Chapter 14: Dinosaur in the Back Seat

Monica's POV

Dalton's voicemail sat on my phone for a full day before I played it.

I played it standing at my mother's stove, with the oatmeal pot in my other hand.

"I did not sign that consent," he said, and his voice sounded scraped. "I won't let it stand on Friday."

I deleted it, then fished it back out of the trash folder, and then I hated myself for doing that.

"Nope," Ruby said from the table. "We're not doing this before coffee."

"I'm not doing anything."

"You're holding a pot like it's his neck."

"It's a pot."

"It's a pot with a face on it."

My mother snorted into her tea.

"Take Biscuit around the block," she said. "Both of you. Loudly, so the neighbors know I'm not dying."

I clipped the leash on the dog, who had been waiting by the door since six.

He had come back to me in a tuxedo bow tie and he had refused to leave my side since.

Ruby grabbed her jacket, and we went out to my car, because she had left her laptop charger in it.

The street was gray and quiet.

A dark sedan I didn't know was parked three houses down with its engine running.

I opened the back door of my own car to look for the charger.

A small boy looked up at me from the floor behind the driver's seat.

He was wearing his dinosaur sweater, and he was holding a plastic dinosaur in each fist.

"Hi," Archie said.

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