It was my mom. “I’m in Virginia,” she had started off by writing, and then she’d sent a few pictures of what seemed to be a large body of water. The Atlantic Ocean? As I stared, the messages kept coming.
“We drove over some mountains to get here.”
“It’s warmer than Michigan. Not hot, but not as cold.”
“I saw a cute dog.”
I continued to stare, not understanding. My mother and I had never texted like this before—if we were communicating, it was for a distinct purpose, like asking if we needed milk or saying that the neighbor was acting whacko in the street so watch out. Another of those purposes had been when I had asked why she hadn’t been paying our utility bills, and I had also wondered what had happened to the money that I’d given her out of mypaychecks (almost the entirety of my paychecks). But since she’d left our house for the final time, she had maintained total silence, not even answering when I asked for one word to show that she was still alive. It was now four-thirty in the morning and I was confused by a lack of sleep, but I was also confused by how she was acting.
So that was what I said. “I don’t understand. Are you ok? You’re in Virginia? Why are you writing to me now?”
Nothing.No response.
“Mom? Is that really you?” I’d been thinking about criminals and crime tonight, and it would have been pretty easy for someone else to have gotten ahold of her phone and imitated her. I asked something that I thought only she would know the answer to: “What year did Dad leave?” It was a trick question, because he had walked out on us on New Year’s Eve, but we hadn’t told anyone until about two weeks later because we’d all been hoping that he would return. He had, but then he’d died.
She still didn’t answer and I got nervous. I could have been writing to the thief who had stolen my mom’s phone and then, for an unknown reason, had started to tell me about the weather in Virginia. I called the police.
Not too many hours later, when I arrived at the elementary school, I was not at my best. The administrative assistant noticed that when I used the machine near her desk to make a few copies. “Are you doing ok?” she wondered.
I was not. “I’m really, really tired,” I admitted. “I think I only slept for about an hour last night.”
She looked concerned. “Are you coming down with something? There’s that flu going around the high school. I was going to mention it to you for your exposé because they’re having problems with absences.”
“Oh, thanks. I’m actually not going to work on that project anymore,” I told her. Everett had enough to use about the schools and I couldn’t see how any of it would help him. I wasn’t sure how I felt about him raising that little boy, anyway.
“I’m glad you gave it up. It made me concerned,” she said. “Sometimes it’s best if we don’t look too deeply into things, you know? I’m not talking about anything specific going on here, but just in general. Sometimes it’s better to keep to your own business.”
“I guess so,” I agreed. The police had basically told me the same thing when I’d talked to them early this morning, or maybe that counted as last night. They’d gone over the facts: my mom had told me that she was leaving, she had quit her job, she had given up her car. Before she’d left, we hadn’t been close—we had never talked much or hung out together, even if we had lived in the same house. That had been true for years, starting long before the issue with the unpaid bills. So what, exactly, made me think that there was anything wrong? Where was the proof that she had been kidnapped or was being held against her will? What made me believe that reaching out with a few texts about a cute dog was a sign of something bad?
Nothing. I had to admit that there was nothing that made me believe any of those things. “I was kind of hoping,” I hadadmitted to the person on the phone with me, and he had been shocked.
“You were hoping that your mother was in danger?” he’d demanded, and of course the answer was no! But I had been hoping that there was a reason that she hadn’t been in touch with us before now—like, she had wanted to, but something had prevented her. If she had been kidnapped, then she wouldn’t have been able to respond to my emails, texts, and voicemails. But the officer didn’t understand that, and I guessed that it didn’t make much sense. I had been looking for a reason that she would ignore us, a reason besides the obvious one that she just didn’t care.
It boiled down to hope, but that was a little bit tricky. When my dad had left on New Year’s Eve years before, I had hoped that he would return. I’d also hoped that he wouldn’t ever come back, and it had been awful and confusing. I had hoped that Boyd would have a terrible accident and suffer like my sister but at the same time, I didn’t really want anyone to go through what Willow had. I didn’t actually wish him harm…maybe a little. Just a little.
In a way, I hoped that Everett wouldn’t get custody of his stepson because he didn’t seem ready to be a parent, but I was also happy that a little boy might have someone who wasn’t only interested in him as an accessory. Hope was—
“Zoey?”
I blinked and saw Anita, our nice admin, watching me. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes, sorry. I need to get back to work,” I told her. I yawned as I went, and I made sure that the volume was turned down on my phone. No more hope, no more distractions.
Chapter 5
“Hurry up, Zoey!”
I was trying, but there was only so much you could do to make a big load of clothes dry quicker at the laundromat. “I’m coming,” I told my sister, and hung up the phone. She was welcome to deal with our dirty stuff herself if she thought that I wasn’t fast enough and I would have been happy if she’d stopped complaining about how I got it done.
But besides a few small problems like that, Willow had been in a very good mood lately, which was great. I was glad that she was feeling better and smiling more. I wasn’t glad about the reason behind it: Boyd. She and her former boyfriend had been spending time together, a ton of it. The good part about the situation was that she was often out of the motel room, something I’d also been pushing on her. He was driving her around, because he had a license and a car but not, apparently, a job. It seemed like he had hours and hours open. They spent many of those together, going places or hanging out at the housewhere he lived with at least a few roommates. I wasn’t sure what he and Willow did there—ok, I had ideas, so I was reminding her all the time about being careful. She knew what I meant.
She still hadn’t gotten a job, which was the bad part about being with Boyd for most of the day: now she didn’t have any extra time available for work. But really, when I saw how happy she was, how she was getting out in the world, and how much she was eating…that meant a larger grocery bill, but I was glad to pay for food. I wasn’t glad to buy the beer she wanted me to get for him and I’d said no to that request.
She was with him today and they were both waiting for me, because we were going to watch Everett’s final game of the Junior Woodsmen season. I was really excited about it and seeing him play always put me in such a good mood, which was why my sister had chosen this excursion for my reintroduction to Boyd.
“You’re going to have to deal with it at one point. We’re back together, for real.” She’d said that and a huge smile had lit up her pretty face. If he made her feel this good, then who was I to say that it was stupid, wrong, and dangerous? Well, I was the person who’d watched what had happened the last time they were together. I was the person who would be holding her hand again, when he acted exactly the same way this time.
Except that people could change. It was like how Everett had told me that he used to be an asshole but he wasn’t anymore. He’d said it as we’d driven back from the bar, after Boyd had been detained but not, my sister kept correcting me, arrested. Her former and maybe current boyfriend hadn’t known thattheir friends had warrants and also drugs, but he himself was never charged that night. I was supposed to forget about that, just like I was supposed to forget everything he’d done to her five years before.
