90 Days (Prairie Town Book 2)

by Ridener, T. E.

  “Then buy it, silly.” Lydia laughed. “That’s what a bookstore is for, you know? You see a book, you like a book, and you buy it.”

  “Really? I had no idea!” Aggie stuck her tongue out at her and tucked the book beneath her arm, moving down another aisle. “Oh! Look, Liddy Biddy. They’ve even got The Kadenburg Shifters Series!”

  “The what?”

  “The… ugh, you know, it’s the bear shifters series I was telling you about? Oh, come on. I’ve talked about it before.” Aggie stared at her as if she’d grown a third eye. “Bear shifters? Tennessee? Hunky gay werewolf I’d totally do bad things to?”

  “I think I remember you mentioning something about that.”

  “How can you not? I raved about those books for weeks. I’m still waiting for the final installment. I’m not a patient person.”

  “Don’t I know it?” Lydia laughed, reaching for her phone when it began ringing.

  “Is that the future husband?” Aggie giggled as she continued grabbing books and hugging them to her chest.

  “It’s the father.”

  “Ohhh. Well, tell him his favorite gender fluid adopted child says hello.”

  “Will do.” She headed back to the front counter and answered her phone, smiling happily. “Hey, Daddy.”

  “Lydia.”

  The tone of his voice immediately made her heart sink. Something was wrong.

  “What is it?”

  “You need to come home.” He replied with a heavy sigh. “And bring your brother and sister, too.”

  ----------

  Laney

  She had been enjoying a rather spontaneous make-out session with Benji when her sister interrupted them, in the storage closet of all places, and said they had to head back to their parents’ house. At any other time she would have complained, but the expression on Lydia’s face told her it was important and it wasn’t something to argue with.

  So that’s how she found herself in the backseat of the car with a fresh hickey on her neck and a stomach full of anxious butterflies, heading down the gravel road that led to her Mom and Dad’s place.

  Lydia was driving and hadn’t said a word since they left the store. Aggie was sitting in the passenger seat, admiring the new books she had purchased before their departure.

  As much as she wanted to ask what her father had said on the phone, a part of her really didn’t want to know. It must have been bad. It had to be bad.

  But what was it about? Had his heart gotten worse? Was their Mom okay? Did someone die?

  More and more questions swirled around in her mind and they weren’t helping the nervous knots in her stomach. They squeezed around her organs and made her feel sick. When the car finally stopped, she pushed open the door and got out, practically running up the steps and into the house.

  “Dad!” She called, her heart beating so hard it felt like it may explode. “Mom? Where are you?”

  “In the kitchen, sweetie.” Her mom replied.

  Lydia was just making it through the front door when Laney was off again, darting into the kitchen. She found her parents sitting at the table. Her mother was holding a cup of coffee between her hands and her father was staring at a piece of paper, his fingertips resting against his temple with a look of concern on his face.

  Either someone had died or something really, really bad had happened.

  “What’s going on?” Lydia asked as she finally made it into the kitchen, leaning against the back of her mother’s chair for support. “We’re here like you wanted. Now tell me what happened.”

  “I’d much rather wait for your brother.” Her father said quietly, placing the paper face down on the tabletop before lifting his gaze to meet hers. “This is a family matter.”

  “Oh, God.” Laney wailed, putting a hand over her mouth. Insta-tears came out of nowhere and she all but threw herself into her father’s arms. “You’ve gotten worse, haven’t you? Oh, God!”

  “Calm down, Laney. No—it’s not that. Stop crying.” Her father patted her back and hugged an arm around her, sighing.

  “Wait, what?” Lydia sounded confused, and rightly so.

  None of them had had the courage to tell her about Mr. McIntosh’s heart condition.

  And I just stupidly blurted it out. Way to go, Laney.

  “Oh, dear.” Mrs. McIntosh sighed. “Lydia, sweetheart. I think you should come sit down.”

  “Why?” Lydia became defensive. “What’s wrong with Dad?”

