I hurry to follow her, weaving around guests who are now moving toward the music pumping from the patio.
When I get to the hallway, the noise fading behind me, I glance both ways but Meg’s nowhere in sight. Would she go out tothe parking lot? Or to the left, and the balcony? There are also the bathrooms.
Shit.
Would she leave the party and not tell me?
I hurry to the balcony, but it’s empty, tables and chairs stacked under the eaves, so I push out the front doors and squint over the rows of vehicles illuminated by the overhead lighting.
“Meg?” I call out, pacing down one row of cars. Dusk is falling quickly, sending long shadows across the blacktop. Besides the distant car door slamming and muted crunch of golf cleats on the pavement, there’s no reply. Back inside, I walk to the restrooms. The entrance splits—to the right is the men’s, to the left is the women’s. I lean my ear to the women’s door, but there’s a fan running in the walls, or maybe it’s the water in the pipes.
I’m about to knock when the door shoves into me and a woman in a two-piece dress steps out. Her eyes go wide with shock.
“Excuse me,” I say quickly, stepping back. “I’m just looking for my friend.” The termfriendfeels foreign on my tongue, but before I can think it over, the woman snorts.
“Not in the ladies room you’re not.”
I bite my tongue. “I’ll just wait out here,” I say so the woman will continue on her way. The second she’s out of sight, I lean against the door, pressing it open an inch.
“Meg!” I call out. If she’s not here, where the hell has she gone?
“Linden?” Meg replies from somewhere deep inside the space. Her voice is thick with emotion. Has she been crying?
Desperate to find her, I push into the restroom. “Where are you, shortcake?”
“Down here.”
I walk to the last stall in the row and put my hand on the top of the door. “You wanna talk about it?”
She sniffs. “I don’t hateher.”
I’m not privy to Meg’s inner feelings regarding her stepmom, but I only need a bird’s eye view to understand there’s some sort of turf war going on here, and Darienne’s playing dirty. I just wish I could spare Meg from the hurt.
“That’s big of you,” I say.
“Darienne took out the photos of…” her voice breaks “…Mom.” She sniffs. “Why would she do that? Just because Mom’s gone doesn’t mean she’s erased from his life. If she was here, she…”
The sound of her crying in there alone is like a knife to my chest. “Honey, let me in.”
Her tears turn to soft sobs. “I can’t lose my dad too.”
As a father, the fear of losing Greta has kept me awake more nights that I’d like to admit. But Meg’s talking about a different type of loss. An emotional one. The kind where the other person is still alive but chooses to detach. Discard.
Fuck!
I’m about to rip the stall door off its hinges when two women push into the restroom.
“Can you give us a minute?” I bark.
Their eyes widen but they spin and disappear in a flash.
The stall lock clicks and Meg peeks out, her eyes wet and her cheeks red. I slip into the space and tug her to me, wrapping my arms around her, like I’m her human shield.
Meg buries her face in my chest and cries. I huff a sigh and stroke down her silky hair.
I know how much this hurts.
“This probably seems stupid,” she says.
