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The stairs creaked, the RV resettling as Wren unlocked her front door, holding the storm door open with her hip while she did it.
“Honey, I’m home,” she said under her breath as she pushed the door open. She threw her keys onto the kitchen counter, and tossed the jacket she hadn’t needed onto the bench seat at the postage stamp excuse for a dining table. Then she swung her purse around from where it had been tucked on the small of her back before unlooping the thing from her shoulders and tossing it on top of her coat.
She crossed to the sink and reached for her favorite (read: only) mug. Then she cranked on the tap, snagged the electric kettle sitting not far from where her mug had been, and shoved it under the running water. A few moments later, kettle crackling quietly as it began to heat, she pulled a bag of loose tea leaves down from one of the two upper cabinets and tapped a few into the bottom of her cup.
Now all there was to do was wait for the water to boil.
She crossed the tiny space to a wall lined with greenery, where dozens of plants grew in hydroponic vessels, the water in each container chortling happily. Wren thought it sounded like laughter. She observed the plants one by one, plucking browned petals and leaves, checking water levels and the heat from the full spectrum lights overhead.
It was probably time to rotate the containers again, she thought, at the same time the electric kettle clicked, turning itself off once the water had come to a boil.
“Sweet.” Wren crossed back to the kitchen, plucked the kettle off its powered base and filled her mug, watching the tea leaves swirl and dance in the tiny torrent of hot water.
“So, Callum and Zander got off okay,” she said as she settled herself into the ugly, green, vintage wing back chair Callum and Scott had happily given her when she commented on its ugly-awesomeness. She planned to rip out a bank of bench seating in the little bump out at the back of the RV so she could position the chair in a well of sunlight that filtered down from the sun-roof overhead. It was right next to her plants and with the benefit of the bright LEDs, the little space felt more solarium than used-to-be-where-the-bedroom-was. For now, however, it sat awkwardly in the middle of the tiny room so it was more obstacle than accent.
“Their flight was delayed by an hour, but they got the alert before we even left. So we got a beer before heading out.” She took a long sip from her tea.
Damn that was good.
Wren had let the A/C run while she was gone, so the RV was cool enough to make this hot tea actually enjoyable. She wouldn’t be drinking it otherwise, except she needed to so she could be certain of the decision she was about to make.
She sipped in silence a while longer, listening to that cheery chortling water all around her, and thinking again about the conversation she’d had with Bridgette’s spirit, through Callum and Cecily, those nights ago. In the end, they’d spoken for nearly an hour. Wren would have kept talking all night but Bridgette eventually ended it, telling Wren to go get some sleep. She’d crashed out on the sofa, unable to drive home until the wee hours of the morning.
They’d talked about so much. Little things, and big things. Important things, and stuff so mundane it made Wren smile to think about—primarily that she needed to get a better mattress on “that sad excuse for a bed,” as Bridgette had put it.
“I want you to travel, not cripple yourself,” she’d said.
Wren felt better since talking to Bridgette. She didn’t know she’d felt bad before. She’d been okay, she’d been making it through—but that was all she’d been doing. Bridgette had known it, even if Wren hadn’t been able to see it.
The thought of moving on was still a little hard for Wren to grasp—how could she just continue on with her life like Bridgette never happened?—but she thought she was understanding it more each day.
Bridgette wasn’t asking her to live like the two of them had never been. She was asking Wren to actively participate in the creation of her life now that they weren’t.
So now Wren just had to figure out what that life she was going to create looked like, exactly.
A number of sips later, she swallowed down the last bit of tea, careful not to tip the cup up and risk disturbing the way the leaves had settled.
She gave the bottom of the mug a glance, knowing what she’d see—and froze.
Slowly, she sat forward in her seat, placing both feet on the floor and bracing her forearms against her knees as she stared into the mug.
The leaves didn’t look like she expected. Like they had last time.
She shook her head. No, we ended the Shadow.
She stared down into the cup like she hoped the image would miraculously morph into something else.
The Shadow was gone. She’d done it with her own hands. The thing was toast.
So why did the tea leaves look like this?
She closed her eyes, drew a breath and opened them again.
Still the same.
Because it’s not the Shadow.
The knowledge came to her like it had been delivered from on high. From Bridgette.
It’s not the Shadow. It’s something else.
Wren rose from the chair and paced slowly across the tiny space, turning the mug in her hands and observing the leaves as she walked, as the light dimmed.
And the image changed.
When she turned it, the image wasn’t threatening at all. It was a portent of good fortune, of the right path taken.
But when she turned it back, it was an omen of control and oppression.
So which was it?
She closed her eyes, drew another breath and sent the question out into space. Out to Bridgette.
What is on the horizon? Which image is the augury?
And she got her answer. Will either change your course?
Wren sighed and opened her eyes on a roll. “No, it won’t,” she said aloud. “But I’d like to know what I’m walking into.”
The RV was silent. Of course it was.
Reading tea leaves was an imperfect science. What you saw reflected more of your own inner workings than a true psychic glimpse at the future. Which meant the sinister message she was seeing probably had more to do with her own anxieties about what she was planning to do than anything else.
Right?
“Fine,” she said aloud, casting her gaze to the framed picture of Bridgette. In the picture, Bridge was holding Wren’s arm, hugging it, and staring up at the camera Wren had held above them: a wake-up selfie she hadn’t known the importance of when she took it, capturing real life at its brightest.
“I hear you loud and clear,” she said to Bridge. “But I’m not going back to Seattle right away. And I’m not selling the RV.”
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