by Rhonda Bowen
“Thanks for coming.”
Sydney heard a throat clear and realized that Lissandra was still there.
“Uh, why don’t you have a seat.” Sydney motioned to the living room. “I’ll be right with you.”
Hayden seemed to weigh the option of declining, but then nodded and made his way to the couch.
“I’ll be in the back,” Lissandra said, lowering her voice for Sydney’s ears only. “Don’t punk out.”
Sydney watched her sister disappear down the hallway, then made her way into the living room where Hayden sat waiting on the couch.
She chose the chair opposite him, on the other side of the coffee table.
“So,” she began. She spun her watch on her wrist as she tried to think of what to say next.
Hayden watched her before shaking his head and sitting back.
“Wow. This is awkward.”
She sighed. “I know. And that’s my fault. I shouldn’t have gone off on you at the hospital like that.”
He shrugged. “It’s OK. How is Dean?”
“Still in the coma,” Sydney said, her eyes dropping to the floor. “The doctors say his lower-body injuries seem to be healing well. But until he wakes up, they won’t know about his brain functioning.”
“I’ve been praying for you all. My dad and the family have been, too,” he said. “I’m sorry you all had to go through this.”
“Yeah,” Sydney said. “It’s only been a few months since Dean’s been back home, and already so much has happened.”
Hayden let out a deep breath. “I’m sorry about Sheree, too. I just can’t believe she would do something like this.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what happened to her.”
Sydney began spinning her watch again.
“Have you spoken to her?” Sydney asked.
Hayden looked down and shook his head.
“I tried calling our mother, to see if she had seen or heard from her. But she hasn’t spoken to Sheree in over a year. She didn’t even know she was married.”
Hayden put his head in his hands.
“How could she do something like this?” Sydney asked, an edge stealing into her voice. “What kind of person does that?”
“She wasn’t always this way,” he said, shaking his head. “Things have just been hard for her, that’s all. And I’m not saying that makes what she did right, but that’s the only way I can try and explain it.”
“That’s not good enough.” Tears sprung to Sydney’s eyes. “Because if my brother . . .”
She covered her mouth as unexpected sobs stole her voice.
“If my brother dies,” she sobbed, “it would be her fault.”
She closed her eyes as the hot tears slid down her cheeks. She hadn’t allowed herself to think that way until that very moment. But it was a very real possibility that Dean would not recover. The doctors were hesitant to say it, but Sydney could see it in their eyes. And the longer he stayed unconscious, the more unlikely a full and complete recovery seemed.
She felt arms around her and she realized that Hayden was kneeling in front of her, pulling her close. She let him cocoon her in his arms as she pressed her face against his chest and cried the tears for her brother that she thought she had been done crying.
“He’s not going to die,” he whispered to her as his hand traced soothing circles on her back. “God is going to heal Dean. I believe that, and you have to believe that, too.”
Sydney wanted to believe, but it was hard. She had prayed for God to heal her dad and he hadn’t. In her mind she knew that her father had already been living in pain because of his first stroke, and that God had his reasons for doing what he did, but in her heart that hadn’t made it hurt any less.
When she finally pulled away, she found Hayden’s coffee-colored eyes staring at her with concern. Could eyes like that lie to her? If he knew where Sheree was, would he tell her?
“Look, I know I can’t make up for what my sister’s done,” he began. “But if there’s any way I can help . . . If you need help with Dean’s medical bills, anything . . .”
“No,” Sydney shook her head. “We’re fine. But thanks.”
“OK,” he said. “But if that changes . . .”
“I’ll let you know,” she said.
He gently wiped the tears from her face with his fingers.
“How about you?” he asked. “How are you dealing with this?”
She knew what he was asking. They both knew her last few interactions with Dean hadn’t been the most positive.
She took a deep breath. “I’m fine. I don’t care about the shop or anything. I just want Dean to be better.”
He nodded, then pulled her closer, kissing both her eyelids.
“You know I’m here for you,” he said softly, his forehead resting against hers. “If you need anything, or you just want to talk, or you need to get away, I’m here.”
Sydney closed her eyes. He was making it hard for her to not trust him.
“OK,” she said with a sigh. “Just promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“If you hear from Sheree, you’ll tell me.”
“Sydney, forget about her for now. Right now, you need to focus on Dean. . . .”
“Hayden, promise me.”
He sighed and kissed her forehead. “If I hear anything major, I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you.”
She slipped her arms around his shoulders and he stood, lifting her off the ground as his strong steady arms returned her embrace. Yes, she had definitely missed being close to him.
“I have to get back to the shop,” she said, when they finally let go of each other.
“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “I have to get back to the clinic, too.”
She nodded and followed him to the door.
“So we’re good?” he asked.
She nodded. “We’re good.”
“Great,” he stepped closer. “’Cause baby, I’ve really missed you.”
His lips found hers briefly, but it was enough to make Sydney wish she could blow off the rest of her afternoon. Minus the blip at the hospital, it had been more than two weeks since she’d last seen him.
“Later?” she breathed against his lips.
