Delaney and Jenna sat at the lunch table with the fortune cookie like it was waiting for one of them to to open it, Jenna had taken it from her families take-out last night and it was still in plastic wrap and slid it across the table with a face like she was giving away something large and important.

"Go ahead, open it, it won't bite you," Jenna said.

Delaney picked it up and broke it apart, pulling out the little strip of paper in the same way that she always did, already expecting something generic. Something about patience or prosperity, yet instead it said: You aren't who you think you are, which was weird.

She stared at it for a second, then laughed and flipped it around so Jenna could read it.

"Okay that's kind of creepy," Jenna said.

"It's just a fortune cookie," Delaney said, then without thinking any more about ot she put the paper in her jacket pocket. But she did keep thinking about it and the words remained in her mind like a splinter, small and unseen but painful whenever she turned the wrong way.

The school day passed, which had been busy but also somehow loud and unremarkable, her friends and the rest of her classmates went on their way as the last bell had rung. Delaney had gotten into the rhythm of an afternoon, knowing she had a job that she need to go to.

The Blakes lived next to Delaney, and their three‐year‐old son, Archer, was constantly trying to make every room in the house resemble a tornado had gone through it. Delaney had been babysitting Archer for almost 15 months, so she was very much used to it. In fact, she enjoyed it, there was something refreshing about a child saying what he wanted something, and meaning it. If only more adults were like him.

As needed for dinner, Delaney fed Archer the mac and cheese his mother had prepared, wiped his face twice which was because he wanted to wear it, too, and spent close to an hour and a half playing with his plastic dinosaurs on the floor of the living room with him. Delaney liked how Archer to express himself, and when it was time to clean up his toys, Delaney counted the toys, making a game of it, and Archer enjoyed helping to clean, which was an incredible since he no longer complained about it.

The afternoon was fine. Normal. But the strip of paper in her pocket didn't feel normal, and she couldn't stop thinking about it in the background of everything else.

She was home by six, and her mom wasn't back yet. Peggy Kennedy, her grandmother, was in the living room in the chair she had claimed when she moved in four years ago after Delaney's dad died. She didn't look up when Delaney came in.

"Your mother's late again," Peggy said.

"I know," Delaney said.

"The dishes from this morning are still in the sink."

Delaney put her bag down and went to wash them without saying anything else, because that was easier. The kitchen felt different when her mom wasn't in it. Smaller. Peggy's presence had a way of filling the rooms she wasn't even in.

Juliette Kennedy came home at seven-fifteen still in her work clothes and pulled the leftovers from the fridge and ate them standing over the sink. Delaney watched her from the hallway for a moment before she came in. Her mom's hands looked tired, which was a strange thing to notice about hands, but it was true. They moved slowly.

They talked for a little while. About Delaney's day, about nothing important, the way they did when they were both too worn down to get into anything real. It was still good. Delaney would take it.

Peggy appeared in the doorway at some point and said something about the state of the house and what Delaney's dad would have thought about it. Delaney's mom went quiet in the careful way she always did and then Peggy moved on and the kitchen felt like it could breathe again.

Later Delaney went back to the Blakes to finish out the evening while Mack and Lydia went to dinner. Archer was already getting sleepy. She got him through his bath, into his pajamas, and had him down by eight-thirty. Then she sat in the quiet of their living room and did homework until Lydia texted that they were on their way.

She was back home by ten. The house was dark except for the kitchen light. Her mom had gone to bed. Peggy's light was off.

The washing machine had run over while she was gone. Not badly, just a little water on the laundry room floor and a towel that had been sitting in the drum too long. Delaney wrung it out and took it to the backyard to hang on the fence so it would dry overnight. The air was warm the way that nights are, heavy and close, and the yard was dark.

She was reaching up to hang the towel when she saw it.

A light on the fence post. Small. Blue and warm at the same time, which didn't make sense, but there it was. She went still and stared at it and it hovered, just sitting there, and she couldn't figure out what she was looking at.

Then the phone rang inside the house, her mom's phone cutting through the dark, and whatever it was vanished. Gone. Not hiding, just gone.

Delaney stood there with the damp towel in her hands and the fence post empty in front of her.

She went inside. Locked the back door. The fortune strip was still in her jacket pocket. She'd forgotten about it entirely.

The story hadn't.