“I don’t have a reason to lie.”
“Why did you kiss me?” she suddenly blurted out.
I didn’t even have to think about it. The truth was resting right there on the tip of my tongue, ready to present itself. “Because I’d been wanting to do it all day. Every time I get close enough to smell your lip gloss, all I can think about is kissing you.”
She mulled that over in her mind for a bit. “So it wasn’t for Megan’s benefit.”
“No. It was for mine.” This level of honesty wasn’t easy. I had to admit that. It was fucking difficult baring your soul for someone else to see. “Can I ask you something?” I questioned.
She gave a quick jerk of her head that might have been a nod. “Sure.”
I reached over and gently lifted the single strand of pearls she always wore. “Where did you get these?” She wore them all the time. They must be important to her.
“They’re a placeholder,” she said with another wince. “Or at least that’s what my grandmother, my Nana, said.”
“A placeholder.”
She nodded. “She gave them to me on my eighteenth birthday. She told me that I should wear them until someone who loves me replaces them, so I know that I am loved.” She shook her head. “But Nana’s love isn’t real love. Not really.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well,” she said, and she stopped, like she was gathering her thoughts. “The day that Lynn and Mason got married, Mason gave her a blue topaz necklace that matched her eyes perfectly. It was beautiful. It was like a physical embodiment of love, every time I saw it. It meant that he loved her and he knew her well enough to buy her the perfect piece of jewelry.” She made a snorting noise in her throat. “It took me a while to figure out that’s what it meant.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I used to beg Lynn to let me wear it. She was resistant at first, but eventually, she let me borrow it. And I loved wearing that necklace, because when I wore it, I believed in the kind of love they had.” She shook her head. “Looking back, it was really stupid.”
“Why was it stupid?”
“Because, eventually, Lynn explained what it meant to her and then I felt like a dumbass. I gave it back right away. It wasn’t my place to wear it. There I was, just wanted to wear a pretty necklace, and there she was, wanting to wear this perfect symbol of their love for one another. The two didn’t compare, but it took me a while to understand it. I used to wear that thing all the time. After what happened with our father, Lynn was grateful, so she gave it to me. It was like she gave me the moon and the stars. But it wasn’t my moon and stars. It was hers.” She laughed. “I feel like I’m talking in riddles. You probably have no idea what I mean.”
“No, I think I understand it. You saw a pretty bauble, not realizing it was a declaration of his love for her, that it meant so much more to her than it ever would to you.”
She looked up at me. “How do you do that?” she asked, her eyes skimming my face.
“Do what?”
“How do you give voice to the thoughts in my head? No one has ever been able to do that before.”
“I don’t know.” And I didn’t know. I didn’t understand it either. “So, you gave the necklace back to Lynn.”
“Yes, I returned it, once I realized what it symbolized for them. It wasn’t right for me to wear it. It was theirs. It wasn’t mine.”
I lifted my hand and fingered the pearl necklace. “So this is a placeholder, your grandmother said.”
“Yes. Something to be replaced later on.”
“I like it. It suits you.”
She lifted her graceful fingers and rolled the pearls between the pad of her forefinger and thumb. “What about it suits me?”
“It’s classy. Like you.”
She snorted again, and it was the cutest noise I’d ever heard. “Have you met me? I am not classy.”
“Just because you can shoot and fight doesn’t mean you’re not classy.”
“My Nana says classy ladies don’t curse.”
“Your Nana is wrong.”
She coughed into her fist. “Anyway,” she said, drawing the word out slowly.
“So tomorrow is Friday,” I said.
She nodded. “It is.”
“I’m picking you up at seven.”
“I remember.” She looked up at me. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise.” I squeezed her hand again.
By then, we had done one full lap around the park.
“Are you ready to go back?” I asked.
She looked up, but her eyes were closed, like she was enjoying the sun on her face. “Not quite yet,” she said quietly.
“Okay.” So we kept walking. She was quiet for almost half a lap. Then she asked, “Tell me what your summers were like when you were a kid. You were with D’Shaun, right?”
So we walked and we talked for almost an hour. She told me about how she used to switch places with Lynn when Lynn would come to her Nana’s house to spend the summer, and no one could tell them apart. She told me about how they streaked around on their bikes. She didn’t mention their father, or Lynn’s friends. And I somehow knew that she avoided those topics on purpose. She laughed when I told her stories about scrapes D’Shaun and I would get into, and how MeeMaw used to ground me and him at the very same time.
And, after we had done five more laps around the park, we went back to work, and now she didn’t avoid me. She looked directly at me when she spoke to me again.
It was almost five o’clock when I had a thought about our date. “I need to run an errand, Shelly,” I said, as I walked toward the office door. “Will you be all right until I come back?”
She barely looked up. She was still cataloguing facts. “Sure,” she chirped.
“I’ll be back in about an hour.”
She waved a hand at me like she was swatting at a fly, and it made me laugh.
