by Debbie Burns
From the corner of her eye, she saw Sophie bite her lip. “Promise you won’t say anything to my parents?”
“I won’t tell them. But, Sophie, depending on what happened in there, you may have to. Even if it’s the hardest thing you’ve done.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I told them there’d just be girls there. That’s how it was going to be, but some of the really popular girls came and they invited the boys. Trisha’s sister was supposed to keep an eye on everything, but she spent the whole night upstairs with her boyfriend.”
Megan pulled into her driveway and turned off the ignition but sat in place waiting for Sophie to continue. Please, God, don’t let anything really bad have happened to Sophie.
“I know they’re not my friends, not even Trisha. I always knew. They make me do things to stay in the group. Things I don’t want to do.” Her tears started flowing again. “I didn’t want to be a part of it, but I was scared to say no.”
No, not that. Please no. “Oh, Sophie.”
“It’s not what you think. I didn’t do that. But I did go into this closet with Miles when it was my turn.” Sophie shook her head hard, and her hair bounced over her shoulders wildly. “I tried to do what he wanted me to do, but it was so gross I threw up. Right on a stack of magazines. Everybody made fun of me. I grabbed my stuff and ran out, and nobody came after me. None of them even cared.”
Megan pulled Sophie into a tight hug. She smelled like a mix of soda and popcorn and overly sweet perfume. “Oh, Soph, I’m so sorry. So very, very sorry.” What Megan needed to do was help get Sophie’s mind off this terrible night. “Let’s get you inside. You can take a shower, and I’ll make you something to eat. And while you eat, I’ll fill you in on all the great adoptions we’ve had this week. You won’t believe some of them. Remember meeting Mrs. Sherman? The lady with ten cats? She did some research and found out that two of the cats she’s adopted over the last couple years are actually mother and daughter, though nobody had any idea.”
Sophie swiped away a few fresh tears. “Really? That’s cool.”
“Yeah,” Megan said as they stepped out of her car and headed inside. “That’s the thing about the shelter. There’s always a story or two to remind you that the world’s more connected than you first think.”
Chapter 22
It took Craig a few seconds to orient himself in the darkened room. At first, he only knew it wasn’t the stiff queen bed in his apartment that he’d grown accustomed to sleeping in. It was the slight body pressed against him and the sinewy arm draped across his stomach that helped him remember. He’d fallen asleep in Reese’s room. They were lying sandwiched in Reese’s twin bed, using Reese’s iPad to skim baseball stats. That was at ten thirty. Now it felt like the middle of the night.
Extracting himself from Reese’s rarely felt embrace, Craig managed to slide out without waking him. The iPad, which had become tangled in their legs, thudded to the floor.
He found the doorknob in the darkness as the doorbell rang, reminding him that something had jerked him from a deep sleep. He shuffled out of the room, shutting the door behind him. A glance at the clock on the stove revealed it was nearly two in the morning.
Bracing himself, he cracked the front door. The person on the other side attempted to shove in immediately, vanquishing his grogginess. He drew an arm back reflexively before the intruder’s voice pierced the darkness.
“Why didn’t you answer your phone? I called a dozen times on my way here.” Jillian pushed past him into the hallway of his apartment. “It’s Sophie. She left the party. We’ve got to get Reese and go get her. I’m not leaving him here alone.”
“What do you mean left the party?” Craig headed for kitchen and flipped a switch, wincing at the bright light. “With whom?”
“I haven’t a clue. She’s not answering her phone.” In the glaring light, Jillian looked exceptionally pale. Exhaustion and fear lined her nearly flawless skin. She kept moving, crossing the small apartment, and barging through Reese’s closed door.
Swiping crusts of sleep from his eyes, Craig followed her. As she coaxed Reese awake, he tried to get her to make sense of what was happening. “If she’s not answering, how do you know she left? Did Trisha’s parents call you? If you were tracking her phone, it could have been stolen, or a friend could have taken it home accidentally. You know she’s lost phones before. It isn’t like Sophie to leave a friend’s house without telling us.”
