They Booked Four Seats Without Me, So I Booked One to California novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Warm

We landed in California at one in the afternoon, and I took off my padded coat before we reached the airport doors.

It was sixty-eight degrees.

There were palm trees in the parking lot.

I stood on the curb in my sweater with my crutches under my arms and looked at my phone.

"Paul removed you from the group." "Closed at the request of the primary holder."

I had never had a joint account, so someone had put my name on money I didn't know about.

"Ingrid," I said. "What was in that account?"

"Not here," she said. "Somewhere you can sit down. I'll tell you what I can, and the lawyer will tell you the rest."

I put the phone away and breathed.

"Told you it was warm," Ingrid said.

"You said that in a text."

"A text doesn't count. This does."

She drove us over a mountain road with the windows down.

The air smelled like salt, eucalyptus and wet leaves.

I had never smelled anything like it.

Ingrid's house sat three blocks from the ocean, a low yellow place with a porch full of potted plants.

Behind it was her nursery, rows of green under a glass roof.

She had a small cottage at the back of the yard, painted blue, with a swing seat on the porch.

"That's Dylan's," she said. "My tenant. He's the county paramedic, and he'll be home any minute from a night shift. You can have the room off the kitchen."

She pushed open the door.

It was a small room with a white bed, a slanted ceiling and a dresser with a vase of yellow flowers.

There was a window that looked at the lemon tree.

There was a lamp on the nightstand.

It was a plain brass lamp with a green shade.

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