Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(37)
“Burn what? What are you talking about?”
“Our family pictures!”
“Of course not! I just packed them away until—”
“Put them back!”
“Not until after the move.”
The move. When Mom so brilliantly decided to uproot them, Caroline was appalled. Somehow, she managed to convince herself that it would never happen. Now it looks like it might. Poor Daddy isn’t going to like it one bit when he’s released from jail and has to come home to a brand-new apartment.
If, she thinks now, Mom lets him come home at all.
Caroline pauses at the master bedroom once shared by her parents.
Where, she wonders again, is Mom going today? Does she have a boyfriend in Westchester?
Maybe there’s some indication, somewhere behind the closed bedroom door, of a secret romance.
Shuddering to imagine what that might be, she slips into the room. Everything is picture-perfect, ready for potential buyers to traipse through the apartment. Not a personal item in sight, other than a cluster of perfume bottles on Mom’s bureau and a couple of generic-looking paintings on the walls.
Now that all the personal stuff is gone, no one crossing the threshold would ever guess that the notorious Quinns live here.
For that matter, no one looking around Mom’s bedroom would ever find evidence that she’s involved with some guy.
Caroline figures the only place she might be able to find incriminating information is on Mom’s phone, and of course she’s taken that with her.
She slouches back down the hall to her own room—also devoid of her favorite photos and mementos and reminders of Daddy that were on prominent display, until Mom made her remove them. The room looks so generic now, like it could belong to anyone. The less time she spends hanging out here, the better.
Now what? The whole day stretches emptily ahead. Too bad none of her friends is around, and there’s absolutely nothing to do.
You could always go back to Starbucks.
Ha. As if.
Then again…what about Jake?
She never had a chance to say good-bye to him, never gave him her number. The rat incident happened right after he asked her about meeting her at Starbucks this afternoon.
He doesn’t even know her last name, so he’d have no way of finding her if he wanted to. And she doesn’t know his last name, either. There are dozens of Jakes and Jacobs at Billington alone; there are probably hundreds of them at Columbia.
Looks like she’s never going to see him again, unless…
What if he shows up at Starbucks today, hoping she’ll be there?
He never mentioned a time, but he did say afternoon. That’s a five-hour window…but what else has she got to do?
Sitting around a rat-infested—or not—coffeehouse hoping to run into some guy is pretty pathetic…but then what about Caroline’s life these days isn’t?
The rainy drive back from Massachusetts has left Elsa with a queasy stomach, courtesy of too much gas station coffee, or sheer exhaustion, or nerves—probably all three. All morning, she’s been dreading the quick stop at home to pack up some things for herself and Renny, certain that once she crosses the threshold, she won’t want to leave again—and knowing that it’s necessary.
But now that she’s here…
I can’t wait to get out.
The house just doesn’t feel right.
It’s nothing she can put her finger on, really. She walks quickly from room to room. Everything appears just as she left it yesterday: rainy day bin in the kitchen, a couple of finished jigsaw puzzles on the coffee table, The Little Mermaid DVD case beside them.
Still, she feels violated. Someone could have been here in their absence, snooping around.
From Renny’s room, she can see Brett beneath the rain-spattered window, looking for the footprints and the broken branch.
In the master bedroom, she goes straight to the nightstand, where she keeps the tiny key, dangling from a strip of blue satin ribbon. If anyone was rummaging through the drawer and found it, he wouldn’t have to look far to figure out what it’s for.
She kneels in front of the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, fits the key into the lock, turns it, lifts the lid.
The contents, at a glance, are undisturbed. The linens are neatly folded.
Beneath her own things lie the items she rarely looks at: her wedding veil in its protective wrap, lace doilies handmade by Brett’s grandmother, a preserved baby dress that had been presented to Maman by the great Coco Chanel herself when Elsa was born…
And then there are the little-boy clothes, the ones she can barely see because her eyes are flooded: Jeremy’s worn dungarees, his T-shirts, the red sweater he’d worn that last Christmas…
Elsa braces herself as she digs her way to the bottom of the chest. If it isn’t there…
But it is.
Choking back a sob, she picks up the Spider-Man figurine she’d found lying in the grass the day Jeremy disappeared.
“Mommy?”
Renny is in the doorway.
Keeping her back to her, Elsa drops the toy back into the bottom of the chest and hurriedly wipes her eyes.
“I’m going to go pick out the clothes I want to bring to Mémé’s house,” Renny tells her. “How many dresses do you think I need?”
“Wait, first you need to put away the puzzles and other toys you played with yesterday,” Elsa tells her, conscious that Brett is right under her bedroom window. “Oh, and you can choose some things to bring with us while we’re away. Come on, let’s go see what we can find.”