  The sound of tears in her voice made Laney feel even worse. She had such a stupid, big mouth! Pulling away from her father and wiping at her eyes, she turned to stare at Lydia apologetically.

  “Lydia, I—”

  “What’s wrong with Dad?” Lydia repeated, her eyebrows furrowing. “What the hell are you all not telling me?”

  “Oh, Lydia.” Mrs. McIntosh’s eyes glistened as she looked to her husband nervously. “Sweetie, we wanted to tell you, but—”

  “But what?”

  “We were going to wait until after the wedding.” Mr. McIntosh gazed at her sadly. “I didn’t want you worrying about it. You’re so happy, baby. I didn’t want to take that away from you.”

  “Oh, okay.” Lydia’s hands soared into the air as she scoffed. “Because not telling me something is so much better. ‘Oh, you’re getting married, Lydia? Well, let’s not tell you about your father being sick because you need to be happy!’ Really? You think that’s a good reason not to tell me?”

  Laney watched her parents bow their heads in shame and she mirrored them, which was a bad idea because Lydia laid into her.

  “And you knew! Laney, how could you keep that from me?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” But she knew that wasn’t good enough. What they had done was wrong. They were trying to protect her, to shield her, to keep her, but they had gone about it all wrong.

  “How long?” Lydia asked in an angry whisper, her voice trembling.

  “How long what?” Her mother questioned with a sniff.

  “How long has he been sick and how long have you been hiding it from me?”

  Laney and her mother exchanged glances before the McIntosh Matriarch responded.

  “Three years.” Her mother whispered.

  “Three years…” The rage in Lydia’s voice caused Laney to take a step back. Whatever was about to happen, it wasn’t good. Her sister had every right to be angry—she would have been pissed, too—and if Lydia started swinging, she didn’t want to get hit. “Three years!”

  “Lydia, I’m so sorry.” Mrs. McIntosh stood up and quickly approached her, reaching out to grab her shoulders. “Honey, we didn’t want you to worry. There wasn’t anything you could have done differently if you—”

  “I could have been here!” Lydia cried, her eyes glossing over with tears before they began to fall. “How could you not tell me?” She glared at Laney. “Any of you. How could you keep it from me?”

  “It was my decision.” Her father finally said, his eyes remaining on the table. “I didn’t want to worry you, Lydia. I knew you’d come running back and you weren’t ready to come home yet. Finally becoming who you are is what was most important at the time. I was fine.”

  “Why do you people keep saying that to me?” Lydia shrugged her mother’s hands away and stared at her as if she’d been burned. “You think that’s all that mattered to me? Transitioning? You think I couldn’t have put it on hold to come home? You didn’t even call me when Laney tried to kill herself! Do you know how shitty that makes me feel? I literally just found out about that, and now this? Do you really think I care so little for you?”

  “Honey, we don’t think that at all.” Mrs. McIntosh sobbed. “Your father just didn’t want to pull you back here when you had so much going on. If he’d gotten worse…”

  “You would have told me, right?” Lydia’s tone became bitter, laden with resentment. “Well, I’m glad to know where I stand with this ‘family’.”

  “Lydia, wait.” Her mo
ther tried to grab her as she turned to leave the room, but stopped when her husband spoke again.

  “Let her go.” He murmured, pinching at the bridge of his nose. “Just let her get it out of her system.”

  They all fell silent as the screen door slammed shut and Laney wanted to disappear.

  “I’m sorry.” She whispered, shaking her head. “I didn’t mean to… I thought…”

  “It’s okay.” Mr. McIntosh held the paper up for her to take. “She needed to know anyways. But this… I don’t reckon I fully understand what’s going on, Laney. What do you know about it?”

  Glancing at Aggie briefly before accepting the piece of paper, Laney unfolded it and began to read.

  PRAIRIE TOWN WILL KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT YOUR TRANNY FREAK.

  GO TO HELL.

  Letting the paper fall from between her fingertips, she swallowed down the bile threatening to escape. The room began to spin and she had to steady herself against the corner of the table as her father’s hand touched her arm.

  “Laney? Are you okay?”

