My mother picks up her glass of wine and smiles brightly across the table. “Keelie, dear, how long has it been since he changed your flat tire?”
Fuck it. I do roll my eyes, because I just don’t give a shit. That is until I hear voices wafting in from where Asa left my front door standing open.
When they get louder, we all start to make out the words, and the first we hear are Asa’s, and they aren’t happy ones. “You should’ve called. I told you I’m taking care of it.”
“Where are they?” a woman’s voice demands. “I took the red-eye and had two layovers. I’m exhausted and since no one will answer their phones, I had to use the Find My iPhone app. Do you know how hard that was to do?”
Confused, I look around and am about to get up to see what’s going on with the man I had sex with last night, when I notice Emma sit up straight and all of a sudden become alert. She glares at her big brother, who closes his eyes as he shakes his head.
What the hell?
“Stop—” I hear Asa warn one last time, but the woman interrupts him.
“My daughter was in a drive-by shooting and I want to see for myself that she’s okay.”
Oh, fuck.
I pull in a breath and shift in my seat since my back is to the entryway just in time to see a woman stomp through the construction of my front porch. She’s at least five-foot-eight, slender, with thick, dark hair hitting her shoulders, and she’s dressed from head-to-toe in Lululemon. I’d know it anywhere because it’s the best workout gear on the planet—I can’t afford it, even when it’s on sale.
“Emma!” the woman exclaims and holds her arms out. “Come give me a hug. I have to see that you’re okay after the shooting!”
All eyes in the room who are related to me go big at the announcement of a shooting, and everyone in the room whose last name is Hollingsworth groans, as if they were shot at all over again.
“Well, I do declare,” Aunt Lillian Rose announces as she pours more syrup on her French toast casserole. “This is better than my evening shows.”
Chapter 19
Claustrophobic
Keelie
“Mo-om!” Emma drawls. “What are you doing here?”
My eyes jump to Asa, but he’s busy shooting daggers with his beautiful, dark, hazel eyes at the woman I can only assume is his ex-wife. He’s angry and the only time I’ve ever seen him like this was right after I was grazed with a bullet.
“Emma.” Her mother’s shoulders sag with what seems to be relief at the sight of her daughter. She sounds more exhausted than she looks. “I needed to see you—see that you’re really in one piece after the shooting.”
“You could’ve waited,” Levi points out. “We’re flying out to see you next weekend.”
“I tried to tell her that,” Asa growls.
Our new guest puts her hands to her hips, flustered. “Just you wait until you have your own children and find out one of them was in a drive-by shooting while you’re three-thousand miles away. You’ll drop everything in life to make sure they’re okay, too.”
My mother—who doesn’t even watch evening shows and is more cut off from the realities of the world than Aunt Lillian Rose—is aghast and looks at Emma. “Oh dear! You were in a drive-by shooting?”
I stand, my chair scraping across the hardwood, needing to cut this off before it spirals into a nightmare straight out of a Dateline Exclusive. I offer my hand to the worse-for-the-wear woman. “Hi, I’m Keelie.”
She doesn’t take my outstretched hand, but she does look me up and down, taking me in with an odd sort of look on her face.
“Keelie, this is Danielle Wegman, Levi and Emma’s mom.” Asa introduces me, and in a tone which tells me he wasn’t excited for this moment to arrive anytime in the next decade, let alone for it to happen this morning. He exhales a loud breath and continues. “And my ex-wife.”
Danielle looks to Asa but points to me. “This is Keelie Lockhart? The kids’ counselor?”
“Wait,” my father interjects from behind me. “You’re their school counselor?”
I ignore him and watch Asa confirm this for the room at large with a curt nod. Danielle swings her eyes back to me and all of a sudden, they’re filled with tears. She whispers, “You’re Keelie?”
I look to Asa confused, because it’s been confirmed multiple times now that I am, indeed, Keelie. Asa’s jaw is tense and he presses his lips into a firm, unhappy line.