“If you would’ve answered the phone, I could have told you all this,” Jillian said, facing him once Reese groggily sat up. “I woke up with a bad feeling, and I called Soph. When she didn’t answer, I went online and checked that app we installed. It shows she’s at a house in Webster. Then I called Trisha’s parents. They’d been out all night and just gotten home. Last minute, they left their sixteen-year-old in charge of the party! I ended up talking to Trisha. She wouldn’t own up to it at first, but finally, she said Sophie texted an hour ago that she’d gone home with another friend. And no one questioned it!” Her pitch rose at the last words, and she wrung her hands wildly. “I would’ve gone alone, but I don’t know what I’m facing here.”
Seeing she was on the verge of hysteria, Craig scooped Reese into his arms, blanket and all, and headed for the kitchen. “We can get to Webster in ten minutes. Grab my shoes from the hall closet, will you?” He could drive barefoot for now, and he didn’t need to bother changing clothes since he had fallen asleep in lounge pants and a Henley. Shifting Reese in his arms, he swiped his wallet and keys from a tray in the kitchen.
“Dad, I’m awake. I can walk.”
Refusing to waste time, Craig kept Reese locked in a vise grip till he reached the car. He hadn’t carried Reese in years, and the solid weight of his son surprised him. He was growing up fast. So was Sophie, for that matter, if she was hopping rebelliously from one party to the next. Only that didn’t sound like Sophie.
They buckled in, and Craig swept out of the parking lot fast enough that the tires squealed.
“What’s up with Soph?” Reese asked from the backseat, yawning out the first half of his words. “Were there not enough arts and crafts so she ditched and went to another party?”
Sarcasm—his son wore it better than the blanket he was snuggling.
“Reese, please.” Jillian’s tone was strained.
Craig glanced her way as he zipped through the streets toward a part of town he was getting to know fairly well. He’d seen that look of complete exhaustion before. Losing Andrew had changed her, as it had changed them all, but with Jillian, it was different. She was attempting to carve out a world with zero unpredictability.
Not surprisingly, it wasn’t working for her. Newbie teens weren’t predictable. Neither were ex-husbands who unexpectedly fell asleep in their son’s bed and left their cells muted in the other room. Sons learning to live without twin brothers weren’t too cooperative either.
Jillian hadn’t always been the woman whose refrigerator contents were placed with precision organization. Who, every day, worked out two hours, did yoga for one, and checked in with her therapist at least once.
Back when they were newlyweds, they’d had a joint business trip to New York. On a whim, they’d taken a few days off when the meetings were over and flown to Paris because she’d had a lifelong dream of making out on a bench in view of the Eiffel Tower. She’d been over five months pregnant with Sophie then, radiant and glowing and always wearing a smile.
Remembering that woman, the one he fell in love with, his heart ached for all the loss they’d endured. He merged onto the highway and squeezed Jillian’s hand reassuringly.
No one spoke until he pulled off the interstate. Reese’s soft, even breathing showed he’d fallen back to sleep. Sleeping like a log was the one normal boy thing Reese did.
“Where to?” Craig asked, locking both hands on the steering wheel as he headed into Webster
, a part of St. Louis he’d grown to associate exclusively with Megan since both the shelter and her condo were in the heart of it. Jillian directed him down Big Bend Boulevard, past the turnoff to the shelter, stately churches, and the university.
When she instructed him to turn down the same street that led in three more turns to Megan’s, his heart sank. He pulled to the side of the deserted road and came to a stop.
“Let me see your phone.”
“I can get us there fine. Let’s not waste time.”
Sighing, he held out his hand. “Jillian, I think I know where she is.”
If it were possible, she seemed to grow even paler in the dim dashboard light as she surrendered her phone. Sure enough, with a few swipes of his finger, the map led him to Megan’s cul-de-sac and her condo.
Turning off the navigation, he passed Jillian back her phone. “I don’t know why she’s there, but I know where she is. She’s with Megan Anderson. From the shelter,” he added unnecessarily.