  “No.” She replied in a trembling voice. “No, Dad. I’m not freaking okay.”

  Aggie bent down to retrieve the note and as her eyes scanned it, her face turned red.

  “What the hell is wrong with this bitch?” She asked through clenched teeth. “When will enough be enough?”

  “You know who is doing this?” Mrs. McIntosh sounded surprised.

  “We have an idea.” Aggie replied. “Or, well, Jebson has an idea.”

  “Jebson?” Mrs. McIntosh’s eyes widened. “You mean whoever wrote this is connected to my boy, somehow?”

  “He thinks it’s an ex-girlfriend.” Aggie replied, her gaze meeting Laney’s. She mouthed ‘sorry’ and moved into a seat, resting an elbow against the table. “Apparently she accidentally discovered Lydia’s past when he picked up a prescription for her and forgot it was in the car. This girl, Alisha, or Mia, whatever, must have seen it or something. But I don’t know why she’s doing it.”

  “That’s awful!” Mrs. McIntosh gasped.

  “No one told me about an ex-girlfriend.” Laney frowned. “I didn’t even know Jeb was seeing anyone. When did she supposedly see the prescription?”

  “Months ago.” Aggie shrugged. “It wasn’t long after Lydia moved here.”

  And he didn’t fucking tell me. Laney’s nostrils flared. And they didn’t tell me about this girl being a possible suspect. What the hell? Callum was supposed to involve me.

  Crossing her arms over her chest and rolling her eyes, Laney exited the kitchen and made her way towards the stairs. She’d honesty had enough of this day. Her family was still as dysfunctional as it was on the day Lydia left. Maybe it was even worse.

  Just as her foot hit the bottom step, she heard shouting from outside and immediately retracted.

  That wasn’t just shouting. It was a fight.

  She shoved the screen door open and was surprised to see her brother and sister screaming at one another.

  “Of course I didn’t tell you, damn it!” Jeb narrowly escaped a smack to the head and whirled around like a big lanky ninja, gripping Lydia’s wrist. “Stop trying to hit me!”

  “You deserve to be hit!” Lydia screeched. “You all deserve to be hit for hiding this from me. How could you? He’s my dad, too!”

  “He didn’t want us to tell you. For fuck’s sake, Lydia, would you calm down?” He pinned her arms to her sides and gripped her in a bear hug, breathing heavily as he glanced up at Laney. “A little help here?”

  She didn’t know what to do. She was like a deer caught in headlights as she watched Lydia’s foot slam down against Jeb’s. He howled like an injured coyote and released her, hopping up and down on one foot.

  “For…shit…Lydia! Damn it!”

  “I am so sick of the lies!” Lydia cried, her eyes wild and her hair a mess. She was clearly upset—Laney understood—but she was letting her anger get out of control. “Everybody in this house lies to me. Why? Why do you keep things from me?”

  “Why do you keep things from me?” Laney suddenly blurted, causing her brother and sister to stare at her.

  “What are you talking about?” Lydia wiped at her eyes in frustration and sniffled.

  “The voice mail. The text message. And now the note?”

  “What note?” Jeb asked breathlessly, leaning over and resting his hands against his knees.

  “The note Mom and Dad received.” Laney frowned. “That’s some ex-girlfriend you’ve got there, Jeb. Glad to know she exists.”

  “Aw, hell, Laney.” He groaned, shaking his head. “She’s… she’s not even important, okay? She never was. You don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “That’s precisely my point! I would know if you would stop treating me like a baby and tell me stuff every once in a while.”

  “Can we not do this right now?” He straightened to his full height and glared at them. “Honestly, there’s enough going on without you two ganging up on me. So I didn’t tell you, Laney—I’m sorry. And yeah, we didn’t tell you about Dad’s heart condition, Lydia, and that’s unforgivable. We couldn’t find the right time to tell you, so we decided to wait. Then all of this started happening…”

  A pained expression came over his face and he gazed up at the sky, licking his lips and sighing.

