Crush: A YA Romance Collection

by Lavinia Leigh

  Emmeline cursed under her breath.

  She regretted leaving the house. Millie could be back by now, and she wasn’t there. They could have already made up and put the kettle on for a cup of mint tea, or better yet, a vat of coffee and a Tylenol. She regretted letting her leave in the first place.

  She turned on a dime and headed back double time. The song in her head changed its chant to She is fine, she is fine, she is fine.

  Goodness, she thought, the word almost escaping her lips, is this what I put my parents through? She made a mental note not to mention this incident to her mom when she came around, but perhaps she might accept the dinner invitation she had been avoiding.

  There was still no sight of Millie as Emmeline entered the apartment.

  Emmeline was frantic. It was all too overwhelming. Too much work, too hard. She wiped her eyes. It would do no good for Millie to see her like this when she came home.

  If she came home.

  Chapter 48

  Emmeline checked her watch, trying to calculate how long Millie had been missing, and cursed herself for not checking the time when her kid first walked out the door. How long did it take to walk down to the beach? Five minutes? Ten?

  How did she even get in this situation?

  Where would Millie go?

  Should she run out again and look for her? Stay still and trust Millie would come home? Call the police?

  “What do I do?” she shouted in frustration. At best guess it had been no more than twenty minutes. The only twenty minutes of Millie’s life that she couldn’t account for.

  What have I done? I’ve totally messed my kid up.

  I need help.

  She dialed Callum’s number, fumbling over the keypad. Her hands were shaking. She let it ring through. The answer at the other end of the phone said, “The number you are trying to reach is not in service. Please hang up and try your call again.”

  “Crap! I dialed the wrong number. I can’t do this.”

  She ran to the front door again and stepped out onto the street, looking both ways to see if she could see her. There were happy people milling around, eating ice cream. How could they be happy? How could they stomach eating? Her kid was missing.

  She sat down on the front step and tried to control her hands while she dialed Callum’s number again. No answer. She dialed the number at the shop.

  “Hello, this is…” Callum’s voice said through the phone.

  “Come, Millie. She plan away. She ran away.” Even Emmeline knew her words weren’t making any sense.

  “Stop. You need to slow down.”

  “It’s Millie, she was mad. We had a fight, a stupid fight, and she just left. My girl. We’ve never fought. She’s never run away, and she’s gone.” Her halted words came through streaming tears.

  “She’s…gone…?” he said slowly. “Where did she go?”

  “If I knew, I’d go and get her!” she answered sharply. Fury was working its way through her body. This wasn’t funny anymore. Millie needed to march back home right this instant.

  “Okay, I got it. I’m coming.”

  A minute later Emmeline saw Callum’s large frame running down the street. She ran up to greet him. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her head in his chest, but only for a moment. She looked up and could see the concern in his eyes. It made the situation all the more real.

  “You stay at the bakery,” he said. “In case she comes back. I’m going to look for her.”

  “I can’t just stay put.”

  “Please. Just wait. She couldn’t have gone far.”

  Callum escaped her arms and walked briskly down the street, frantically looking in every direction. Emmeline returned to the front step. Her eyes were red, and she felt like every ounce of her body was raw.

  Millie, please come home, she willed, sending a message out to the universe. She looked at each of the stores. Could she be in one of them? There was an art store, a framing store, a chiropractor’s office. None of those seemed like they would be interesting to Millie at all. There was the river that ran behind the bakery, but if she went down there, Emmeline would have seen her as she walked to the beach.

  People were still walking along the street. How could they? She needed more help. She impulsively called her parents.

  Her mom answered. “Please come.” Emmeline broke down again. “Millie, she ran away.”

  There was a moment of silence on the other end. “Emmeline, are you at the bakery?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Your father and I are coming.”

  Emmeline hung up the phone. Her parents were coming. It felt good. She was relieved for a moment. She needed as many people as she could get out looking for her daughter. Next she dialed Ginny, and told her the same thing. Ginny was there in five minutes with a group of men in suits and ties, who Emmeline assumed were the other lawyers at her firm. Emmeline recognized Ginny’s father running behind the pack to catch up.

  “Em, do you want me to organize an official search party?” asked Ginny, a little out of breath.

  “No, let me.” This was her kid, she wanted to do it. Emmeline took a deep breath. Some of the people wandering the streets were getting curious and starting to look to see what was going on. “Um, hello. I’m new here. Well, not exactly new. I’m Emmeline,” she said loudly. A few other people stepped closer. “My daughter Millie is eight. She’s a good kid. A very good kid, but she isn’t handling moving here very well. She doesn’t do well with change.” She could see her parents step out of their car where they parked it across the street. “And she’s never run away before. In fact, I’ve never had any problems with her. But, today she ran away.” She pushed her lips tightly together and breathed heavily. She needed to stay strong. “She doesn’t know her way around town, and she’s been gone for about twenty-five minutes. Please, if you could help me. Just bring her home.”

  It was embarrassing, humiliating, and humbling watching people scatter through the streets, telling others and looking for her baby.

