“Why was your water going to be shut off?” he asked me, which was also what my sister did. She was good at changing thesubject to something I didn’t really want to talk about, like my own lack of a boyfriend or that I still hadn’t learned how to do anything with my hair.
“It turned out that my mom had planned her exit for a while,” I said. “She stopped paying bills a few months ago and she had taken days off to use up her vacation, which I didn’t know about.” If I had, then I probably would have pestered her to spend that time doing things that she had never liked, such as cleaning, laundry, or hanging out with Willow. Instead, Mom had probably been with the person she said she’d fallen in love with.
“She was scheming,” he noted.
“I guess so. She had put in her notice at work without letting anyone know. She also sold her wedding ring and some other things she had from my dad,” I said. “When she walked through the door for the last time, she was only carrying one bag, so I was really surprised when I went down to her room and looked around. It was almost totally empty. She’d been moving out for a while, but she’d been hiding it from me. There wasn’t much left and nobody wanted to buy any of it.”
“Why?” Everett asked. “Why did she do that?”
I shrugged but then remembered that the camera was watching, so I pretended to write something down. “She probably knew that I would have tried to talk her out of it, so she was sneaky…or are you asking why she left us?”
He nodded and I started to answer, but then glanced down at my phone. I didn’t always respond to everyone, but I did alwayscheck when I got a notification. After all, I was the only person that Willow had to depend on now and the text I’d just received was from her.
“Where are you?” she’d asked.
“Work,” I wrote back.
I focused on Everett. “You were asking…sorry, hold on again.” My phone had whistled three more times and I looked at what she had sent now. My heart pounded as I processed it. “Oh, geez! My sister is in the hands of the police!”
“No, I didn’t get arrested,” she said when I called her. She was using the overly patient voice that I hated, the one she also adopted when she was giving me unwanted makeup tutorials. “I got detained, but they just needed to ask me questions and now I’m free to go. Can you pick me up?”
“Where are you?”
She told me the name of a small town and I shook my head as I heard it. “That’s an hour away.” It would probably take a lot longer tonight, since it had been snowing so much. “Why are you there?” I asked, and I could almost see her shrug as she answered.
“I went out with some people.”
“Friends from school?” No, it couldn’t have been. She never saw anyone from high school, not anymore.
“Can you please come get me? You know how much a rideshare is going to cost.”
I was briefly gratified that she was worried about money, but then I focused on the fact that she was correct about the cost and that also, it wasn’t likely that any driver would have gone so far to pick her up at this time of night and with the weather so bad. “Are you at a police station?”
“I’m at a bar, but I can’t stay. It’s not right since I’m underage,” she said piously, but then she told me the rest. “The cops also told me I had to get out soon and they only let me wait in here because I said that my sister was on the way. You are, right?”
I would have to go. I couldn’t let her stay there and I didn’t want to pay for a long ride, if she even could have gotten one. But I also couldn’t afford to take off early from my job. “I’m done in an hour,” I said. I looked at the big clock on the wall under the blinking red light of the camera. I wasn’t supposed to be using my phone, either, and I turned away from the lens. “You’ll have to wait until then.”
“I guess I will, but drive fast,” she urged. “I’m almost out of minutes so I’m hanging up.” She did.
I looked across the reception desk to where I’d made Everett Ford stand at the door. “My sister went out,” I said.
“Why do you sound happy about that? I thought she got arrested.”
“Apparently, she was only detained.” I realized that yes, I was smiling, despite knowing that I’d have to make a two-hour trip tonight and I was already low on gas. I’d been trying to make it until payday before filling up. “I’ve been so worried aboutWillow sitting in our motel room by herself, but she went out and I think she had fun.”
“It’s all fun until the police detain you. Why are you two in a motel room?”
“I thought I explained that I lost the house. That’s why I don’t have to worry about utility bills anymore,” I said. “I’m not sure how it was allowed, but my mom had taken out loans and she used our home as collateral. She really must have saved up a lot by not making any payments on anything, and she could have used that money to travel far away by now.” With her salary and with what I’d been giving her out of mine, she would be set for a while.
“Are you being serious?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Why would you think I was joking?”
“Not joking, but just telling me a story,” he said. “You don’t seem bothered by any of this. Are you on a medication that flattens things out?”
“That’s not any of your business, but no. I have been taking a lot of over-the-counter pain relievers because I’ve been having bad headaches, but nothing besides that. I just don’t get too upset by things.”
“Really?Nothing?”
