“Too. Bad. Because we’re done for good.”
* * *
I was shakingas I headed back to my apartment. It was my last night there, my last night of a real bed and being alone and having the freedom of not having to deal with my sisters day in and day out. Not that they didn’t need me.
Hazel:As soon as you move in, I’m taking a vacation. I cannot with teen-girl drama.
Meg:Can I have one night of nursing my feelings?
Hazel:Screw Hunter. He’s a jackass. He’s always been a jackass.
Hazel:Don’t waste calories on him.
Meg:Too late. Susie is here with a sampling of Harrogate’s finest fried food.
Susie was worried as she came into the apartment with big bags of takeout.
“I know you said you didn’t want the zucchini fries, but I figured you should have something that looks like a vegetable. Also Mickey’s owner gave me a cocktail to go, even though it’s illegal, and he told me to tell you that he is voting for you for mayor, and you should remember how nice it feels to get takeout cocktails when you start writing new laws.”
“I’m never going to be mayor!” I wailed, picking up the large container of craft cocktail. I sniffed it and took a gulp.
“That is to share,” Susie said. “You can’t drink all of that!”
“Can and will.” I grabbed a handful of french fries out of the bag and handed Kate a chocolate shake.
“I hate Hunter.”
Susie sighed and handed me the mozzarella sticks.
“Maybe he felt backed into a corner,” she began.
“Don’t!” I waved a mozzarella stick at her. “Don’t make excuses for him! He was planning on posting porn online of me! So that he could trap me!”
“I thought he didn’t admit to that, just the general lying?”
“Yeah, but I’m sure he planned it,” I said stubbornly.
“Did he?” Kate said, wrinkling her nose. “Karen’s a bitch. Maybe she was lying.”
“She had pictures.”
“Hm,” Kate mused. “Maybe she stole his phone? Or hacked it? I can ask Grant’s cousin if that’s possible.”
“He gave them to her,” I said bitterly. “Just to trap me.”
Susie sighed. “I know you’re angry.”
“Furious.”
“I know. But listen, I’m usually on night shift patrol, and I am always the one at the train station to process Hunter’s little brothers when his dad would ship them to Harrogate—alone, I might add, cross-country. One kid was sent as a hitchhiking passenger. Fortunately, he was picked up by a nice truck driver and not one of the kid-killing kind.”
I winced.
“If the Dad treats the little brothers like that, I can only imagine what the Svensson sisters had to endure.”
I looked down at the greasy bag of food.
“You know what the worst thing was?” Susie continued. “When I picked up that kid, he was crying and a mess. I told him he was safe, that I would take him to his brothers. But he wasn’t scared for himself. He kept crying about how one of his older sisters was sent away to bad people and asked me if I could help rescue her because I was a police officer.”