  Her mom crossed the street. She didn’t say anything, she just hugged Emmeline tightly.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said simply. “We’re going to find her.”

  Emmeline collapsed on the step. Her mother sat beside her as her father disappeared down the street.

  “She’s going to be okay. She’s strong like you,” Amy said.

  “Strong. That’s the last thing I feel like right now.”

  “But you are. Stronger than me. Stronger than most. You’ll get through this. Millie is like you. She’ll be fine.”

  “But you don’t know that. What if she’s been taken, or what if she gets hit by a car? What if she falls down and hurts herself? No one will be there to help her.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. Look around. Everyone is looking for her. That’s what we do.”

  “It’s just so hard.”

  “Listen, I know a thing or two about trying to raise a strong-willed kid. Sometimes you don’t get things right. I know I haven’t. I’ve messed up over and over again. But you love your daughter, and she loves you. When she’s ready, she’ll come to you.”

  Emmeline got the feeling that Amy was talking about more than just Millie. Her mother held out her hand, and Emmeline took it. She laid her head down on her mother’s shoulder, and Amy laid her head on Emmeline’s.

  A familiar figure walked down the street toward them. At first Emmeline couldn’t place who it was. A softness lined the elderly woman’s eyes.

  “Emmeline, is that you?” she asked.

  “Mrs. Smyth?” She had been the secretary at Emmeline’s high school. She remembered how supportive that she had always been.

  “She’s at the library. I just spoke with her.”

  Emmeline’s heart pounded out of her chest. “What?”

  “I just left her, and the library staff is watching over her. I wanted to come right away and tell you.”

  A small sob escaped Emmeline’s lips.
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br />   “She’s fine. I know, it’s okay, let it out. Raising kids is tough. I raised four of my own, and each one of them did something silly like this at one point or another. You get those first painful calluses when they’re small with stunts like this, and they hurt for sure. She just needed some space. She is safe.”

  “Ha!” said Emmeline, laughing out loud. Only her kid would run away to the library of all places. “Thank you,” she said then.

  “She’s coming back. I just advise you not to be too hard on her, she feels bad enough as it is.”

  Mrs. Smyth reached out and hugged Emmeline. It felt good.

  “See, what did I tell you?” said Amy.

  Mrs. Smyth gave her directions, and Emmeline left her mother, who volunteered to tell everyone that Millie had been found, and walked the two minutes down the street to the library. No wonder Millie had disappeared so fast—she hadn’t gone far.

  As she opened the door to the library, the woman behind the returns counter whispered, “She’s upstairs.” Emmeline assumed the frazzled look on her face was a dead giveaway that she was the missing child’s mother. She walked carefully up the stairs, looking everywhere. As her foot reached the top step, another librarian pointed over to the corner. Emmeline mouthed “Thank you” and followed her directions. Through the open shelves of books, she could see Millie. She looked so small, curled up on the window seat. Sometimes when Emmeline looked at her she seemed so much older than eight. She had turned out to be so capable. Other times she was just a baby.

  “Millie,” Emmeline called out. She was trying not to sound too angry, even though part of her was. Relieved and angry. But they needed to deal with this and shouting got them into this mess in the first place.

  “Mom?” Her little head looked up, her eyes glistening.

  Chapter 49

  Millie

  Millie knew she was wrong. She knew it the second she had ignored her mother’s second command to come back, but she was mad and she couldn’t bring herself to listen. Her legs moved faster in defiance, and her neck stubbornly refused to turn around and look. She knew any second now, her mom would catch up with her. She needed a place to go, to think.

  The problem with a new town was that she didn’t know of any places to go. She ran past the library, then stopped and went back a few feet. Maybe she could hide amongst the stacks of books. Maybe her mom wouldn’t find her for a few minutes. She stormed in the front door. The building had two levels. The bottom level was all the baby books, and ones for her age. She knew that those would be the first place her mom would look if she thought to come inside. So she headed for the stairs. She passed the man sitting at the help desk at the top, and smiled, hoping he wouldn’t question her being there—she wasn’t sure how many kids came upstairs. Impulsively she decided to go to the right. There were stacks of books on shelves, and large windows with window seats lined with comfy cushions. Millie found one that was hidden a bit and sat down. She leaned against the wall and pulled her knees up to her chest. She stared out the window and willed herself not to cry. She never knew she could be so brave, but it didn’t feel good.

  She picked up one of the books that someone had left on the window seat, trying to look like she belonged. She must not have, because an old lady with tight, short curls approached her and looked at her strangely. It made Millie uncomfortable, the way she looked at her. Maybe she was some old lady psycho killer. Millie tried to read the book in front of her intently.

  “Excuse me,” the lady said. Millie pulled her knees in tighter to her chest.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bother you. It’s just that I accidentally left the book I was going to borrow today on the window seat.”

  Millie peered up from the book, eyeing her suspiciously.

  “That is,” the lady continued, “if you’re really into the Mannerist style coming from the High Renaissance as influenced by Rosso Fiorentino, by all means, I’ll leave it to you and sign it out another day.”

