Among ciphers and construction sketches, he wrote in his left-handed script, Addie-Cell and the number she recited.
“Thank you.” She turned toward the lane. “I won’t be long.”
“Addie.” Massaging his left shoulder, he walked with her around the side of his house. “It’s good the kids get along, don’t you think?”
She continued down his driveway. “It doesn’t mean we’ll be friends, Skip, so don’t read anything into it.”
“I’m not. I just wish…”
Halting midstride, she gazed up at him—at those honey eyes, that two-day beard, the too-long hair edging out from under his ballcap. “What? That we’ll be friends? That the past didn’t exist and I didn’t hate you for what you said and did?”
She saw him swallow before he looked away and wished she could recall her words. She hadn’t meant for him to know her grief, her hurt. And if she were honest with herself, neither had she meant to hurt him.
She resumed her mission, bent on her house, truck and bees. An hour and she’d return for Michaela, to have a chat with her daughter about crossing roads and going to the neighbor’s house without permission.
Michaela had to understand the gravity of her actions, of stranger-danger. One day her life could depend on it.
“Addie.” She heard his voice through a haze of worry and frustration.
With a sigh, she turned. He stood twenty feet up the driveway.
“Bee sting,” he said softly.
Bee sting. His code when they were teenagers, whenever she fought with her father and cried over his strict regimen, his harsh and opinionated philosophy. The words had helped her put things into perspective. Bee stings were ultimately worse than arguing with a parent.
As she gazed at Skip, she understood. Having him as her neighbor or having their children like each other was not as bad as an allergic reaction that squeezed air from windpipes—his windpipe.
Clamping her bottom lip at that memory, she turned for home, grateful he’d been a survivor that day. Because no matter what she believed about the past, nothing compared to seeing a twelve-year-old boy writhing on the ground, fighting for his next breath.
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