“Ruby—” he started to say before the sound of a phone ringing inside the house cuthimoff.
There was a home phone in the house? I wondered, knowing I hadn’tseenone.
Aaron cursed, setting his plate on the side table and getting to his feet. “I’ll be right back,” he said to me, giving me a tight expression before practically jogging backinside.
I hadn’t really planned on being nosey and eavesdropping on whatever conversation was about to take place on a phone I hadn’t even known existed, but curiosity got the best of me. Mostly because I wanted to see where the heck the phone had been the entire time. But something bothered me as Aaron headed straight to a cabinet directly beside the refrigerator that I had never opened before, like he knew exactly where it was, and pulled out a corded white handset, bringing it up tohisear.
I guess that shouldn’t have been surprising considering he’d been the one to put up the groceries the second day we’d been there. Maybe he’d looked around the house, or maybe this was the same place that they had all stayed at when they’d come to San Blas last year. That would makesense.
The thing was, I kept watching him as he answered, in a voice that was intentionally low, “Hello?”
I might not be as athletic as Jasmine or as smart and outgoing and pretty as my mom and sister, but I’d inherited my dad’s excellent hearing, vision, and teeth. I wore earplugs every single time I went to a concert and I could usually hear just about everything. So even though Aaron was basically whispering as he reclined against the kitchen counter with the phone to his ear, I heard him and I watched his facial expression, and the tone of his voice change instantly. I mean,instantly.
We’d had our beef the night before, but it was nothing like the tension that strummed through his body, and I definitely hadn’t thought it was possible for him to scowl and frown as he said to whoever was talking to him, “What doyouwant?”
If that wasn’t abrasive, I didn’t knowwhatwas.
His features didn’t change even a little bit as he replied to the voice on the other end, “I’m fine. I’m sure Colin told you I was fine when you talkedtohim.”
Who wasColin?
“Look,” he basically growled after a moment, making me lean toward the glass panel separating the deck from the living area like that would get me closer to the action going on inside. “If I had wanted to see you while I was home, I would have.Sorry.”
I’d already known Aaron had sarcasm down stat, but he’d never sounded more insincere ever. Who was he talking to? Who would have the home’s phone numberanyway?
“I’m at the beachhouse—”
The beach house. Notabeach house. Wait asecond….
“—I need to go. If you want to talk, call Colin orPaige—”
I knew that name. Paige was his sister’s name. Was Colin his older brother? It had to be.Sowho—
“I’m going now. Bye,” he ended the call abruptly, still talking and sounding like a totally different person from the warm man I’d gottentoknow.
He stood there. All long and lean, his body strung completely tight. It wasn’t until his head drooped forward and his hands went up to lace behind his head that I turned around, my heart beatingquickly.
I tried to process everything. A phone call. Aaron’s entire personality changing like Jekyll and Hyde. Him mentioning his sister and who I could only imagine was his brother. The beachhouse.
He’d never once mentioned renting the house,hadhe?
He’d brought up several times having a decent relationship with his dad, so there was no way that could have been him on the phone, but… had it been the woman he’d repeatedly called his “birth mom” whohad“left?”
My mind was running a mile a minute as I tried tothink. Think, think,think.
A brief memory of the T-shirt he’d worn the first morning flicked through my thoughts. Hall Auto. He’d never mentioned what his dad did exactly, only that he had employees and that his brother and sister workedforhim.
I knew it was none of my business, but the need to know lingered in my brain as my stomach turned at the not-lie but not-truth Aaron might have been hiding from me. Maybe not hiding exactly, but he hadn’t been forthcoming either. With a glance into the house one more time to find Aaron in the same position he’d been, I brought my phone up to my face and launched the browser, quickly typing in “Hall Auto” and “Shreveport” into thesearch.
It didn’t take more than two seconds for five different results to fill the screen. Five different results for five different auto dealerships in the state of Louisiana, all called some variation of HALL AUTO. This lump formed in my chest, and even though I knew I didn’t deserve to feel like he’d lied to me, I couldn’t help it. It took about a minute of searching before I found an “About Us” section on one of the dealership’s websites. Keywords like “family owned business since 1954” and “family values” caught my eye. But it was the three pictures at the bottom that made menotmove.
One was an old picture that had to have been taken in the 50s with a gentleman and a woman beside a car that would have been vintage today. That one was nobigdeal.
The second image was a recent one of a man in his late fifties standing beside awhitecar.
The third was a clearly dated picture of a man standing in between two males and a younger girl. The older man was obviously the one who had been standing solo in the first photograph, but it was the male beside him was almost a mirror image of Aaron just a little younger than what he was now. Standing a few inches away was the younger girl, not touching the man. And on the far end was a face I knew well. A face much younger than the one I’d been seeingconstantly.
It was a seventeen maybe eighteen-year-old Aaron standing there besides who I was sure had to be hisbrother.
