“I’m sure she’ll turn out all right. You raised her right.”

“You make it sound like I’m her mother.” Harper laughed somewhat uncomfortably. Daniel just looked at her and shrugged. “You think I act like her mother?”

“I don’t think you act like you’re eighteen,” he clarified.

She bristled as if he’d accused her of something terrible. “I have a lot to worry about.”

He nodded. “I can tell.”

Harper rubbed the back of her neck and turned away from him. Through the diner window she could see the library across the street, and she wondered how well Marcy was holding up.

“I should probably get back,” Harper said, and she reached into her pocket for her money.

“No, no.” Daniel waved his hand. “I got this. Don’t worry about it.”

“But I thought this was my IOU meal for the ice cream.”

“I was just kidding. I’ll pay.”

“Are you sure?” Harper asked.

“Yeah,” he said, laughing at her guilt-stricken expression. “If it bothers you so much, I’ll let you pay for it some other time.”

“What if we don’t ever eat together again?” Harper asked, eyeing him skeptically.

“Then we don’t.” He shrugged. “But I think we will.”

“Okay,” she said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Thank you for the Coke.”

“No problem,” Daniel said, watching her as she got up.

“And I’ll see you around, I guess.”

He nodded and gave her a small wave. As she was walking out the door, she heard Pearl ask him if he wanted any pie. Harper went back across the street to the library, and it was very hard for her not to glance back over her shoulder at him.

THIRTEEN

Rebellion

Part of her penance was helping Harper clean. It actually wasn’t specifically dictated as part of her punishment, but it helped ease Gemma’s guilt over frightening both Harper and her father so badly.

Based on how much Harper complained about it, Gemma thought that cleaning the bathroom was her least favorite chore. So that was the one Gemma had offered to take over. Although, after spending five minutes scrubbing the inside of the toilet, she was really starting to regret it.

When she got to cleaning the tub, she realized that the toilet wasn’t even the worst part. The drain in the bathtub was disgusting. Harper always claimed it was mostly Gemma’s hair clogging things up, but Gemma hadn’t really believed her until now.

Fortunately, she wore thick yellow cleaning gloves, or else there would have been no way she could’ve handled it. As she pulled out a long wet rope of hair that looked all too much like a drowned rat, Gemma noticed something glinting in the light.

Carefully, she picked it out of the tangles, and when she saw what it was, she dropped the wet mass of hair. It was another one of those weird iridescent scales she’d found in her bath sponge. She’d nearly forgotten about the last one. Or at least she’d tried to.