Truly, Madly, Like Me - Jo Watson Page 0,25

wallet and smiled again. “Came prepared,” she said.

I pulled out some notes and put them on the table.

“Most people who come here don’t know that we don’t have any ATMs. If you’re prepared, are you planning on staying a while?”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled under my breath.

“Do you like books?” she asked suddenly.

I looked up at her suspiciously. “I guess. Maybe.”

“Some of us ladies have a book club on a Thursday evening. We don’t put it on the calendar because then everyone will come, and we like our little group. But if you’d like to come?” she asked me.

Why was she asking me? She didn’t even know me. “I haven’t read a book in ages,” I said. “Well, not one with pages anyway.”

She gave me a curious, confused look. “What kind of book doesn’t have pages?” she asked.

“An eBook,” I stated.

She cocked her head to the side. “What’s that?”

“Um . . . you buy them on Amazon.”

“The Amazon?” she said, sounded utterly intrigued.

“Yes.”

“What kind of books are those? From the Amazon?”

My jaw dropped. My eyes widened. My mind boggled. “So, you were born and raised here, I take it?” I asked, already knowing the answer to this question.

She nodded proudly. “Our family are direct descendants of the original Ackerman family who settled here in 1859 and founded this town.”

“How interesting,” I said, although I didn’t mean it at all, but this seemed to be the right response, because she smiled at me.

“Here.” She turned around and took something else off the shelf. “If you’re interested in it, you should come to our annual town festival.” She passed me the piece of paper.

“The Spring Festival,” I read. “But it’s autumn.”

She laughed at my joke, a joke I wasn’t even sure I understood. “It’s a yearly festival that celebrates the arrival of the Ackermans to this town. They suffered a terrible drought on their original farm. So they took the whole family and what remaining livestock they had and headed out into the desert in search of water and a place to build a new farm. They were almost on the brink of death when they finally arrived here and found the spring.”

I nodded. “So, spring, as in water spring.”

“Exactly. And each year the whole town reenacts their journey down the main street, and we end it at the spring with some music, a large braai and a party.”

“I’m sorry . . . you reenact it?” Oh. My. God. More alarm bells went off in my head. This sounded totally cultish, and I wondered what they braaied at the spring. A human sacrifice?

“It’s a tradition we’ve kept going for over fifty years. My father started it. But if you ask me, these days it’s more an excuse for a big party.” She winked at me. I hated winky face emojis, I always thought they showed no imagination. So generic. I mean, put some effort into your emojis, for heaven’s sake. Personally, I spend hours thinking about what emojis to use and under what circumstances. I choose them according to color and theme and what message I want to convey. But I found myself responding to her winky face with an even more generic emoji, by giving her a thumbs up.

I looked down at the sieve and snacks on the counter now, very pointedly. I really wanted her to ring them up so I could get out of here. She looked down at them too.

“Is that all you’re taking?” she asked.

I nodded.

And then she did something strange. She simply pushed them, and the notes I had put on the counter, back to me, without ringing anything up. “It’s on the house, as they say.” And then she smiled at me, so big and genuine and kind that I felt a little tug inside. I was used to getting free stuff from people, but they usually wanted something in return for it. A post on Insta, a mention on Facebook. But I could see that her offer didn’t entail this.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

Her smile grew. “Think of it as a welcome present.”

“Thank you. So much,” I said, taking my stuff. “That’s really kind of you.” The last word in that sentence caught in my throat just a little, for some reason.

“It’s a pleasure, Frankie.”

I gave her another small smile and then walked out the shop and back onto the lonely street outside. I looked around again. Twenty-four hours to wait. A whole day! I kicked some stones as I ambled along the pavement,