I needed to get one thing for our date tomorrow. I needed one thing that would make it perfect. I just didn’t know what it was yet. But I would find it.
Chapter 26
Shelly
Almost as soon as Clark walked out the door, a ringing phone jolted me out of my work haze. I jumped, not sure where it was coming from, but then I remembered the spare phone I’d put in my purse, the one I’d bought special so that Lynn could call me to check in. I grabbed my purse and pulled the phone out.
“Hello,” I said.
“Can I come home yet?” Lynn whined from the other end of the line.
I rested my forehead in my palm on the desk and took a breath. “Oh, my God, I have been so worried about you. What took you so long? I thought you would have called by now.”
“We drove all day and all night. We went pretty far away.”
“How far?” I asked, my heart in my throat.
“Do you really want me to tell you?” she asked cautiously.
“Probably best if you don’t.” Not if there was any chance Megan could get the information. “But you’re safe, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “We’re safe. But I do want to come home.”
“Me too!” Mason chimed from somewhere nearby, but I could hear him clearly.
“I know,” I replied. “I’m working on it.”
“So what’s the status?” she asked. I could hear her eating something while she talked to me.
“We haven’t seen or heard from Megan.”
“Nothing?”
“Not a word.”
“So, what’s going on there? You’re still with the PI, right?”
“Yeah, I’m staying with him and his MeeMaw.”
Lynn laughed. “His MeeMaw? Tell me you’re joking.”
“Nope. His MeeMaw lives with him. She’s really nice. But I’m not completely sure she likes me. I can’t tell,” I admitted.
“What’s not to like?” Lynn quipped.
“Everything,” I muttered.
“How’s the fake rela
tionship going?”
“It’s going,” I said, wincing inwardly.
“What’s that mean?” she said, and I could tell her mouth was full. She always did that. It was like she couldn’t talk on the phone without completing a full meal in the meantime.
“I don’t know, Lynn. I just… I don’t know. It’s weird.”
“What kind of weird? Clark is being nice to you, right?” She finally stopped chewing. Thank God.
“He’s nice.”
“So what’s wrong?” she asked.
“He kissed me,” I blurted out. “And then I kissed him.” It was like I suddenly had verbal diarrhea.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” I laid my forehead back in my palm and closed my eyes.
“How was it?” She waited patiently, and it sounded like she wasn’t even breathing.
“A-fucking-mazing,” I said on one long exhalation.
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. Uh-oh.”
“I told you not to get the feelings for him.”
“I know.” I growled low in my throat.
“Do you have the feelings?”
“I don’t know what the feelings feel like.” I hated saying that out loud, but it was true. I didn’t know what the feelings felt like and that, all by itself, was a tragedy.
“Well, when you’re with him, what does it feel like?” she asked.
“Like I can’t breathe and like I never want it to end all at the same time.”
“Uh-oh,” she said again.
“Yeah. Uh-oh.” Fucking feelings. I didn’t know what to do with them or how to interpret them.
“So…what are you going to do?” she asked.
“I guess we’re going to keep doing what we’ve been doing.” I had no idea what was next. I knew what I wanted to be next, but I didn’t know how to get there.
“You really like him, huh?”
“I like him a lot.”
“Do you think he likes you?” she asked, her voice hesitant.
“I don’t know. This was supposed to be one big game to draw Megan out of hiding.”
“But it’s not a game anymore.”
No, it wasn’t a game anymore.
“Shelly—” But she stopped.
I sat up straighter. “What?”
Her voice dropped down until it was soft. “What would happen if you just let it happen?”
“Let what happen?”
She laughed. “Whatever is going to happen.”
“You think I should just let it happen.” Had she lost her mind?
“You’ve had sex before, Shelly,” she reminded me. I could almost see her rolling her eyes.
“This feels like it would be more than sex,” I said quietly. “So much more.”
“Does it have to be?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, where would be the harm in just letting it be sex? Just letting it be fun? Does it have to mean more? Does it have to mean more today? Would it help you if you treated it like the others?”
I didn’t know if I could treat Clark like the others. The others were a quick screw, a means to an end. They weren’t people I cared about. “Maybe,” I said instead. “I like him. A lot.”
“You just met him,” she reminded me.
“How long after you met Mason did you know he was the one?” I already knew the answer to this, but I wanted to hear her say it.
“Same day,” she said.
“See?”
Then I said nothing. She didn’t either. She waited a beat.
“Does he feel the same way?”
I slapped my palm on the desk. “I don’t know how he feels. That’s the problem.”
“Well, you’re not alone. We never know.” She laughed lightly.
“You knew.”
“I knew how I felt. I didn’t know how Mason felt until I talked to him.”
“You had to ask him?”
“Yes. I had to ask him. As it turned out, he felt the same as me, but I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t ask.”
“So you think I should ask.”
“If you want to know. If you don’t want to know, just do what comes naturally.” She waited another beat. “So is he a good kisser?” She pretended to growl into the phone.
