My father was stiff. Formal. Absent a lot. Not once had I ever seen him violent.
I was four when my mother died. Arthur said it was complications due to medicine she’d been taking.
God, now that I thought of it, did that mean an overdose? Suicide?
These scary facts had always been right there and I didn’t once, never once asked anyone the hard questions.
Because I was a princess sheltered in my castle.
That’s what Marc would have said. I hated he was right.
My phone started buzzing in my purse. I pulled it out and saw it was Arthur. The driver must have reported my absence. I didn’t answer. Not because I was trying to hide from him, I just wanted space. My space. Not his space.
A trip to San Diego, not Sedona. Something I chose for myself instead of what he wanted. I’d booked a last-minute VRBO condo in the Gaslamp Quarter and was going to stay for however long I wanted to stay.
Let my cheek clear up. Figure out a way to move past what Arthur had done. Then I would go home and start college in the fall.
With Marc.
Marc, who’d had a series of fuck-ups last night. He didn’t even know how much those fuck-ups changed my life. Least of which was ruining my prom.
* * *
Landen estate, Harborview
Marc
This was killing me. I was walking around the property to blow off steam. George had complained my pacing around the carriage house was annoying the shit out of him. Except I couldn’t stop. I kept going over and over the whole day. What I’d screwed up. What I should have done differently.
I’d borrowed the fucking car to avoid any risks of delayed trains. I’d been thinking aboutnotscrewing it up. Before I screwed it up.
She wouldn’t call me. She wouldn’t text me. It had been twenty-four hours. I felt in my gut something was up. This didn’t feel like Ashleigh. Whenever I’d pissed her off before, she fired right back at me. She was not someone who ran off crying in a corner.
Except for that one time when I almost killed her.
Still, that was years ago. This version of Ash was made of sterner stuff. Which is why the whole premise of needing a trip to get away from what I’d done didn’t make sense.
I asked her why she left. I asked her where she was.
Nothing.
Then when George got home last night after preparing Landen’s dinner, he’d told me Landen had been asking him strange questions.
Questions like, had Ash mentioned visiting any place in particular? Or had she told George where she was going? Had she been in contact with him?
It was like Landen didn’t have a clue where she was. Which wasnotthe impression he’d given me yesterday.
Now it was almost noon the day after she’d left, and still nothing from her. I walked to the rise at the rear of the property and sat onourhill. The hill we’d used for sledding any time it snowed.
I’d stopped sledding with her when I was sixteen because that was kid stuff. Which was why she’d stopped going at fourteen, because sledding wasn’t fun alone.
That’s what I needed to do. I needed to play the one card I knew would work. I pulled my phone out of my pocket.
Me:Ash, you know this is killing me. You know it. Which means you’re deliberately hurting me. ME! CALL. ME.
Two seconds later I let out a whoosh of breath when I saw the dots move.
This was going to be bad. This was going to be really bad, because I’m pretty sure I was actually going to have to do some groveling, which was not my norm around Ash. But I had no other out.
