“Crista, please?—”
She shook off Vivien’s attempt to make peace. “I’m packing our things,” she ground out. “Nolie and I will be gone this afternoon.”
With that, she strode inside, leaving them in silent shock.
Eli exhaled sharply. He wanted to stop her, but knew she needed to calm down. His eyes met Vivien’s, who looked as troubled as he felt.
And Tessa looked gutted. She swallowed hard, then lifted her chin, her breath shaky as she shifted her gaze to the beach and it landed on Nolie.
“I made a promise and a commitment,” she said, voice steady but fierce. “And Artie Wylie’s daughter doesn’t break either one.”
With that, she walked off, leaving Eli and Vivien standing in the wreckage of the argument.
Back to square one, Eli thought. Back to broken bridges, and fractured families.
Fear? Anger? Temper tantrums and accusations? Humming with emotions that seemed more in control of her than anything else?
Crista Merritt, what is wrong with you?
Even for her, the reaction to the “anonymous informant” news was over the top. Was she afraid of the truth? Worried it would get her in trouble with her mother? Cause a setback for Nolie? Somehow break up her marriage or family or her relationship with Eli or Vivien?
Deeply frustrated and out of sorts, Crista closed the door to her bedroom and dropped on the bed, giving in to a full-body sob that made no sense to her. She’d been doing so well at controlling her emotions until…until that day Mama had told her the truth about Artie turning Dad in to the authorities.
Maybe before that. Maybe when her mother had broken the news that they owned this house. That’s about when the “wilder than usual” emotional reactions had started. It was like a switch flipped that day and she’d been hanging by a thread for weeks and weeks now.
She fell back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, trying so hard to understand and control this personal rollercoaster. Maybe she needed medication.
No, no. Maybe it was the stress of Nolie possibly having to repeat second grade. Or that feeling that every flaw in her life was magnified by her mother’s judgmental eye. Even the distance from Anthony that they’d tried to fix with, what? One date night a while ago.
Who could blame him for being distant? She wasunstable.
But now this revelation about Dad. She closed her eyes and moaned, the very thought of her father in jail making her feel literally sick. She’d only been a child when he was arrested, and it had scared the daylights out of her. She hadn’t understood what was happening and, goodness, her mother certainly hadn’t bothered to enlighten her.
Everyone thought Crista was “too young” to know what was going on. The next thing she knew, Mama was crying at the dining room table and told her that Daddy had died in jail from a broken heart.
It didn’t take a shrink to know it was that day that Crista Lawson became a stressed-out perfectionist and drama queen. If only she could be “perfect”—her life, her home, her hair, her everything—then maybe she wouldn’t losebothparents.
Those days, those years, were scary and gloomy and the only thing she could cling to was…Maggie.
And now, years later, she had to wonder—what if Artie Wylie had kept his mouth shut?
Would Dad have been arrested? Could he have climbed out of the hole of debt and fraud he’d dug himself into without getting caught? Could he have confided in his brilliant wife, who might have thought of a way out? Maybe he could have turned himself in for a lighter sentence and been on probation at home when his heart stopped beating?
Would Crista’s whole life have been different?
She felt the sting of tears on her cheeks and tried to push up to get the packing started, knowing she’d painted herself into a corner and Anthony expected her home tomorrow. He’d given her a day’s reprieve, but…
Sighing, she closed her eyes, the weight of bone-deep fatigue pressing down on her. She felt that little wave of dizziness that sometimes happened right before she drifted off, and she just didn’t have the strength to stand or…move.
All she could do was escape in…sleep.
“Hey. Crista? Are you in there?”
The voice came from way in the distance, soft and familiar.
“Crista?”
She blinked, inhaling a sharp breath, yanked from a deep slumber. How long had she crashed?