“I felt it all the way to my toes.”
“Hey, Shelly,” she said, and I could hear a moment of hesitation in her voice. It scared me.
“What?”
“I hate to remind you of this, but when you find Megan, what will happen if Marley finds her way back?”
I stared at the wall for a moment. “I have no idea.”
“He loved her.”
“I know.”
“And he probably still loves her.”
“I know.”
“So if you decide to go after it, just know that you might have to give him up at the end of it all. Okay?” She sounded so sympathetic. In all my life, no one knew me the way Lynn did. She knew that I would struggle. But I struggled with everything. This was the one thing in my life that felt effortless. At least until I started trying to analyze it.
“Okay,” I replied. “We’re going on a date tomorrow. So we can see and be seen.”
“Do you think it’ll piss her off?” Lynn asked.
“It would piss me off,” I admitted. “If I were her, I would be livid.”
“Maybe it will draw her out, and I can come home.”
“Maybe.”
“Look,” Lynn said, “I have to go. Mason is glaring at me. There’s some touristy thing near here that he wants to go and see.”
“Tell the asshole I said hello.”
She pulled the phone away from her mouth. “Shelly says hello.”
He replied with something that sounded a lot like “Tell Shelly she can fuck off.” But she said to me, “He says hi.”
“Sure he did.” I laughed out loud. As much as I disliked Mason, I loved the hell out of him. “Kiss my nephew for me, okay?” I blew a kiss into the phone.
“Will do. Love you!” she cried, and then she hung up on me before I could say it back.
The door snicked open and I looked up, just as I was returning the phone to my purse, and Clark walked in.
“Hi,” I said. He smiled at me. Then he leaned down and kissed my cheek, lingering just over my lips for a second, his lips just barely not touching mine. I couldn’t tell if he wanted me to lean forward and kiss him or not, so I did nothing. And neither did he.
Then he stood up and went into his office and closed the door. And he stayed in his office late into the evening. He was on the phone part of the time, because I could see the red “in use” light was lit up, but I had no idea what he was doing. So I settled in and worked on the case he’d given me, which I had already figured out.
I knew who the vigilante killer was, and he wasn’t going to like it.
Chapter 27
Clark
Shelly bellowed my name from the other room. “Clark!” she cried. Then the door flew open, banging loudly against the wall.
“Someone is in the house with your MeeMaw,” she said, nearly breathless, as she ran for the door. She took off, moving as fast as she could go. It was all I could do to keep up with her.
“What did you see?” I asked as we jumped in the car, but Shelly was already on the phone with 9-1-1. She was giving them the address to my house as she pressed her imaginary gas pedal on her side of the car, urging me to go faster with her hand flying wildly in the air. Finally, she hung up with 9-1-1 and flipped to the browser on her phone. She didn’t turn it in my direction, since I was driving. “What did you see?” I asked again.
“Someone is in the house with MeeMaw,” she said.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” She watched the screen. “MeeMaw is napping. She’s not even aware.”
“Did you call her?”
“She’s not answering.”
She usually turned the ringer off when she napped. She didn’t like to hav
e her sleep interrupted.
“Is it Megan?” I looked over at Shelly.
“I couldn’t tell. She didn’t look at the camera. Not this time.” Shelly stared at her phone, searching the cameras in the various rooms one by one. “There,” she said, as she panned to the camera in the hallway. “In the hall. Walking toward the guest room.” She waited. “Now she’s in the guest room. She’s searching through the drawers.”
The guest room drawers were full of MeeMaw’s seasonal clothes. She liked to put her winter things away and get out her summer clothes as the seasons changed.
“She’s looking under the bed.”
I couldn’t think of anything that might be under the bed.
“She didn’t find anything.”
We skidded to a stop near the street. I already had my weapon in my hand before we both jumped out of the car, and so did Shelly. She held her sidearm down by her thigh, and she ran for the front door, getting there just before I did.
“Wait,” I began, but Shelly was already opening the door and entering the house. “Jesus,” I swore as I followed right behind her.
Shelly went left and I went right. I slapped the emergency alarm button on the wall as I walked by it, and a siren began to go off, loud enough to wake the dead from an eternal rest. I went straight to MeeMaw’s room, where she was already sitting up, confusion and panic clouding her features. “MeeMaw!” I called, as I crossed the threshold.
“Why are you waving a gun at me?” she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
No one was in MeeMaw’s room, so I said, “Wait here.” Then I went out to find Shelly.
She stood in the kitchen next to the back door, which was standing wide open like someone had just gone through it.
“She’s gone,” Shelly said, as she lowered her weapon and put the safety back in place.
Suddenly, four police officers rushed through the front door. “Clark,” one of them said in acknowledgement. I could barely hear him over the alarms, but I could read his lips.
“Jack,” I replied, nodding to them each in turn. I knew three of them.
“What’s going on?” Jack asked.
“Somebody was in my house,” I said.
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