She turned to look at the outline of his profile in the dim parking lot light. He’d built another wall with piles of stuff between them, but she still had a clear shot of his face. “What if he’s lying?”
Dingo turned to look at her. “Seems unlikely. Especially since GAH can corroborate the story.”
“How would I know thatshewouldn’t lie, too. For him.” Great-Aunt Hiroko had obviously liked Maddie’s father more than she’d liked Lisa.
Dingo sighed. “You know, love, it’s all right to be mad at your ma. Not telling you that your father was right there in the pictures she was showing you is pretty mean. Selfish-like. Like, she didn’t want to tell you anything good about him at all, so she just didn’t tell you anything. That’s not fair. I know I’d be mad.”
“I always thought that she loved him, but that he didn’t love her—us—back,” Maddie said. “But what if he was the one who loved her? What if she just kept using him, the way she used him in today’s story, so she could do that play? What ifshewas the terrible one?”
“Your dad seems pretty smart,” Dingo said. “Self-aware. Like, yeah, okay, he caved to the pressure and played Romeo, but he knew exactly what was going on. And, you know, they say love is blind, but it’s hard to imagine someone as smart as him falling in love with someone truly terrible.”
Maddie shot him a look. “Like you with Fiona?”
“Me and Fee,” Dingo said with another heavy sigh, “was never my proudest moment. A perfect example of the flesh being weak. Thanks ever so much for bringing that up.”
Maddie laughed. “You’re lucky she didn’t kill you—like tear off your head and devour you after sex.”
“Well, there’s still a chance for her to do that tomorrow—the tearing-my-head-off part. The sex is long over and done. I’ve decided to embrace a vow of celibacy for a few years.”
“A fewyears?” Maddie laughed. “Yeah, that vow’s gonna last. Until the next time you go to the beach and meet some pretty blond girl in a bikini and—whoa! What’s that? Is that…?”
“Earthquake! Shite! Hold on!” Dingo confirmed, knocking his wall away to reach for her. “It feels like a big one!”
Pete was in the kitchen when the tremors started.
He’d washed again after returning home late from the base, and he was wearing board shorts and flip-flops and little else, his hair still damp from his shower.
He was gazing into the fridge, as if hoping something more exciting would magically appear when the unmistakable shaking started.
Shayla! Shit! And Maddie! Jesus, did Maddie know what to do in a quake? He had no idea—he also had no idea where she was, but he hoped to hell she was somewhere safe.
He swiftly closed the refrigerator door, making sure it latched, and moved away from the kitchen cabinets and into the doorway that led to the living room. If it was going to be a big one, the cabinet doors would come open and dishes and glasses would turn into missiles. Likewise, keeping his distance from the front windows was smart, and Jesus, the shaking was so intense, the walls seemed to ripple as his furniture jumped and shook. As he figured out his next move, he braced himself against the doorframe—if he hadn’t, he might’ve fallen down.
The power went out, plunging him into darkness—and great, it wasn’t just his house, it was the entire street at least.
Throughout the neighborhood, car alarms had triggered and were going off, but they sounded almost faint beneath the quake’s roar. Movement of the earth’s plates was never a quiet thing. Still, he heard a crash from behind him in the kitchen—and he didn’t need light to know that Maddie’s new computer had been out on the counter. With his luck, that had been what he’d just heard hitting the floor, probably along with the empty mugs from the coffee that he’d shared with Shayla last night.
He couldn’t see Shay’s house in the pitch-darkness. He knew it was stupid as fuck to move, but he scrambled across the room on his hands and knees—the shaking immediately pushed him down to the still-moving floor—and out the front door.
The row of shrubs that lined his front path tripped him, and he went down, hard, but used his momentum to roll farther out onto the lawn and away from the windows, as the tremor finally, blessedly stopped. The postquake “silence” was filled with those car alarms and barking dogs—and despite that, it still felt quiet without the low-pitched rumble.
As Pete pushed himself up, his eyes were already adjusting to the blackout—it seemed to be contained to just his neighborhood because he could see the haze from lights just a few streets away, which was good. “Shayla!” He ran across the street to her house. None of her windows seemed to have broken, either—that, too, was good. The entire quake had lasted maybe twenty-five seconds—from experience, he was guessing it was around a five, maybe five-point-two. Not exactly small, but certainly not theBig One.
Still, Shayla wouldn’t know that, its being her first since she was a kid.“Shay!”He banged on her front door, but she didn’t open it, didn’t answer.
Pete ran around to the back and—
There she was.
Her back door hung open—she’d made it out of the house and was sitting in the middle of her yard, her face lit from the screen of her cellphone.
“Shay! You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, looking up at him and sounding extremely normal, like riding out a five-point-two was no big thing. “Are you?”
“Yeah.”
She held up her phone. “Maddie’s okay. The boys and Carter are, too. I tried to call them, but I got one of those weird busy signals, but then I remembered that texts often get through when calls don’t, so I texted, and they all just texted me back.” Her thumbs moved across her phone. “I’m texting Maddie that you’re okay. She was shaken, pun not intended, and worried about you—I mean, she didn’t say that, but…She was definitely worried. I was just about to go check on you. I texted, but you didn’t answer.”
