“Listen, I don’t need the whole sad melodrama spelled out. I’ll notify your students they have the day off.”
She fumed silently, wanting to unload on him over the phone. But where would that get her? Fired? And since her mother worked at a fabric shop and her sister was a degenerate runaway, she couldn’t afford to lose the income all three of them depended upon.
So she said, “That’s fine. I’m so sorry.” And hung up with an inward snarl.
So far, the search was going nowhere. Erin’s cell went straight to voicemail, and none of the usual haunts had turned up any leads. At this point, Sam was half-convinced her little sister was passed out on the floor of Hamilton House, a needle stuck in her arm.
She hit the brakes and turned into the driveway of the modest two-story colonial where Erin’s best friend Julia lived. She was halfway up the front walk when the door opened and Julia’s mother, Heidi, stood in the threshold drying a casserole dish with a checkered towel.
“Samantha.” Her voice registered surprise. “Good morning. Were the girls supposed to carpool? I just put Julia on the bus.”
Sam shook her head, and knew her smile was tight. “No. I’m actually…” It stung to have to say these words to this kind of woman. Someone who was on top of every aspect of her household, who would never have lost a teenage girl out from under her roof. “I’m looking for Erin,” she said in a rush. “She hasn’t been by, has she?”
Heidi’s eyes widened. “Looking for her?”
“Yes.” Sam grimaced inwardly. “Have you seen her?”
“You mean she…” Heidi lowered her voice, as if she were saying something truly scandalous. “Ran away?”
“Gonna take that as a ‘no’ on the seeing her front,” Sam said.
“Oh no. She hasn’t been by here.”
“Thanks.” She turned to go, knowing there was no sense dragging out this oh-my-how-could-you-lose-your-sister conversation.
“You want me to call if she turns up here?” Heidi called at her back.
“Yeah.” Sam fought to keep the sarcasm from her voice. “That’d be great.”
~*~
Tea, and then coffee, and then a cold shower only went so far toward burning off the hangover haze. The slap of early autumn wind against his face as he rode in toward Main Street went a little further. But nothing sobered Aidan up like sliding into a booth at Stella’s across from Tonya.
What did he call her now? His baby-mama?
As with last night, she lacked her shiny veneer of outward beauty, and instead looked severe, bitter, and WASPish. Dark hair slicked back, lips pale, harsh cheekbones casting dark shadows across her jaw. She wore a loose sweater that was too warm for this time of year. Her hands were wrapped around a coffee mug, and her eyes flicked momentarily to him before dropping back to the table.
The sight of her was a double-shot espresso gut punch. He was instantly awake, all foggy remains of his hangover vaporizing.
“Should you be drinking that?” he asked as he got settled.
“It’s decaf,” she snapped, voice brittle enough to crack.
“Right. Helps you keep up the charade that way.”
Her eyes flashed, a cold, seething shade of blue he suddenly found repulsive. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I was the one who broke up with you, and it pissed you off, ‘cause you’re a goddamn princess. So I’m gonna need more than your word for it.” He gave her a tight, false smile. “No offense.”
One of the usual waitresses breezed past and patted him on the shoulder. “Hi, hon, the usual?”
“Yeah, that’d be great, Mona.”
When the woman was gone, Tonya pinned him with an icy glare and reached into her purse, withdrawing several folded sheets of paper. “Here.” She shoved them across the table toward him. “Is that proof enough, asshole?”
It took him a moment to figure out what he was looking at: paperwork from Knoxville OBGYN. Test orders. Results. An old-fashioned stick test and a blood test, and both had come back positive. The next one was a grainy black-and-white abstract he couldn’t make any sense of.
“Sonogram,” Tonya explained. “That’s my uterus.” One of her manicured nails touched the picture, a pale speck. “That’s the fetus. So,” she said, withdrawing. “Proof.”