“Definitely.”
“Leaving already?” Lissandra asked, appearing at the doorway with them.
“Duty calls.” Hayden glanced at Sydney affectionately. “But I’ll be back.”
“Well, thanks so much for coming by,” Lissandra said, throwing her arms around Hayden in a hug. “I know it meant a lot to Sydney.”
“Uh, no problem.” Hayden patted her back awkwardly as he shot Sydney a questioning look.
“OK.” Lissandra stepped back. “Take care.”
Sydney eyed her sister suspiciously as Lissandra watched Hayden make his way to his car.
Sydney folded her arms. “What was that about?”
“What?” Lissandra’s eyes were still outside, where Hayden was starting his car.
“You don’t even hug your own brother.” She narrowed her eyes at her sister. “What’s with the sudden affection toward my boyfriend?”
“Because”—Lissandra waited until Hayden had driven off before closing the door—“I needed this.”
She held open her hand with Hayden’s cell phone in it.
“You lifted his cell phone!”
“Hell yes,” Lissandra said. “Once you went all weepy, I knew your little lovesick behind wouldn’t get anything from him.”
“I’m lovesick because I get emotional over my brother in a coma in the hospital?”
“Save the dramatics.” Lissandra headed to the living room. “I just need to see if there’s anything on this phone about Sheree.”
“Well, you won’t get anything. It’s password protected.” Sydney followed her sister into the living room. She sank into the couch. “I can’t believe you stole his cell phone. Where did you learn to do that?”
“What’s
the password?”
Sydney let out a laugh. “You must be smoking more than just cigarettes if you think I’m going to help you break into his phone.”
“Come on, Sydney,” Lissandra said in frustration. “All we need to see is if there’s a number for Sheree, or a record of a last call, or a text message from her.”
“He said he hasn’t heard from her.”
“And you believe him?” Lissandra asked in disbelief. “If the tables were turned, would you rat out Dean?”
Sydney bit her lip. “Maybe.”
Lissandra threw her a knowing look.
“OK, I don’t know,” Sydney admitted.
“Exactly.” Lissandra’s eyes went back to the screen as she tried different combinations. “Look, the worst that could happen is we find nothing, you can say I told you so, and you have an excuse to have him come back over here.”
Sydney bit her lip. Lissandra did have a point. Plus she liked the thought of having Hayden come back. Somehow being with him made everything else bearable.
“OK, fine,” Sydney said. “But we don’t look at anything unless I say it’s OK.”
“Whatever,” Lissandra said, moving over to where Sydney was sitting and squeezing in beside her. “Let’s just get this done before he figures out it’s missing.”
“OK, so what have you tried?”
“Your birthday, your first name, and your middle name, the date of the NBA party where he first ran into you again . . .”
“Try his graduation date, 062000.”
“Nope.”
“Try 200607, that’s when he won MVP.”
“Keep going.”
“Sheree’s birthday?”
“Which one?”
“Try both.
“Nope,” Lissandra said. “How about his birthday.”
“Too easy.”
They kept tossing out options, but each one turned out wrong. Suddenly Sydney sat forward.
“What?” Lissandra asked, curious.
“Try 050708.”
Lissandra sat forward. “That’s it!” She turned to look at Sydney. “What’s that?”
Sydney closed her eyes. “The first day of the rest of his life.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” Sydney shook off the sense of guilt that settled around her. “Let’s just get this done.”
Sydney felt awkward going through Hayden’s phone. She had never been an insecure girlfriend. Even though she knew that Hayden got a lot of attention from women, it never bothered her. But going through something as private as his cell phone was different. All it took was one text message out of context to change things.
It wasn’t long before they found Sheree’s number in the address book. It was the same as the one they found in Dean’s phone, so it didn’t help much. The call history showed that Hayden had been in touch with his sister quite a bit, but nothing past the week she went missing. Same with text messages.
“See? I told you,” Sydney said. “He’s not a liar.”
“Whoa, not so fast,” Lissandra said. “There’s a missed call, from her.”
“What? Where?” Sydney asked, pulling Lissandra’s hand with the phone closer.
Lissandra scrolled through the list until Sheree’s name and number showed up again.
“It’s from a week ago,” said Lissandra.
“Look at this, though,” Sydney said. “One minute before, there’s another missed call from another number. Maybe she called from that number first, he didn’t pick up, then she called back from her number, thinking he would recognize it and answer.”
“Only one way to find out.” Lissandra pressed the green call button for the unknown number and put the phone on speaker. It rang twice before a cheery female voice came over the line.
“Welcome to Best Western Mississauga, how can I help you?”
Lissandra and Sydney looked at each other.
“Hello?”
Lissandra ended the call.
“Call Essie,” Sydney said, taking Hayden’s phone from Lissandra and getting up. “Tell her we’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Why?” Lissandra asked, even as she followed Sydney to the coat closet.
Sydney slipped on her jacket and gloves before opening the front door.
“We need to get into his voice mail.”
“So in less than a week you’ve figured out where this girl was staying, figured out she called her brother, and managed to jack his cell phone. Man, I should have you all working for me.”