“I know who Megan is, Craig. She’s not with her. She’s at a house. I saw it on Google Live View.”
“Megan isn’t at the shelter.”
The ensuing silence lay between them like a lead blanket, Reese’s rhythmic breathing the only thing to penetrate it. Jillian folded her arms across her chest as Craig pulled back into the lane and navigated the streets without need for a map. He could tell her he’d come here once with the kids to see Tyson and his brother. And even though it would be the truth, the idea of it felt like a lie on his tongue.
Megan’s home, and the way to it, were intimately familiar to him now. Waking up in her bedroom no longer caused that feeling of disorientation he’d experienced in Reese’s room a bit ago. And while he hadn’t shared any of this with his ex-wife over the last few months—or anyone for that matter—he wouldn’t try to make it look like they weren’t.
He could feel the storm growing in Jillian. His body reacted to it automatically, the surface of his skin hypercharged as if it were conducting a strong current. Like always, the stiller she grew, the more obvious Jillian’s discomfort was. No fidgeting, no huffing, no drumming of an ankle. Just silence and control. He debated whether there was anything he could say. She wasn’t one to fight publicly, so he wasn’t worried about her making a scene in front of Megan.
Besides, he’d done nothing wrong. It was true he’d met Megan way before he’d planned on meeting anyone. But his marriage was over. Emotionally for a long time, contractually for less, but over still.
When he turned down Megan’s quiet cul-de-sac, Jillian cleared her throat. “So Sophie knows. Does Reese?”
She knew. And she wasn’t going to make him explain. “Neither of them knows anything.”
“Then why is Sophie with her?”
“I don’t know, but I suspect something happened at that party and she wasn’t ready to face us. Volunteering with Megan as Soph does, they’ve developed their own relationship.”
He pulled into the driveway but left the ignition running. Reese slept on, undisturbed.
Craig unbuckled and opened his door but paused when Jillian didn’t move.
“I knew it at Sophie’s party.” Her tone was even and low but accusatory. “I knew it from the way you two avoided each other. You gave that money to her shelter, and she wouldn’t look at you. And then there was the fact that you gave an animal shelter money in the first place. You always choose children’s charities.”
“I won’t defend my decisions, Jillian. I don’t have to. But I’ll tell you this. Our relationship started after—”
Unfolding her arms, she held up a hand. “That’s the beauty of divorce. I don’t need details.” She unbuckled and opened her door. He could see her chin starting to wobble. “But I’ll tell you this. Whatever girlfriend-daughter bonding’s going on inside that house, it ends tonight.”
She popped out of the car but left her door open wide. He knew it wasn’t that she’d forgotten but that she wanted to be able to hear Reese if he woke up and called for her. But he was ten, he’d been here before, and he was Reese. He wouldn’t call out for his mom if he woke up. He’d get out and come inside.
Jogging around the front of the car to catch up, Craig closed his hand over Jillian’s elbow. “I get you’re pissed. Keep in mind the kids don’t know. And Megan doesn’t deserve to feel any wrath over this either.”
Jillian’s chin was wobbling harder, but she didn’t look close to tears otherwise. “Your relationships aren’t my concern. My concern is why my daughter left a party in the middle of the night and came to another adult’s house. That’s my only concern.”
Craig paused in front of the door, wishing he’d taken the time to swipe his cell off his nightstand before leaving. For Megan’s sake, a phone call would be so much less of a shock than opening her door at two in the morning to find him and his ex-wife hovering there. Light was pouring out of the windows from cracks in the curtains, so at least she and Sophie were awake.
It took Megan a minute to get to the door. It cracked open, and she peeked tentatively around it. She made eye contact with Jillian first, and her eyes widened only slightly. “Hey.”
Whatever she’d stepped up to do with Sophie in the middle of night, Craig felt a rush of gratitude toward her. She pulled the door open the rest of the way. She was barefoot and dressed in low-rise yoga pants and a dark-pink cami, her hair a mussed mess, all of which called to him even amid this commotion.
