The door of the garden house opened, and the lights on the porch shone on a man and a woman in jeans and sweatshirts. They seemed to be talking to Lena, but Jess couldn’t make out their features.
After a moment of hesitation, she hastened downstairs to her mom’s study to get the binoculars. On her return, she had to pause halfway up the stairs for a couple of breaths. When would her stupid heart improve?
She held the binoculars to her eyes, but it was too late. The people had left, and the porch was dark again. Her hand trembled as she lowered the binoculars. Was she taking things too far?
Maybe Lena had friends over. Normal people did that.
Her gaze returned to her laptop, which still showed the prison’s website with Lena’s last name typed into the search field. She closed the lid with a snap.
Time to go to sleep.
The first rays of sunshine barely sneaked over the horizon, as Lena breathed deeply to center herself for her tai chi routine. She began with circular movements of her arms and went through a series of easy qi gong exercises. Icy dew prickled the soles of her bare feet and made her feel alive. Soon her muscles warmed up despite the early morning. As she was about to start the form, loud steps and heavy breathing interrupted her concentration.
A sweaty and flushed Jess approached through the back gate. She wore the same training clothes as last time. She rested both her arms on the gate and tried to catch her breath for quite a long time. At last, she straightened and wiped her face with the hem of her T-shirt. The color of her cheeks was slowly fading to normal.
Lena didn’t want to continue watching from afar without Jess knowing she was there. That would be creepy. But she didn’t want to ignore her either, as Jess didn’t look all that well. Maybe Maggie’s concerns about her exercising alone were justified. She walked over.
“Good morning.”
Jess twirled around and glared. “What are you doing here? Spying on me?”
Not this conversation again. But Lena remembered Maggie asking her to show a bit of patience and refrained from rolling her eyes. Instead, she smiled. Or at least pulled up the corners of her mouth in a resemblance of a smile. “No spying going on here this morning. I was doing my tai chi routine. Best way to wake up.”
“The Chinese thing where you move super slow, like a snail?” Jess tilted her head to her side. “Isn’t that for old people?”
Don’t let her provoke you. Jess was probably embarrassed that Lena had seen her breathless. “It’s Chinese, yes. And everything is slow because the movements should strengthen your core muscles. It has all sorts of health benefits, and even elderly people can do it. Or maybe they get so old by doing it?”
Jess snorted with laughter. The sound was one of the first genuine friendly reactions she’d shown Lena. “Touché. I haven’t seen anyone doing it outside of TV documentaries about China.”
“Then you haven’t been to the right places. People all over the world do it. Everyone can benefit from core strength.” And relaxation and inner harmony. Especially you. Lena pressed her lips together. Instinct urged her to invite Jess to join her, but her mind held her back. She wasn’t so stupid as to want to spend more time with someone who didn’t care for her company.
“Not everyone. I don’t think tai chi is what I need.” Jess shrugged.
“What do you need?” Whatever form of exercise Jess was doing, she didn’t seem to be getting what she needed from it.
Jess’s brows furrowed as she contemplated the question and she dropped her gaze to the ground. “If I only knew…” Without another word, she went past Lena toward the house.
As soon as Jess was out of sight behind the vegetation, she slowed down. No need to stress her heart again.
At the end of her short run, she had been out of breath and dizzy. Actually, it had been more fast walking than running, but that was even worse.
Her method of training wasn’t working. Maybe she needed to try something else. Like tai chi? She laughed. Um, no. That didn’t sound like her at all.
After checking on Ella, who still slept, she went to her room to shower and change. As she walked past the dresser, the blood pressure monitor drew her gaze.
She’d somehow managed to ignore it since the day she’d moved in with her mother. Doctors really were the worst patients—not because they thought their bodies worked differently from other humans, but because they knew they didn’t.
Sticking her head in the sand hadn’t got her anywhere before, and it wouldn’t help her now. Jess grabbed the device, shook it with a little more force than necessary, and blew on it to remove some of the dust. She closed the cuff over her left upper arm, then pressed the start button. The machine inflated until it seemed ready to burst. Or squash her arm. She wasn’t so sure that wasn’t the more likely outcome.
Jess clenched her teeth. No wonder everyone had high blood pressure these days if the process hurt so much. The pain might even add another twenty or so to the count. She sighed when the cuff deflated and the numbers appeared on the screen.
One eighteen over sixty-five. Pulse ninety-eight. Good enough. So her meds were working fine.
She couldn’t get the thing off fast enough and shoved it on the dresser again.
After she had showered and dressed in something that fit her current size better, she pondered her next move. She could search for Lena on the inmate list, which felt wrong, or she could go to the café and talk to some people there who knew her. That might still count as
