Chapter 5
“You arenotgoing to believe who messaged me on Mybook last night.” Amy pressed the cellphone to her ear with one hand and scrolled down the list of emails with the other.
Kassy spoke under her breath before replying, mumbling something to the twins about getting sent to thequiet spotif they didn’t obey. “Sorry, what was that?”
“Jace Burns.” Just saying his name aloud caused a thrill to shoot through Amy’s entire core. A thrill that was, at least slightly, curbed by hints of ambivalence as she considered the mysterious guy from her past.
“Whoa, wait. What about Jace Burns?” Henry and Willis giggled in the background. “I’m serious, you two,” Kassy threatened. More giggles sounded in the distance. “Daren? Will you come get these guys for a minute?”
Amy clicked to read the first one. “He sent a message to my profile… well actually, like a bunch of messages.”
“You’re kidding! What did he say?”
“Well, it’s kind of confusing, actually, because he kept deleting them after he sent them. In fact, I wouldn’t have seen any if they hadn’t been sent to my email.”
“Your Mybook messages go to your email?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t even know you could do that. So what did he say?”
Amy clicked on the first email that came, though she already knew what it said without looking. “Okay, the first one just says, ‘Hey.’ That’s it.”
“Hey? Like he was waiting for a response?”
“Probably. But then he deleted that and sent another one.” She clicked on the next message. “‘How are things going, Amy?’”
The sound of a door closing came from the line, followed by the faint hum of traffic. Amy could just picture her sister standing on the balcony in their backyard where the freeway ran. Tall trees did a good job of creating privacy, but they didn’t exactly do much to mute the sound. “So he deleted that one too? How many did he send?”
“Yeah. One more after that. This one’s the longest.” It was also the one that got her heart racing each time she read it. Already the adrenaline was rushing faster than freeway traffic on a Sunday. “Okay, it says, ‘I’m going to be in town soon, and wondered if you’d be interested in catching up.’”
“Holyshnikeys!”Kassy blurted.
Amy’s smile grew. “I know!”
“Read that again.”
Amy cleared her throat and channeled her deepest voice. “Hey there, sexy. I’m going to be strolling into your neck of the woods and I’d love to take you on a date. I kind of ad-libbed that time.”
Kassy laughed. “Oh really? I didn’t notice.”
Amy walked away from her laptop and strolled through the small front room, eyeing the sight through the storm door. A quiet street with tall, leafy trees lined the park strips. She stepped onto the porch and sank into one of her wicker chairs with a sigh. “Why do you think he deleted all of those?”
“That’s a good question.” Kassy’s tone was tight, which meant she was holding back what she wanted to say.
“But you have an idea?” Amy urged. She’d hear it inevitably anyway, may as well encourage her sister to speak up now before Amy dared get any more excited about the messages than she already was.
“Does Dad know you’re getting into his hat collection?” Kassy hissed under her breath. “Go back inside and put that back right now.” The slam of a door sounded before her sister spoke up again. “Sorry, you there?”
“Yeah.”
“I was thinking…” Kassy said hesitantly, “that maybe Jace’s profile got hacked.”
It wasn’t nighttime. In fact, the sun had just started its morning climb along the eastern sky, but Amy could swear crickets picked up in the moment of horrific realization. Her heart stopped thumping its wild pace and shifted into tread-mode, barely operating enough to keep her afloat. “You’reright.”
“But I might be wrong.”
“No,” Amy said. “I’ve been connected with him on Mybook for years and he’s never updated his profile or even posted once. And suddenly he hops on and sends me a bunch of messages and deletes them?” Ugh, she almost wished she’d have waited to tell Kassy. Having her hopes crushed so quickly felt awful.