Sydney handed the phone to her aunt, then took the chair next to Lissandra’s.
“Lissandra stole the phone, not me,” Sydney said. “If anyone ever asks, I’m throwing her under the bus first.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Lissandra said dryly.
“So I have a few ideas, but what do you want me to do with this?” Essie asked, her eyes on Sydney.
“First, we want to get into his voice mail,” Sydney said. “I think she’s too smart for it, but there is a possibility that Sheree may have left him a message there.”
“You can do that. Right?” Lissandra asked.
Essie laughed. “Sugar, you can’t imagine some of the things I can do.”
“Well, let’s just limit it to that for now,” Sydney said, as she watched her aunt connect Hayden’s phone to her computer.
It wasn’t long before she had accessed the voice mail and was going through the most recent messages. She asked Sydney if she wanted to hear, but Sydney declined. The less she knew the better. The only thing she was concerned about was information about Sheree.
“OK, I got something,” Essie said after a few minutes. “Listen to this.”
Essie disconnected the headset so all three of them could listen to the audio.
“Message received at seven thirty p.m.: I can’t believe you called Mom. Now she’s blowing up my cell every ten minutes. I can’t deal with her and your girlfriend’s people on my back. Look, don’t worry about me. I’m fine. But I’m ditching this phone. I’ll call you when I can.”
“When was that message?” Sydney asked.
“Last week,” Essie said. “After the missed call you guys caught.”
“So you can bet she already got rid of the phone,” Lissandra said.
“And she’s probably not at the Best Western anymore either,” Sydney said. “Do you think they would have a record of her, though?”
“Probably not under her name,” Essie said. “And she probably paid cash. We don’t how long she was staying there, if she was actually staying there, or if she was just using the phone.”
“Great,” Lissandra said with a huff. “So we’re back to square one.”
Lissandra got up and went onto the little balcony to light a cigarette.
“I don’t get it.” Sydney got up and began pacing. “Sheree stole that money a week before she made that call to Hayden. Why was she in Mississauga, just an hour away from here? Five hundred thousand dollars can get you far far away. Why stick around?”
“Maybe she wants to be close to her brother or mother,” Essie volunteered. “Maybe she has other ties to the city that we don’t know about.”
“I couldn’t care less why she stuck around,” Lissandra chipped in from the balcony. “I just want to know where she is with my money. Essie, you said you had ideas.”
“I do,” Essie began. “This girl said she would call your man back. She may have already done that. But in the event that she hasn’t we may be able to track her through your boyfriend’s phone.”
Sydney stepped closer to her aunt’s desk. “How.”
“There’s software we can download onto his phone that will allow us to connect into his calls and messages. He won’t even know it’s there, but if she calls again, we may be able to listen in.”
“That’s great,” Lissandra said. “Let’s do it.”
“That’s your sister’s call.” Essie turned her eyes from Lissandra to her other niece. “What do you want to d
o, Syd?”
Sydney paced the floor behind the chairs again. First they were just looking at text messages and call records. Now they were tapping into Hayden’s phone. What was she doing? Hayden had promised her he would tell her if he heard from Sheree. He knew how much what had happened had affected her family. He told her he was there for her. He cared about her.
However, he had also told her he hadn’t heard from Sheree, when the voice mail message they had just listened to said the opposite. She knew he wouldn’t intentionally hurt her, but she had seen the look in his eyes when he talked about Sheree. He wanted to save his sister. Just like she wanted to save Dean. In the end, blood was always thicker than water.
“OK, put the tap in,” Sydney said. “But no one listens to those calls but you, Essie.”
“You got it.”
“And I only want to hear about the stuff that has to do with Sheree. Nothing else.”
“You have my word.”
A sudden feeling of anxiety swept over Sydney. But as she waited for Essie to finish loading the software onto Hayden’s phone, she ignored it. What she couldn’t ignore was the smirk on Lissandra’s face.
“Well, well, look who grew a backbone.” She gave Sydney a once-over. “Good job, big sister. I knew you had it in you.”
Sydney turned away. Now she knew she had crossed over. Because if Lissandra thought it was a good idea, it was definitely all bad.
Chapter 21
After leaving Essie, Sydney swung by the shop to check in. Things had been pretty slow in the past two weeks, since Sydney had stopped taking jobs past the date when Decadent would close. Dean had sold all the equipment with the store, so there was no way she would be able to fulfill the specialty orders she used to. Her oven at home could only handle smaller jobs. She could still swing a couple wedding cakes or simple specialty cakes if she had enough lead time. But cakes like the one she had made for the Raptors party were absolutely out of the question.
It had been even harder to be in the shop over the last week since the sign had gone up about the closing. Sydney couldn’t deal with the stream of “why” and “what will you do next” questions that seemed to flow from people who had patronized the shop for years. She knew it was unfair to leave it all to Wendy and the other staff. But they had been trained in what to say, and at least there was no risk of them breaking down when people started to tell stories about the good old days when Leroy Halton used to be there.