Stella made a strangled sound. “Marni, come on. You’re a smart woman.”
That tone. Sharp and condescending. Totally unnecessary. It was like watching bullying on the school playground in real time. I didn’t like it when a stronger personality loomed over a weaker one back then. I despised it now.
“You’re wading back into bullshit territory.” I slipped into the role of reluctant defender, wishing someone else would take a turn. “None of us are at our best right now. None of us are in control either and I know you hate that.”
“You don’t?” Stella shook her head. “I have Everly to worry about. You have Jeremy.”
Marni’s head snapped up and her expression turned fierce. “For the record, you don’t need to have a kid to be in danger here.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Okay.” That conversation couldn’t lead anywhere helpful, so time for a redirect. “Look, today has been wild. Terrible. Confusing. Scary. All of that.” The situation called for harsher words, but those were the only ones my brain could muster at the moment.
Marni shrugged. “Maybe we deserve this.”
“Possibly.” And by that I meantyes.“We have a shared objective. The years of us not speaking, of pretending we don’t know more, has to end. We need to find out where Aubrey has been, what she plans to do, and how much this Gabe person knows and from what sources.”
No one said anything for a few seconds. Stella was the one to break the silence. “So, we work together.”
Marni shrugged. “I never understood why we had to keep our distance for all these years. All it did was make the paranoia fester.”
The blood I saw on her hands.That’s why.
Red dripping from Marni’s fingers. Her palms slick with the damning evidence. I’d heard the yelling. I saw the blood and her stunned expression. She’d cleaned up by the time she slipped from the house to run away. But did that sort of stain ever really wash off?
What had she done?
“We’re in this together.” I focused on Stella, hoping she’d let Marni’s comment pass. “You’ll look into Gabe.”
“I’ll see if Cam knows anything about the guy or Xavier’s estate planning,” Marni said.
That last part made me twitchy. “We can stay in touch via text. Keep it coded. I actually don’t know what that means but it’s a thing I’ve heard Jeremy say.”
“Unless something else happens, we’ll wait until we have more information to meet again.” Stella glanced at her watch. “That should give us time to take a breath.”
Sure. Plenty of time. But I wasn’t in the mood to argue with Stella. Ever, really. “Fine.”
Marni stood up, clearly ready to bolt for the door. “Yep.”
Stella continued to issue orders. “If anyone asks, we’re meeting for a potential community project.”
This seemed like a good place to end the covert, terrifying meeting. Not that any part of this plan really qualified as an ending. This was a beginning. “Excellent. Everybody out.”
I needed space and time to think before Aubrey took her next shot. It was coming. Soon. She wanted us off-balance and she’d succeeded.
Chapter Twelve
Hanna
It took a few minutes for the ladies to shuffle into the night. I locked the door and ran through my usual closing up shop ritual for the second time today. Lights. Bolt. A final check of the equipment to make sure everything that should be turned off was. I’d left my coat upstairs, so nothing else stopped me from getting out of there.
The cool night air smacked me in the face as I stepped into the driveway that ran next to the café. Jeremy and I called the upstairs unit above the supply room and garage home and had since I bought the building back when he entered second grade. I lived there full-time now and Jeremy popped in and out, depending on his class schedule and need for clean clothes. Otherwise, he shared a room on campus with a nice kid from Syracuse.
Part of me loved having a small portion of my life back while I was still young enough to enjoy it. Not that I ever did. I worked. That was about it. I’d go out to eat with a few friends now and then, but when the nest emptied out my evenings mostly consisted of marathoning food competition shows and watching videos of home DIY projects I’d never try.
Being alone didn’t bother me. Being lonely was a bitch.
It would have been convenient and safer in this already safe neighborhood if I could access the living space from the café instead of by using the outside steps, but installing an internal staircase would mean restoring the building back to its original one-household structure with an attached garage and I had better ways to use my savings. So, out the side exit and up the stairs would continue to be my work commute.
