“Ugh,” Bird interjected softly.
“Thank you, Godiva,” Jen put in dryly. “Now I wish I could unhear that.”
Godiva blithely ignored the interruptions. “—and the next thing we hear is that you’re moving in together?” She flashed a grin. “I gotta say, you don’t let any grass grow under your feet, girl.”
“He offered to move here. Which I call heroic, considering he’s got two kitchens. And an herb garden. As well as growing his own vegetables. Took me about five seconds to decide,” Doris said. “Joey’s place is way better than this place, which I never would have picked if I’d been smarter about real estate. And he’s got a couple acres to—” She stopped on the verge of saying to run in. “Start a garden project.”
Doris’s gaze slid toward Bird, but she yanked it back. She had wanted more time in order to think out how to talk to the women who had been her closest friends for years. She hated keeping secrets.
Bird had said over the phone the night of Doris’s return, “It hurt me, not telling the rest of your four. But the world of shifters is their secret, not ours. And I see why they keep quiet.”
Doris had agreed—but now she understood why Bird had used the word ‘hurt’—she didn’t want to lie. And yet she couldn’t tell the truth. Oh, she knew she could trust Jen and Godiva, but why burden them with a secret they’d have to keep, which didn’t benefit them a bit?
So she’d just change the subject. “I figure, I’m making up for lost time.” At that moment the tea kettle shrilled, and she busied herself making tea as she added, “I hated missing the writers’ group, but it was either put in the time packing up my sewing gear and my bookshelves last night, or pull an all-nighter tonight. And I lost the knack for doing that and bouncing right back not long after I left college. How did it go?”
“Linette’s great. She handles things like a pro,” Godiva stated. “It’s like she took notes from you.”
Bird put in with a smile at Jen. “Jen here has started a new book. Another fantasy. I really like it.”
Doris paused in the act of spooning Yun Wu, or Clouds and Mist, into the pot. “A new one?” she asked over her shoulder. “I was really into that other one, the one about the world with magic.”
Jen looked down at the pretty lotus blossom cup she’d chosen. “I can’t seem to stick to them past the first few chapters. It’s like I get excited about the world, but the story . . .” She shrugged. “Fizzles on me.”
Bird said quickly, “It’s all right. Sometimes it’s that way. You never know when an idea will take off.”
But at least Jen was writing again. A few years ago, Doris had worried that Jen would give up entirely after her husband died. Jen had barely existed, stunned with grief. They’d all been afraid.
“Yeah.” Jen smiled around at them. “Maybe it’s just that it’s been so long since I’ve written fiction, those muscles are atrophied. It really is different from journalism, where you are constantly checking your sources. With fiction, the source is entirely on me. I feel kind of adrift.”
Bird said, “But Godiva’s mystery is going like gangbusters.”
“Turns out Oona is a real psychopath,” Godiva said with obvious relish as Doris brought the tea to the table. “You were so awesome as Oona, I think you should be the one to decide how she gets defeated at the end. Do you want her ass in stir, or a really nasty end? Like, say, fire ants? Bubonic plague?”
Doris snorted a laugh. “Surprise me.”
Godiva uttered a sinister chuckle.
“Now you’ve done it,” Jen commented to Doris. “You’ve loosed the whirlwind.”
Doris smiled, glad to see another hint of the old Jen. She was definitely coming out of that well of grief at last.
Godiva uttered another laugh, took a sip of tea, and then slewed around her in her chair. “What I don’t get is, how your Professor Hu ended up near your family’s shack, of all the places in the world?”
Doris’s gaze met Bird’s, then both of them quickly looked away. Doris said, “It’s not so odd when you consider the house is above a really pretty lake. It so happened that the bend in the road their Jeep was on when the snow hit was right by our house. And there was nowhere else for them to go.”
“I see. Welp, I’m glad it worked out,” Godiva said. “Hey, I really like the taste of this tea.”
“It’s something Joey brought back from China,” Doris said.
Godiva chuckled. “Who would’ve thought that two of our Gang of Four would end up with hotties? Too bad they don’t have any brothers or cousins tucked up, looking for vintage babes. But I call a fifty percent increase in getting some action pretty good. Vast improvement over last year, when all the four of us had was memories.”
Doris smiled. “Let’s toast to a hundred percent increase by next year.”
Jen shook her head slowly. “I will never find another Robert. I won’t even look.”
“And I accepted that I’m pretty much put out to pasture once the big Eight-Oh rolled around,” Godiva said. “I get my fun vicariously. Seeing you two turn up with bee-stung lips, like you just woke from a wild night, makes me happy.”
Bird said to Doris, “Did you get any new recipes for the new book?”