“I’mchildish and stupid?” she squawks. “You got Amia the same gift as me—but better! Talk about childish and stupid. Andpetty.”
“This is exactly why we need to talk,” I point out. “Because I wasn’t being childish or stupid or petty. I was put in a bad situation with no good options, and I did what I thought was best for my niece.”
“No good solutions?” she huffs, and I can picture her gorgeous gray eyes narrowing in annoyance as clearly in my mind as if she were standing right in front of me. “Like, say, not buying her the thing that I toldeveryoneI bought her? And specifically said no one else should get her? The thing thatevery single other personmanaged to not buy, because self-control is a thing that most people have, along with an absence of the incessant need to be a total jerk for no freaking reason?”
“I already had it,” I snap, running a frustrated hand through my hair. “Before you went and bought that one, then you saidyou got yours on sale, so you couldn’t return it, and I couldn’t return mine because it was past the return window, and having the perfect gift for Amia and not giving it to her wasn’t a good plan, but asking you not to give yours to her wasn’t either. Then every time Itriedto tell you about it, you’d interrupt to throw some rabid insult at me, bat your eyelashes, and flounce away. So in the end it didn’t much matter what I did. Therewasn’ta good option.”
Quiet on the other end of the line.
I choose to take her silence as reflective and wait it out.
“That doesn’t sound like me at all,” she mutters eventually, sniffing.
That’s as close to an acquiescence as I’m getting, I guess. I roll my eyes to the ceiling. “We could’ve cleared this up before you left,” I say. “And not risked you driving when you’re angry.” The fun she has dancing on my nerves isn’t worth her life.
She scoffs. “You don’t affect my emotions as much as you think you do. I’m perfectly fine to drive. In fact, I’ve made it all the way back to my house, safe and so–”
She cuts off on a gasp, then a squeak.
My heart stutters to a stop. “What?”
“Nooo,” she moans. “No, no, no, no, no.”
“What?” I bark.
“I have to go,” she says. “Emergency. And… I might not be at work tomorrow.” She groans. “Or the next day. Sorry. Bye.”
The phone beeps, and she’s gone.
My heart picks back up, double time, as I tell myself she’s fine. Completely fine. Did she sound fine? No.But. She also sounded like she didn’t want to be on the phone with me, and this is exactly the sort of thing she’d do to replace a simplegotta go, bye.
She’s fine.
Absolutely fine.
“She okay?” Wolfe asks.
I shrug, a jerky, unsure movement. Then, I take a deep, calming breath.Then, I curse.
Wolfe blinks. “Do we need to go help her?”
“I don’t know,” I grunt. Probably not. Possibly so. “She said there was an emergency, but she’s a good enough actress that it could’ve been a ruse to get off the phone with me.”
His stare slides sideways, head tilting as he considers the possibility.
“She doesn’t live far,” Mom tuts, arms crossed. “Just go check. If she’s fine, she’s fine, but if she’snot? Then my boys are not going to be the ones who stand around wondering what to do when a woman needs help.” She shoos us away. “Off with you both. Your dad and I can clean the rest of this up. Text us when you know if Poem’s all right.”
I frown, dragging my feet as I follow Wolfe out of the bar and to his marvelously ridiculous minivan. “She’s probably completely fine,” I grumble. “And wasting our time.” Maybe.
Unless, you know, she’s not.
My footsteps quicken of their own accord.
Wolfe fires up the van, and we both pretend we don’t hear sputtering coming from under the hood of his seriously-needs-some-work vehicle as we hurtle down the road toward Poem’s house.
I’m out the door before the hunk of mostly drivable metal comes to a stop. I push Poem’s open door wide as Wolfe yells behind me about “basic passenger safety.”
My feet squish on sopping wet carpet as I step into Poem’s living room. She paces through the squish to her kitchen, where her boots swish against a flood of water as she pleads into her phone.
