The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(19)

If something happened to me, Meredith is the type who’d rally the troops and come down here to see how she could help Rob and the kids. I owe her the same.

By the time Jaycee called her, she had decided it would be a good idea if they all went. Together. For Meredith. She was going to ask how Jaycee felt about it, but Jaycee was in such a hurry to get off the phone . . .

That was strange. One minute she was kidding around, the next she was abruptly ending the call. Why?

Maybe because I asked her what she was doing in L.A.

Jaycee seemed taken aback that she knew where she was, almost as if . . .

Maybe she didn’t want anyone to know.

But why not? What do I care where she travels on business?

Oh, well.

Maybe she’s paranoid about sharing too much with someone she doesn’t know very well. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t post a photo on her blog.

At least Landry now has a voice to go with Jaycee’s name . . . a familiar one, at that. Jaycee definitely reminds her of someone. She just can’t remember whom.

“Mom?”

Addison is in the doorway. She’s changed into a cornflower blue sundress and white sandals, sunglasses propped on her head and a purse over her shoulder. She’s added a necklace of blue and silver beads that complement the necklace and earrings she put on earlier. As always, she looks perfectly put together in an easy-breezy way, so that you’d never guess everything she’s wearing was carefully coordinated to create a very specific overall effect.

“I’m ready to go shopping. Can I have the car keys and . . .”

“Bathing suit money?” Landry smiles. “Sure. Come on downstairs and I’ll find my purse.”

About to shove her cell phone into a pocket, she realizes that the gym shorts she threw on earlier don’t have one. The battery is running low anyway—and she’s had enough, for now, of talking about Meredith’s death. She plugs the phone into the charger near her side of the bed and walks downstairs with Addison.

“Did you figure out what you’re going to do about your friend’s funeral?” her daughter asks.

“The arrangements haven’t been posted yet, but when they are, I’ll send out a group e-mail to the other bloggers to see if they want to meet in Cincinnati.”

“What if they don’t want to?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re still going either way, right?”

Landry hesitates. The last thing she wants is to give her teenage daughter the impression that you should reconsider whether to do something just because your friends aren’t doing it.

But it would be hard to go alone.

When was the last time she traveled far from home completely on her own?

The semester abroad she did back when she was an undergrad English major at the University of Alabama?

Those four months in London felt like a stepping-stone to a future spent traveling the world. But then it was over and she was back in Tuscaloosa, and the next thing she knew, that, too, was over. She graduated and found herself back at home, where she spent the summer sending out résumés for jobs in London, jobs in New York, Chicago, L.A. . . .

A few weeks later she met Rob, and almost simultaneously was hired as an assistant in a tiny PR firm in Mobile. She decided that everything she wanted and needed—for the time being, anyway—was right here.

“Mom?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re going to Cincinnati, right?”

“Of course,” she tells Addison. “Of course I’m going.”

And somewhere in the back of her mind, a flicker of anticipation accompanies her apprehension.

“Hi, you’ve reached Landry Wells,” drawls a pleasant, recorded voice. “Please leave a message and I’ll get right back to you. Have a great day!”

Elena hesitates, then hangs up without leaving a message. By the time Landry returns the call, this brief lunch break will probably be over. Better to wait until she gets home tonight and try her back then.

She looks again at the headline on her computer screen, the one that made her heart pound when she first clicked on it. The kids were still in the classroom then, so she couldn’t react. Now they’re in the cafeteria, and the salad-filled Tupperware container she brought from home is sitting untouched on her desk.

LOCAL WOMAN MURDERED IN APPARENT HOME INVASION

There isn’t much detail in the article. It doesn’t report how Meredith was killed or where she was in the house when it happened. Standard procedure, Elena guesses, to leave out certain details. It’s an active police investigation. No mention of suspects, and anyone who can provide a lead is asked to call a special crime hotline.

“Elena?”

She looks up to see Tony Kerwin, the gym teacher—again. The guy manages to find his way into her classroom several times a day, and she’s not exactly in the mood for him right now.

Really, she’s never in the mood for Tony.

Ironic, because when he walked into the first staff meeting right after he was hired here last fall, she was immediately drawn to him. So was her friend Sidney, a fellow teacher and recent divorcée.

When Tony introduced himself, it turned out he was in his early thirties, like Elena. He had grown up south of Providence, just as she had—he was from Cranston, she from neighboring Warwick.