“So, um, Sophie’s here. Obviously you know, or you wouldn’t be here in the middle of the night. She’s in the shower,” Megan said, shutting the door behind them. She looked more shaken than she sounded. “Did she call you?”
“She didn’t. She’s not answering her calls,” Craig said. Jillian stepped into the foyer after him, scanning the condo, taking everything in. “We have that find-my-phone app. It led us here.”
“Oh.” Megan’s cheeks flamed scarlet, but she motioned them toward the living room. “I was making a quesadilla for her. Let me make sure the stove’s off.”
Craig wondered if any of the color in Megan’s cheeks was due to how Jillian was standing in the exact spot in the foyer where they’d first had sex. Likely she wasn’t thinking about that. Likely she was just panicked that she’d been caught harboring Sophie for whatever reason he’d yet to learn.
When this was over, he’d make it up to Megan.
“What happened at the party? What made her want to leave and come here? Before she gets out of the shower, I’d like to know what she told you.” Jillian’s words cut through the room, though they were spoken without any strong inflection. She strode to the living room and pivoted to face them, her arms still folded across her chest.
Megan paused halfway to the kitchen. She turned, tucking a mass of hair behind her ear. “I can understand you want answers, and I hope you can understand that I owe her my confidence.” Clearly catching one of Jillian’s brows disappearing into her forehead and her cheeks drawing sharply inward in response, Megan continued. “She’s okay. She isn’t hurt, other than emotionally. But she needed to get away from that party, and she wasn’t ready to face you. Either of you. She called me and asked me to pick her up, and I did. We haven’t been here that long. Less than half an hour.”
Jillian released a breath of air like steam from a kettle. “If there was bullying or anything close to it, I’d like to know.”
“I understand, but I think Sophie needs to be the one to answer that.” She rubbed one thumb into the other palm. Her shoulders were lined with tension. “I don’t know if I did the right thing by agreeing to pick her up, but I do know betraying her confidence right now is the last thing she needs.”
“Jillian,” Craig said in as benevolent a voice possible, “it can’t hurt to wait a few minutes longer to figure this out. The truth is that Sophie didn’t call us. Either of us.”
Jillian said nothing and shi
fted her weight to one side, working the heel of her ballet flat in small circles around the ankle that always troubled her. She pursed her lips and finally shook her head, her inner turmoil barely contained.
Craig’s heart went out to both of them. To Megan, along with a hell of a lot of admiration, for holding her ground against Jillian’s everyone-listens-to-me face. To Jillian for maintaining her composure after everything she’d learned tonight. And underneath all of that, a rippling current of concern was growing for his daughter. He wasn’t ready for his little girl to be swept into teen drama. He knew those years were ahead and closing in, but she was still such a kid. An innocent, impossibly kind kid.
From inside Megan’s bedroom, a door pulled open. With intimate familiarity, Craig knew it was the door to the master bathroom by the way it caught on the frame, skidded, and then pulled open freely. If his tools weren’t in storage, he’d have brought a shim to fix it.
There was the padding of bare feet and a pause. Before Sophie rounded the corner of the bedroom door, he had just enough time to wonder if she’d be wearing a towel on her head—if she’d been comfortable enough here to wash her hair—when her voice penetrated the small condo.
“Oh my God, Megan. Does this mean you’re pregnant?”
Craig’s ears buzzed instantly. He gripped the top of an armchair as the words reverberated through his head. Then Sophie, floppy towel on her head, looking down at a book rather than up at them, rounded the corner.
His vision tightened as if he was looking through binoculars as he scanned the book cover in his daughter’s hands. A pregnancy book, one Jillian read years ago.
Then Sophie looked up and saw her parents standing twenty feet away. “Fuck.”
The word barely registered over the buzzing in his ears. He’d never heard her say it before. He wouldn’t have believed she had it in her. Her hands flew to her mouth. The book tumbled to the floor, and her towel turban slipped sideways.