Aspen wraps her arms around me and sways me from side to side. I push her away. I’m not a child!
“Did you and Rowan break up?”
“Yes.”
I mean, I assume we did. He stood there like a deaf mute after I announced my ankle was healed. And here I was thinking it was cause for celebration. I groan. Crap. I left a bottle of champagne chilling in his refrigerator. At least I’m not there to be mortified when he finds it.
“What happened?” Juniper asks as she takes my hand and leads me to the sofa.
I yank on her hand to stall her before she can push me down.
“Why is there a wet spot on the sofa?”
“You know Bark Twain hasn’t been feeling well.”
My nose wrinkles, and I retreat. “As in he’s been throwing up on the sofa?”
Great. This is exactly the kind of welcome home I envisioned. Not.
“For goodness sakes.” Lilac marches into the kitchen and returns with a towel. She places it on the wet spot before motioning for me to sit down.
I plunk down on the sofa and prop my legs on the coffee table.
“Yeah!” Juniper claps. “You got your cast off.”
“You were supposed to have the cast on for another week.” Lilac would know. Her brain is a holding tank for all the information in the world. “Why did you get it off early?”
“And why didn’t you tell us?” Ellery asks.
“I know why,” Aspen sings. I throw daggers out of my eyes at her, but she keeps right on talking as if my daggers are merely love bites instead of the weapons of steel destruction they actually are. “She wanted to surprise Rowan first.”
“And look how that turned out,” I grumble.
She plops down next to me and grasps my hand. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
She bumps my shoulder. “Come on. You can tell us. We know how to keep a secret.”
“Really?” Ellery cocks an eyebrow. “The same way you kept it a secret when I skipped the school assembly?”
Aspen shrugs. “Better for you to get in trouble for skipping a stupid assembly than anyone find out about how I put hot sauce in Love Hill’s tomato soup.”
“Before we bring up every single wrong one of us has done to another of us, perhaps we could return to the matter at hand,” Lilac suggests.
“As if you’ve ever been wronged,” Ellery mumbles.
“I cannot help it if I was the perfect child.”
Ellery’s mouth drops open as she stares at Lilac. “Did you use sarcasm?”
Lilac’s mouth purses. “Of course not. There’s nothing ironic about my being the perfect child. It’s simply a matter of fact.”
Juniper fishes out her phone. “I’m calling Mom. We’ll find out if she thinks you’re the perfect child.”
I slap the phone out of her hand and it crashes to the floor. The sound scares Dale who was sneaking onto the sofa and he titters as he sprints away.
Ellery screams and jumps onto the coffee table. “Don’t let the critter bite me!”