Page 17 of Our Little Secret
“She never calls or texts or—”
“I know.” He held up one hand, as if fending off an attack, and then tossed the remains of the bagel into the sink. “Look, you can call her back. Or if that’s—I don’t know, too personal or whatever—just shoot her a text. You’ve got her number.” He cocked his head. “Don’t you?” Then, added, “If you don’t, I do.” He whipped out his own phone. “Here, I’ll text it to you.” He typed quickly and a second later her phone dinged.
“Weird that you have her number,” she pointed out, seeing the information and adding Leah to her contact list.
“Weird that you don’t,” he countered and she let it go. For now.
Brooke wanted to argue, but there was no point. How could she explain that Leah made her anxious, that theirs was a frail, distrustful relationship at best? That Leah could go from zero to sixty emotionally in a nanosecond, especially when triggered by her older sister. “Fine.” Marilee, who resented being an only child, did not want to hear about the complications of sisterhood.
“Geez, Mom, so your sister called. So what? That’s not a major problem, right?” Marilee frowned, but she had picked up her fork and was cutting into the waffle. She tossed a bit to Shep, who deftly caught it on the fly. “I don’t know why you have to make such a big deal out of everything.”
“I don’t—” Brooke began to argue, then let the thought run out. Marilee was right. She did make mountains out of molehills, as her grandmother used to say. That was a new little chink in her personality, one that had come with her breast cancer scare a year earlier. “I’ll call her.”
“Big of you,” her daughter mumbled, the words barely audible as she pronged a bit of waffle into her mouth.
“Good.” Neal brushed some crumbs from his shirt, snagged his suit jacket from the back of a chair, and jangled his keys. “She”—he pointed at Marilee, pouring more syrup onto her waffle—“is all yours.”
“Real cool, Dad.” Marilee flung him a dark look.
He responded with a wide grin and a reminder: “Be nice.”
She pursed her lips and continued to glower at him.
“Love you!” he called over his shoulder and headed to the stairs leading to the basement and the garage.
“Oh, wait!” Marilee suddenly yelled as the door shut behind him. She turned her big, horrified eyes to her mother as the light dawned. “You’re not driving me.”
“I’m not?” Brooke took a sip of her coffee as she heard the garage door roll up just as the Range Rover’s engine caught.
“Oh God, I’mnotgoing to school in your car!” Marilee insisted. “It’s wrecked.”
“And still drivable.”
“Unfortunately.” Miserably, Marilee took another bite of her now soggy waffle.
Brooke stared at her daughter. “You’d prefer my car was totaled?”
“No, but . . . urgh. It’s just so embarrassing.” She dropped her fork. It clattered against her plate.
Brooke didn’t know which was more mortifying for her daughter—the Explorer with its crumpled hood or being seen with her mother. She decided not to ask. “Look, unless you want to walk, and oh—it’s too late for that; I don’t think you have much choice.” Brooke glanced at the clock on the stove. “You already missed the bus. Now eat up and get a move on.”
“You’re impossible.” Marilee scraped back her barstool.
“I guess it runs in the family.”
With an exaggerated sigh, Marilee headed up the stairs and stomped to her room.
And Brooke slowly counted to ten. Because as cool as the exterior she displayed to her child was, she was inwardly churning. Not so much at Marilee’s insolence, which only added to the stress but worry over the missing girls and the determined man who had shown up on her doorstep last night. She couldn’t do anything about the teens who had vanished, but she sure as hell could deal with Gideon.
This morning in the locked bathroom, after retrieving both her phones, she’d turned them on while waiting for the water to heat so she could step into the shower. She’d prayed for news of Allison Carelli. Instead, she’d found texts on her burner phone:
We need to talk.
Face-to-face.
It’s not over.
We are meant to be together.