  “I’m sorry I’m such a shitty ass brother, okay? I got selfish. I was afraid you’d blame yourself or something and that’s not true at all. You’ve been gone for practically my whole life and I just…” His voice cracked and he turned away from them, obviously struggling with whatever he was feeling at the moment.

  Laney slowly stepped off the porch and approached him, reaching a hand out to touch his arm.

  “I just…didn’t want you to run from us or something.” He finally turned his head to peer at Lydia and there were tears in his eyes, honest-to-goodness tears.

  Laney had never seen him cry before, not like this, and it crippled her.

  “Why would I run?” Lydia asked in a choked whisper. “Jeb, you’re my family. This is my home. How can you think that?”

  “Who would blame you if you left, huh?” He asked sorrowfully. “You said you were leaving the moment you arrived and I wracked my brain, trying to figure out how I could make you want to stay. Imagine how relieved I was when you fell in love with my best friend.”

  “Jeb…”

  “I’m a selfish asshole, Lydia. Okay? Yeah, it was scary when Dad got sick and I would have given anything to have you here, but we all knew what that surgery meant to you. You needed to have time to settle into your new skin. We all wanted you to be happy, and now? Here you are,”—he motioned to her—“just as beautiful as I knew you would be. We didn’t do it the right way, Lyds, but we did it our way. And our way is the only way we know. So go ahead and beat the hell out of me if that’ll make you feel better, but I’ve got bigger fish to fry right now and I’ve got a crazy bitch to find before she has a chance to ruin your life.”

  Gnawing on her bottom lip and watching through blurred vision as Lydia hugged Jeb, Laney pushed her own feelings aside, deciding they weren’t as important right now.

  What mattered was Lydia and Jeb reconciling and working together to bring down this Alisha/Mia girl before she could destroy Lydia’s life. She’d do whatever it took to help them, even if it meant being left out altogether.

  With that thought, she turned around and quietly slipped upstairs.

  She was used to being invisible.

  Chapter 12

  Benji

  “I still don’t understand how I’m supposed to be involved.” He pinned the phone between his ear and shoulder, rearranging a shelf of books that some girls had carelessly put back. “You want me to distract Laney while you take care of this? I don’t think that’s a good idea, Lydia.”

  “But it’s the only idea I have right now.” Lydia sighed on the other end. “She can’t handle this right now, Ben; I can barely handle it, let alone her. The
re’s too much.”

  “I get that, I do, but she’s your sister, Lydia. She wants to help. I thought she made that pretty obvious when she called Callum about the text message.”

  “She told you about that?”

  “She may have mentioned it.” He returned to the cash register to begin counting it down, glancing at the clock. He could leave in a few minutes and he already knew where he was going, regardless of if Lydia wanted him to be there or not. “I just don’t think this is fair. Have you and Jeb considered how she feels about it?”

  “I know how she feels about it and I know she wants to help, but it’s not her mess to clean up.”

  “It’s not yours either. Jeb dated the crazy cow, right?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “You still want to help him figure it out anyway, right?”

  “Because she’s threatening me, not Laney.”

  “You’re impossible.” He rolled his eyes. “You just don’t get it, do you?”

  “I’m just trying to protect her. She’s fragile, Ben.”

  “She’s strong, too. You don’t give her enough credit.” The sound of a car door shutting caught his attention and he frowned. “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Yes.” Lydia sounded so tired. He supposed he couldn’t blame her for that, after everything she’d been through. Adding a fight with Jeb onto the list of ‘fuckery’ she had was surely taking its toll on her. “We’re going to Tennessee to find Alisha—Mia. Whatever her name is. Jeb says that’s where she lives.”

  “So taking an out-of-the-blue trip to the Great Smoky Mountains is suddenly going to solve everything.” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “What if she’s not there, Lydia? Is Jeb positive that’s where you’ll find her?”

  “No. She’s a saleswoman. She sells insurance for a living and travels from state to state. That’s how they met.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “I know. It’s frustrating as hell, but it’s the best shot we have. Her home address is listed in a small town in Tennessee. I need to see if she’s there, Ben. I need to confront her.”