The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(42)

Not as handsome as Rob, by any means. Different handsome. Dark handsome, versus Rob’s golden boy good looks.

She’s well out of her comfort zone now, not only traveling alone, but having a strange man offer to buy her a cup of coffee.

Although he probably didn’t mean it like that . . .

Oh, please. Of course he didn’t. He was just being polite.

Look at her. She’s a middle-aged mom wearing jeans, a hoodie, and no makeup, her blond hair pulled back in a simple ponytail. She’d left too early to worry about what she looked like this morning and had been planning on having enough time at the hotel to pull herself together before she meets the others. Hopefully, she’ll still have it, but if not . . .

What you see is what you get.

She licks her finger, turning a page of the magazine, scanning it—a photo montage of celebrity bikini beach shots with plenty of cleavage, only serving to remind her that her own bikini and cleavage days are long behind her. She turns another page, and then another . . .

Then, oops! Remembers she’s supposed to be watching Mr. Coffee’s luggage.

Restless, she tucks the magazine back into her carry-on, checks her watch, and takes out her phone again.

There’s a text from Addison: Dad said u called. Jumping into shower then have 2 leave 4 work. Talk 2 U later. ILY.

She smiles and texts back ILY2: I love you, too.

Landry toys with her phone for a minute, remembering that she never did return her cousin’s call from the other night. Barbie June left another message—a slightly pissed-off-sounding one—last night while she was out to dinner with Rob. She meant to call back, but when she got home she still had to pack, and by then she wasn’t in the mood to talk to her cousin anyway, with the trip looming and the alarm set for 4:00 A.M.

She glances at the window again in time to see a large bolt of lightning zigzag the sky almost directly overhead. She has nothing but time on her hands for the immediate future, so she might as well call back now and face the wrath of Barbie June, who never takes kindly to being put off.

Her cousin answers the phone immediately, with a high-pitched, “Landry! I have been so worried about y’all!”

“Worried? Why?”

“It’s not like you to ignore your messages, and I’ve been trying to track you down all week!”

“I’m sorry, it’s been a rough week, and—”

“I heard what happened! Aunt Ardelle”—Landry’s mother—“told Mama that you were flying away to a funeral up North!”

That gives Landry pause. She’d called her mother yesterday to let her know she was leaving for the weekend; that an old friend had died. When her mother asked who it was, she said, truthfully, “No one you know.”

“A college friend?”

“Something like that.” Then she successfully changed the subject, asking about her mom’s roses. An avid gardener, Ardelle Quackenbush always welcomes the opportunity to talk horticulture.

Now, Landry tells her cousin the same thing about the funeral: “It’s no one you know.”

“Your mother told my mother it was someone from college.”

“She did? Bless her heart. Her hearing is getting worse by the day. It wasn’t someone from college.”

“Oh, thank the Lord! I’ve been on the alumni Web sites all morning trying to figure out who it could have been and why I wouldn’t have heard about it, too. Who was it?”

Landry sighs inwardly. “It was someone I met online.”

There’s a pause.

“One of those bloggers?” Barbie June asks. “The ones who are always writing notes to you like they know you?”

“How do you know that?”

“How do you think? I read your blog! I’m your cousin!”

Landry clears her throat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you read it.”

“Of course I do!”

Then why, she wants to ask, haven’t you ever said anything positive about it until now? Why are you always making disparaging remarks about anything having to do with social networking?

“Which friend died?” Barbie June persists.

“Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t—”

“Landry! I just said I read your blog. I know who all the regulars are—the ones who always comment. I know you consider them friends. Who was it?”

Fair enough. If she’s been reading, then Meredith’s name will be familiar to her. Meredith was always one of the first to leave a comment whenever she posted a new entry.

“It was Meredith,” she tells Barbie June.

“Really? I didn’t even know she was sick again!”

Rather than inform her cousin that she wasn’t, in fact, sick again, Landry asks, “How could you know?”

“I’ve read her blog, too. You can link to them through their names when they leave comments on your page. I’ve read most of— Oh. Well, there it is.”

“There what is?”

“I’m on her blog now.” Keyboard tapping. “There are all these comments about it being sudden . . . What in the world happened to her?”

This feels wrong to Landry—Barbie June asking about Meredith, almost as if she knows her. Until now her real life and online life have been as neatly compartmentalized as Addison’s cases of beads. Now it’s all been upended and jumbled together, leaving her oddly unsettled.