The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(111)

I need them to love me.

And this way . . . they do.

They’ll never know.

“Kay . . .” Landry’s voice is fading. Landry is holding her hand, squeezing it. “I’m here with you, Kay. Come on. Hang on . . .”

No. She can’t. It’s time to let go.

She’s ready to find the light, and Meredith . . .

Meredith is somewhere, waiting.

We’ll get together someday, Meredith promised her. One way or another. I just know it.

Kay whirls through time and space, flying backward through the years.

I know it’s difficult to hear news like this, the doctor tells her, but the important thing is that we caught it early. We’re going to discuss your treatment options, and there are many . . .

It’s not better to have loved and lost, Mother rasps in her cigarette voice. If you don’t love, you can’t lose . . .

Kay is a little girl again, all alone, always alone, standing by the edge of a pond on a hot summer’s day, reaching for a rock . . .

Reaching . . .

Slowly . . .

Reaching . . .

Steadily . . .

Kay draws her last breath and spirals into the darkness.

Sitting on the couch with Jordan on her lap, reading him a story, Beck has managed to put the remaining questions surrounding her mother’s e-mail out of her mind for the time being. Losing herself in the silly rhyme and rhythm of Dr. Seuss is just what the doctor ordered—particularly on the heels of several failed attempts to get through Jordan’s first book choice—Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever—without breaking down sobbing.

Mom bought that book for him when he was born, her first grandchild. She used to read it for him sitting in this very spot, cradling him in her lap, even as an infant. He doesn’t remember that, of course, any more than he’ll eventually remember more recent times with her.

We should have taken pictures, Beck thinks, turning a page and pausing the story so that Jordan can absorb the picture first, as he likes to do, tracing the colorful figures with a chubby index finger.

We shouldn’t have just posed for photos on big occasions like Christmas morning and birthdays.

Yes, they should have captured the little things, the everyday moments that feel like a dime a dozen when they’re happening but are priceless when they’re gone.

“Anybody home?” Teddy calls from the kitchen.

Beck breaks off reading long enough to call, “In here!”

Teddy comes in, looking instantly relieved to see them. He must have told Beck half a dozen times to be sure to lock the doors after he and dad left . . .

Even though whoever killed Mom came in through a window.

A random stranger?

The thought is no less chilling two weeks after the fact, and yet . . .

She wants to think that her mother died secure in the love of her family and friends; can’t bear to think that she drew her last breath thinking she’d been betrayed.

That e-mail exchange . . . the one her friend had mentioned . . . doesn’t seem to exist. Either she’d lied about it—why?—or it’s been deleted.

Why? And by whom? By Mom, before she died? By whoever stole her cell phone and laptop?

“Aunt Beck is reading to me, Daddy. Hop . . . Hop . . . Hop on Pop . . .”

“Why don’t you hop right up here on Pop, big guy.” Teddy holds out his arms and his son stands up on the couch and leaps into them.

Watching them hug, Beck smiles wistfully.

Maybe someday she’ll have a child of her own.

After this business with Keith is settled, and she’s had time to regroup, rebuild . . .

Maybe.

“How did everything go?” she asks Teddy, standing up and setting the Dr. Seuss book aside. “With Dad and the paperwork?”

He shrugs. “It could have been better. Louise did her best, but—”

“Louise?”

“From the insurance company.”

Beck stares.

“She doesn’t know what happened, Ted,” Dad says from the doorway. “I didn’t want her to worry. I didn’t want any of you to worry, but . . .” He shrugs. “Too late now.”

I didn’t want her to worry . . .

It’s almost exactly what he’d said about Mom the day Beck ran into him having lunch with Louise.

Louise . . . from the insurance company?

“I had to let Mom’s life insurance policy lapse. I couldn’t afford the premium. I was trying to figure out a payment plan, a way to keep it going—that’s why I met with Louise the day I ran into you in that restaurant. It threw me off, seeing you there, knowing you didn’t know that Mom was sick again . . .”

No wonder. No wonder he’d been so edgy. No wonder she’d thought he was hiding something. To think she assumed the worst about him . . .

“We were in the tail end of the policy’s grace period when she died. It ran out at midnight, but the coroner—” Her father breaks off, takes a deep breath. “The coroner pinpointed her death after twelve. Too late, according to Louise.”

“Oh, Dad.” Beck walks across the room and puts her arms around him. “It’s okay.”

“We’re out of money. I can’t pay the mortgage.”

She shrugs. “Sell the house.”