Chapter 11
Tracey
I took a steadying breath as I turned down the street Jade’s home was on. I was too much of a chicken to call her parents. How was I going to explain all of these weeks gone? How was I going to explain anything to them? I had zero answers and just as much heartache as I was allowing myself to feel. I didn’t know how to prepare myself for when they got home and I would have to break the news to them in person. I ran one of my sweaty hands down my leg and then slammed on my brakes.
I was only a few houses down from her’s, but I could see clear as day that the Rivers were home. I was about to backtrack when Jade’s mom lifted her head from the mailbox and waved to me. She didn’t look worried. Her eyes were bright and her skin looked good, a healthy tan from probably being in the sun a lot in the east. I couldn’t tuck tail and run now.
Somehow I pulled into their driveway and got out of the car. Somehow I walked up to the door where Mrs. Rivers was waiting for me. Her lips formed a genuine smile but there was some sadness in her eyes.
“Hi, Mrs. Rivers,” I started before I paused then swallowed hard. “How have you been?”
She placed a hand on her hip. “I should be asking you that, you look terrible. Have you even been eating?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Not really.”
She sighed. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail on the top of her head and she didn’t look a day over thirty, even with her silver hair. “Jade told me that the fight was bad between the two of you but I had no idea it was this bad.”
“Fight?” My voice shook. What was going on? Was Jade back? “Is Jade here?”
Mrs. Rivers ran her hand down the length of my arm as she led me inside. Mr. Rivers was nowhere to be found. I wondered if he was actually in the office, working. I knew he did some sort of accounting, it was where Jade got her love for numbers.
“She must not have told you because of everything that happened.” Mrs. Rivers’ words felt like physical blows. Jade’s phone in my back pocket felt like a weight. “She is still on a trip with her work, you know she got a job with the Crimson’s, right?”
I nodded my head slowly. I didn’t know where we were going with this but I couldn’t turn away now. My chest didn’t feel so tight for the first time in weeks. Maybe this would get us closer to finding answers. Maybe she escaped and she had run away to get out of all the madness that came with our kind. All sorts of speculations swirled around in my head.
Mrs. Rivers held her phone up and showed off a grinning Jade in front of the Grand Canyon. She had a loose sweater on and baggy jeans. Her hair was pulled into two tight braids on either side of her head. She held her thumb up and I knew that it wasn’t her. I smiled but I felt my stomach drop. Whoever had her was doing a good job of keeping her disappearance from the press.
“Have you spoken to her on the phone?” My voice sounded faraway to my own ears.
Mrs. Rivers nodded. “Yes, she calls me more than ever. She sounds so happy and full of life. If we had known that giving her independence would help her flourish then we would have encouraged it a long time ago.”
They were talking on the phone?
“She told you about our fight? What did she say?”
Mrs. Rivers’s face fell. “She said that she didn’t have any intention of speaking to you in a while. That lots of hurtful things were said because of something that happened at a party a while back?”
I twisted my hands in front of me. “Yeah, I thought we had gotten over that. I didn’t realize she was still so upset.”
I had to do anything to find out more information, even if it meant continuing the lie. There was powerful magic involved, I had no doubt.
“I always liked the friendship she had with you. Her whole life she was alone. She had friends but never let anyone very close. It always worried me and honestly, I felt like it was my fault. As we went through infertility before we had her, I stopped trying to have friends. The pain was too unbearable to be around others that had no problems getting pregnant. It was always easier to friend people in other countries that we didn’t have to see often.”
I nodded my head. Some of this I had already known.
She sighed. “She said she didn’t want to speak to you… but I feel like you should call her. She always cared for you and I don’t want her to lose the only real friend she has.”
She held out her phone to me so I could take down the number into mine. I didn’t miss the other pics of her smiling in similar baggy clothes on the screen of the texts. “Can you not tell her that I have this? I feel like I need to work up the nerve to speak to her. I need to think of what I want to say to her. I miss her so much.”
Mrs. Rivers grabbed my hand in hers before she pulled me in for a hug. “She loves you, I think she’s just a little lost at the moment.”
She didn’t know how right she was.
