter, (and probably bacon, had I thought to do that) they are totally delicious.

  The diner is packed today, so much so that it almost looks like a completely different restaurant from the one we visited last night for dinner. We had to sit at the bar because all the tables are taken. The bar stretches across the length of the restaurant, minus the end where a swinging door allows employees to come and go from the kitchen. Our plates sit on a wooden countertop coated with half an inch of clear resin. Sandwiched between the wood and the resin are dozens of old photographs, movie ticket stubs, autographed scraps of paper and other old fashioned mementos. There’s even a feather from an Indian headdress buried by Miranda’s orange juice.

  The walls are made with reclaimed wood from barns or fences and they’re decorated with all kinds of photos and western memorabilia. I feel like I could eat here a dozen times and still not see everything there is to see.

  “I wish Elizabeth was here. I wanted to see if she’s okay.” Miranda frowns thoughtfully as she scopes out another waitress in the crowd and I can tell she’s thinking about asking her for Elizabeth’s whereabouts. Elizabeth’s boyfriend may have broken Miranda’s nose last night, but hopefully he didn’t also break hers.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” I say to reassure the both of us. Last night I had more important things to worry about than a small town waitress and her roid-raging boyfriend. Last night, I figured I would never see her again. Now I’m almost certain I will.

  The warm August air is beautiful, and the walk from the diner back to the inn isn’t so much exercise as it is peaceful. Miranda’s enjoying it too, I think. After our long talk last night, that invisible shield of awkwardness has been dropped between us. We’re acting like the blood relatives we are. Well, not the way Maggie and I interact, but the way two relatives should act around each other.

  “I can’t believe I forgot to pack proper shoes,” Miranda says as she trudges along the broken asphalt road in a pair of my black flats. “I would kill to have my Converse right now.”

  “And I would kill to have you stop kicking those rocks in my eighty dollar shoes.”

  “Must be nice to be so rich,” she says, absentmindedly kicking yet another rock. Yeah, okay. She can just have those shoes now.

  “It is nice,” I say, ignoring her eye roll. “But this is nicer.” I stop in the middle of the road. My arms spread out and up, taking in the sun’s warmth and the wind’s gentle chill and the smell. Oh, god, the smell of fresh country air. “A girl could get used to this place.”

  Miranda nods. “And a baby could totally grow up here.”

  I don’t say anything because I don’t want the truth to interfere with my beautiful, quiet moment in nature. Miranda can let her imagination roam for now. She can think she’s getting out easy by running away from home and raising a child in some new and fascinating small town. But the truth is that she can’t. She will have to go home and be with her mother and face her life the responsible way. You can’t just pack up and run away from all your problems.

  I don’t tell her any of that even though running away is exactly what we’re doing.

  We’re greeted at the entrance to the inn by a tall plain woman with long brown hair in a braid that trails down her back. She’s wearing a simple navy blue knit dress with wooden buttons. It reminds me of the kind of clothing you see in thrift stores, the stuff that no one would ever buy.

  “Welcome to Salt Gap Inn, ladie
s. May I help you today?” Her voice is throaty like she smokes a pack a day. She folds her hands in front of her on the counter and awaits our response.

  “Are you Sherry Singleton?” I ask, remembering the scrawly old lady hand writing on the note left for us last night.

  “Yes ma’am, I am. Owner and manager.”

  “I’m Robin Carter, I checked in last night,” I say, digging in my purse and pulling out my wallet. “Actually, I never got to check in, so I should do that now.”

  “Oh, yes! Of course.” She turns around and flips through an old filing cabinet, pulling out a card. I can’t believe this town hasn’t heard of using this fancy thing called a computer to check in guests.

  “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to meet you last night,” she says, taking a pen out from behind her ear and writing the name Robin Carter in neat upper case letters on the card. “It’s this damned weather, I tell you. It makes my joints all stiff and wouldn’t you know it, I can’t even get up out of my chair if I sit still too long!”

  I smile politely and nod, like I understand the complications of weather and arthritis. She slides the card over to me and I sign it at the bottom. It’s basically an index card, preprinted with spaces for the dates and a little spot to check each calendar day I plan on staying. “I don’t know how long we’ll need to stay. Can I pay for three days and take it from there?”

  “Of course, dear.” She waves away my hand when I try to hand her my debit card. “I won’t need any payment from you.”

  “Huh?” I ask, my mouth open as I look at my rejected debit card. There’s no way southern hospitality is this nice.

  “Thomas Hernandez came by this morning, said he was paying for your stay.”

  “Who?” I ask, mentally scanning through every Hernandez I know and wondering how anyone from back home would know where I’m even at, much less offer to pay my bill.

  “Marcus Hernandez’s father. Like I said, he came by this morning and he said his son owed you an accommodation since he made your stay longer than you expected.” Miranda and I exchange glances and for the first time, Sherry seems to notice the gross abnormality in the middle of Miranda’s face. “Goodness, child! What happened to you?”