Page 39 of Waiting in Wyoming
Change scared her. She understood that.
Did it mean something that she was lying there, worried about him? She almost hurt because she knew he had to be hurting right now, too. Did that mean they were connected in some way?
Maybe it did.
Her alarm beeped. It was four-thirty. She had the morning shift in the dining room. She was going to work, then at a decent hour, she was going to check on him.
When she walked in, Dylan was setting out the frozen desserts to thaw. “Dylan, why are you up so early?”
Dylan had been going to work until midnight, then come in at ten.
“Filling in. For Charlotte. She got an early flight so couldn’t work this morning. I’ll sleep later,” Dylan said, shrugging. “I know she’s worried and scared.”
“She is. She and her friends are really close after what happened to her before.”
“Yeah, I read about what’s happened in Finley Creek over the last few years. That really, really sucked. Quade sat at the desk with us for a few hours, too. We just talked. He was a bit freaked. He really likes his aunt. And he and Charlotte are friends. He calmed her down a little.” Dylan had the desserts lined up perfectly now. She was one of those people who did everything very neatly. And quickly. Dylan was really good at the things she did do. Meyra just thought people looked at Dylan and thought she wasn’t good at things. Maybe because Dylan was really small—probably not even five feet tall—and just looked like a pixie and everything and a lot younger than she really was. They prejudged her. Underestimated her or something.
Well, just like Meyra had seen them do that same thing to Marin a lot of the time. Marin was very beautiful. And she dressed like she was a weird flower child or something. LikeDylan dressed in funny, funky clothing all the time, with wild and goofy accessories. And Dylan’s hair was funny. Grandma had said even Dylan’s hair vibrated withlife.Grandma had said that like it was a good thing. Meyra half understood that.
Dylan was special.
Meyra hadn’t missed that.
Sometimes she didn’t think Dylan saw that, though. Like maybe Dylan underestimated herself sometimes, too.
“You look tired,” she told Dylan. Dylan must have been up all night. Well, Meyra had, too. She just had been in her bed worrying.
“I’ll sleep later. Don’t worry about me. I’m tough.” Dylan grinned, around a yawn, after she said it. Dylan didn’t look tough to Meyra. Not at all. “I’ll sleep this afternoon. It will be one way to avoid my father’s daily ‘you-will-finish-school-or-else’ phone call today.”
“He’s right, though. You should graduate.” Dylan only had eight more classes to go. In business administration. She could probably go on for an MBA. She was definitely smart enough. But Dylan had told her bluntly—she didn’t want to. She had never wanted to major in business in the first place. But Dylan’s dad had pushed her to. Saying he wouldn’t pay for her schoolorher sisters’, if Dylan didn’t do exactly what he wanted. Dylan would doanythingfor her three younger sisters, everyone could see that. Meyra’s dad had gone through the roof when he’d learned that. He and Uncle Arthur had gotten into a shouting match in the lobby because of it—and Dylan had ended up crying in the garden. Meyra had found her there.
Everything was all confused and upside down for Dylan right now.
“You don’t sleep, though, do you?”
Dylan stopped, the bin of rolled silverware in her hands now. “What do you mean?”
Meyra knew she was right. “You aren’t sleeping very well, are you?”
Marin had done that, too. After she was shot with Brandt back then. Meyra’s sister would have massive nightmares at night. Before she’d started counseling and everything. From the trauma.
“Maybe…not as much as I should be,” Dylan finally admitted. “I just…can’t sleep. Nothing feelsrighthere,Mey. It just doesn’t.”
She sat the silverware down, and it rattled. “I’m not even sure who I am here right now. I still feel like Dylan Brown inside. I don’t even know who Dylan Geraldine Talley is supposed to be.”
“You are you. And we love you just the way you are.” Sometimes, she thought Dylan needed to hear that. Dylan seemed really insecure at times.
Meyra thought it was probably her uncle’s fault. After everything he’d done to Dylan and the younger girls. They’d said things before that concerned Meyra. He’d kept them away from almost everybody, for years. And then he’d make them move, sometimes in the middle of the night, and leave everything they owned behind. Meyra couldn’t imagine how difficult that would be for them. It definitely wasn’t very fair.
And the things her uncle said to Dylan sometimes, when he didn’t think Meyra was listening were kind of bad. He was really trying to make Dylan feel horrible for not going back to school. Making her feel bad for not doing exactly what he said. He was telling her she had to take care of her sisters, and not to upset her mother, and things like that.
Miranda said it was emotional manipulation.
Miranda was still in town right now, talking to the Weatherbys about their case. She’d heard Uncle Arthur and Dylan last time they’d argued, and Miranda had gotten reallyangry when Meyra had told her the other stuff she’d heard him say to Dylan.
Miranda had told Meyra she was going to tie a knot in Uncle Arthur’s tail if he didn’t quit it. That Dylan needed to know she wasn’t alone. Everything was really confused in Dylan’s life right now. Miranda said Dylan was struggling with belonging, more than the others, and knowing she had found “her safe place” was very important to Dylan.
Meyra just wanted to help.