  She was caught. Millie looked down at the book for the first time and realized that there was no way she’d be able to convince anyone she was reading it. “All yours,” she said.

  “I haven’t seen you here before,” the lady said.

  “We just moved here,” she said. She noticed the kindness in the lady’s eyes and it put her at ease. She was dying to talk to someone; she couldn’t help the words that came out next. “You know, I’m actually from this town,” Millie said, nervous, confessing her secret and not knowing if she should, or if it even mattered.

  “I figured as much,” the woman said, smiling. She sat down at the other side of the window seat and folded the book on her lap.

  “How did you know?”

  “You can’t live in this town as long as I have and not know a thing or two. I was born in a house just north of here, and spent a lot of time with the little ones. I was a school secretary. I know the kids from this town, and in fact, I know their kids and the little ones that have come after that.”

  There was something about this woman that made her feel warm and safe, like a warm blanket fresh out of the dryer.

  “You look like him, you know,” the lady said. “It’s around the mouth, your face shape—of course, that mole on your cheek is just like your mom’s.”

  “I’ve heard that before. Did you know my dad?”

  “I can do better than that. I remember when you were born. I called the hospital to tell them they were coming.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s true. Your mom was in the middle of class when you decided that you wanted to make your appearance. I think everyone was pretty surprised. Tell me, do you still like to do things in your own time?”

  Millie nodded slowly. She wasn’t sure exactly what she meant, but she had heard people say things like that too in the past. “What else happened?”

  “Then your dad took your mom to the hospital and you came.”

  Millie smiled. “Did everyone know my dad?”

  “Pretty much. He was really well known in this town. So are your grandparents.”

  “I don’t know them.”

  “Things haven’t been easy, have they?”

  “They were, and then we came here. I had to leave my grammy. I miss her, and everything is different here.”

  “I’m sorry, but look at you, all grown up.”

  “I think you’re being too nice. My mom doesn’t know where I am.”

  “Figured.”

  “How do you know so much?”

  “Like I said. When you get old you learn a thing or two.”

  “I should go back.”

  “Don’t worry, you stay here for a few minutes and collect your thoughts. It looks like you have a lot on your mind. I’ll swing by the shop and tell your mom where you are.”

  “Thank you.”

  Knowing that she had a few extra minutes where her mom wasn’t worrying about her helped tremendously. Now all she had to worry about was what she would say when she got back. There was no doubt that her mom would want to talk about the fight, and worse than that, perhaps she’d want to rehash it all over again.

  Chapter 50

  Emmeline

  Emmeline looked at her little girl cowering on the window seat and knew she had to handle this carefully. Yelling wasn’t going to help even though so much of her wanted to. Millie had scared her badly. She sat down beside Millie and hugged her until she started to squirm uncomfortably. Emmeline looked at her sternly, noticing the tears in Millie’s eyes that matched her own.

  “Don’t you ever do that to me again. If you are having trouble, you need to talk to me. Do you understand?”

  “I know.” Millie looked at her toes. Emmeline could tell she felt bad. “It’s not fair!” Millie said, a touch of bitterness in her voice, and she slumped in her seat.

  “What’s not fair? Moving here?”

  “I was happy. I didn’t want everything to change.”

  “I know, but that’s just the way life goes.
You can’t run away when things get tough. That isn’t the way to deal with things. You need to talk to me. You need to understand that things aren’t going to stay the same forever, and you need to know that even when things change we have to stick together.”

  “I promise I won’t run away again.” Emmeline could tell by the look on her daughter’s face that she truly meant it.

  “Thank you.”

  “You know what else isn’t fair?”

  “What?”

  “That you gave up a trip all around the world just for me. Wouldn’t you have rather done that?”

  “Oh, Millie, I have no idea how you know about that. But that life, traveling around the world, it may be nice sometimes, but not right now. I finally get to have my dream. That’s you and me, here, surrounded by our friends. Opening my own bakery. When I travel, I want you by my side, and I want it to be when the timing is right for both of us. Got it, kiddo?”

  Millie smiled weakly. “Are you sure, Mommy?”

  She sounded like a little girl, a rare treat for Emmeline. She looked down into Millie’s big doe eyes. She stroked her hair again and kissed her on the forehead. “Listen, Joel is doing what is best for him, and we are doing what is best for us. Those are some of the choices that you have to make when you grow up. No regrets, okay?”

  “Okay. Are you going to date Callum now?”

  Emmeline could feel her cheeks go bright red. How did this become all about her?

  “I think so. Would you be okay with that, Angel Face?”

  “Yes, but promise me, no kissing when I’m around!”

  “Deal!”

  They didn’t get much done over the next few days. It was time to take a break, and Emmeline didn’t want Millie to have another running away episode just before school started. It did make Emmeline a little nervous. Her timeline was tight, and she didn’t have money to float them for too long. But Millie, as always, came first, no matter what. Besides, she would be starting school in just a few days. She would just have to hunker down after that.