Chapter 118: He Could Keep His Key and Lose Their Business

"Leave that where it is," Dove said, pointing at the key ring. "If you need something from my room, you can ask me in front of everybody."

The worker snatched the ring off the desk and hooked it onto his belt. Hollis turned toward Dove with an expression she was learning to hate. She folded her arms and waited. Thorne was outside their room with the bags, and she could hear Edrik’s steps approaching behind her. Hollis apparently heard them too, because his smile thinned.

"I was checking the corridor," he said.

"Excellent. Check it from the public side. I’m done having this conversation."

Edrik appeared beside her before Hollis tried another answer. He looked at the keys, then the son, and said nothing. Thorne remained outside their room, where Dove had asked him to watch their belongings while she handled the office.

Caldwell arrived from the diner with a towel over his shoulder. Dove pointed at his son. "He was asking for access to the corridor outside our room. Again. Your worker still has the keys, which is the only part of this evening that hasn’t pissed me off." Hollis started to interrupt, and she held up a hand without looking at him.

"I’m leaving," she said. "Refund the unused part of the room payment and settle the counter. You can decide how to explain it to your son after my things are packed."

The keeper offered another room. Dove refused. Moving her bed didn’t change who kept asking for access to it.

Edrik rested a hand against the doorframe, watching Hollis as though he was calculating the width of the opening. Dove touched his wrist once. He stepped back with her, still coldly attentive, and let Caldwell do the arithmetic in his trade book.

They would spend tomorrow packing and selling, then leave the following morning. Caldwell returned the unused food credit as sealed canned goods rather than making her accept a promise for a future visit. She checked the count before taking it.

Day Fifty-Eight started with a pool wash and sweat gathering beneath Dove’s sweater before she’d finished packing. She changed into a light dress from her bag, pulling on shorts underneath. Being warm didn’t mean she intended to let every passing idiot see up her skirt.

Edrik looked when she came through the curtain, then held out the hair tie she’d been searching for. She took it, pleased and annoyed that he’d noticed both her legs and the thing she actually needed.

"Useful and distracting," she told him. "It’s an irritating combination."

Four rain-cover sets arrived from Sprout; she kept one for four Favor and sold the other three for rice, clean cloth, and sugar. The sales and active packing earned the usual rewards. Then she asked Sprout to show what she already owned, rather than another thing it wanted her to buy.

Beside Thorne, Dove visited her space in her mind. Her body stayed in the chair. Rice and pasta sat near canned meat, beans, soup, and fruit. Coffee, sugar, salt, and oil made those meals worth looking forward to. She checked the soap, towels, spare clothes, batteries, tools, and ammunition bin without pretending every box held the same amount it had when she’d found it.

She opened her eyes, retrieved what needed counting, and made a short list. First came their meals and drinking supply, then sale stock. Pond water stayed private. Anything marked for someone else would stay separate too; having room to store things didn’t make them hers.

"Can you stop offering furniture while I’m trying to work out how many drinks we can sell?" she asked.

"Customer comfort encourages repeat business."

"So does having something to drink without shitting yourself to death. Start there."

Sprout added an optional daily drinks task: sell five cups or two bottles from her owned supply. It wasn’t free stock or an extra coin reward. Her normal daily delivery, sales goal, and leftover fees stayed the same. She traded a spare tool for a sealed case of twenty-four water bottles, kept half for their household, and set half aside to sell. The first two sale bottles bought fruit. She’d replenish the sale supply when she could, not empty their own water to please a menu.

The ditch behind the diner was full of runoff, yet the kitchen guarded its clean water and flies gathered around the wet trash. Food still filled the storeroom. Keeping it clean was becoming the problem.

Dove covered their bread and asked Edrik to put the food crates above the damp floor. She wanted to tell him why she sometimes stared into empty air. She would, somewhere private.

Thorne brought roast meat, mashed potatoes, green beans, and bread from the kitchen, watching it packed. Dove made him sit before serving her plate. She had become suspicious of both men using her meals as an excuse to postpone their own.

"Sit down before I eat yours too," she told Edrik when he stayed near the door. "I’m hungry, and I’m in a mood. Don’t test which one wins."

He took the chair nearest her. "You make that sound very tempting."

Thorne laughed when she pointed a fork at him too. She was keeping both of them fed, apparently against their determined attempts to make it interesting.

They loaded the pickup and traded owned canned goods for departure fuel. Caldwell also sold them a small used handcart for more canned goods and a spare tool. The borrowed Quarry cart was already returned; this one was theirs. It fitted in the truck bed and would save carrying crates through shops where a pickup couldn’t go.

She wanted no borrowed goods giving this family an excuse to follow.

Edrik tested the cart while Thorne tied the covered crates in the pickup. Dove checked the wheel pins, then climbed onto the passenger step to reach her bag. Thorne’s hand settled behind her thigh, steadying her without lifting her out of the way.

"You know I can climb a step," she said.

"I noticed. I’m enjoying the view."

She glanced over her shoulder and found him smiling up at her. Dove meant to say something clever, but he kissed the back of her hand when she reached for him, and all she managed was a quiet, "You’re trouble."

Edrik secured the cart and gave her a look that promised he was remembering that exchange. She pointed at the loose strap beside him. "You can flirt after the luggage stops trying to escape."

For a moment, leaving felt like choosing something better instead of being chased out. She wanted to keep that feeling.

Caldwell met them near the gate before evening. He said the direct western road was still flooded and recommended a longer southern approach. Dove marked it tentatively on their map.

Edrik waited until the keeper left before pointing at the junction he’d named. "The carrier used that western road three days ago. He said it had reopened."

Dove looked from his finger to the gate. Either the water had changed again, or the man giving directions had information she didn’t yet trust. She folded the map without choosing a road.