The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(91)

It was. Can you freaking believe it? The letter of the day was a C.

That’s just the way it worked out.

And the whole time I was standing in front of my first-graders that afternoon teaching them that C is for Cat and Car and Cup, I was thinking that C is also for Cancer and also for a whole lot of Curse words that I wanted to scream.

—Excerpt from Elena’s blog, The Boobless Wonder





Chapter 13

Bright sunshine glints on the tranquil waters of Mobile Bay, beaming hot on Landry’s bare arms as she cuts roses in her garden. Saturday morning sounds fill the air: the pleasant buzz of hedge clippers, lawn mowers, motorboats; the neighbor kids; laughter as they romp in the yard; the occasional barking of dogs being walked along the water.

Filling a second large plastic bucket with fragrant pink blooms, Landry needs enough flowers not just for the usual vases in the living and dining room, but also for the kids’ rooms where her guests will be staying. Addison can sleep in the master bedroom with her, Tucker on the couch downstairs. They weren’t thrilled about the prospect of giving up their rooms, but they’ll live.

Right now they’re at work. Landry will be leaving for the airport—again—in forty-five minutes.

The first outing was at 5:00 A.M., when she dropped off Rob and his golf clubs for his early flight to North Carolina.

Even after he got out of the car and was hugging her good-bye, he was talking about canceling the trip, worried about leaving her.

“We’ll be fine,” she kept saying. “I’ll have plenty of company all weekend.”

“I know. I’d just feel better if—”

“If they weren’t ‘strangers’?”

“I didn’t say it.”

“You didn’t have to. Look, you’ve spent every Father’s Day with your dad your entire life. He’s getting up there in years. You never know how much longer you’ll have with him.”

With anyone.

“I know,” Rob said. “I keep thinking of that. I want to go—I need to go, but—”

“You’re going. Get it-got-it-good.”

He laughed. “Bossy.”

“So are you. I’ll see you Monday. Go.”

He went.

And her friends are on their way.

Bruce Mangione delved into both Kay and Elena’s backgrounds and is ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain that they are who they claim to be. Not a threat to her family’s safety.

“Ninety-nine-point-nine?” Landry echoed when he reported that verdict a few days ago. “Not a hundred percent certain?”

“Nothing in this world,” he told her, “is a hundred percent certain. Anyone who tells you that it is full of—”

“Okay,” she said. “It’s okay. I never was worried about the two of them anyway. It’s Jaycee who scares me.”

“But she isn’t coming this weekend, right?”

“No. She never even responded to Elena’s invitation.”

She took the folder Bruce handed her, filled with documentation showing that Elena and Kay are just Elena and Kay, and she handed him a check.

If she opts not to tell Rob about it, he’ll never notice it’s missing. She’s the one who handles all the finances. Ironic, because he’s the one who makes all the money.

But she will tell Rob. Just . . . not yet. Not until this is all behind them.

She may never tell her friends, though—Kay and Elena—that she hired a private investigator to check out their backgrounds along with Jaycee’s. Neither of them has children. They don’t know what it’s like to imagine someone under your roof creeping around the house in the wee hours, capable of . . .

God only knows what.

Jenna Coeur’s daughter Olivia was Addison’s age when Jenna presumably stabbed her to death, in her bed, in the middle of the night.

Jenna is still out there somewhere.

Bruce is still looking for her; looking, too, for solid evidence that Jenna Coeur and Jaycee the blogger are the same person.

The fact that Jaycee has completely dropped out of sight since last week would seem to back that theory. She has yet to resurface in the blogosphere—though as Landry told Bruce, that’s not necessarily unusual. She’s never been as vocal, or as regular, a presence as most of the others.

Still, you’d think she’d want to at least respond to Elena’s update about Meredith’s funeral . . .

Unless she was there herself.

Every time she allows her thoughts to go there, Landry is tempted to cancel the weekend after all. But she won’t let herself do that. The three of them need to be together this weekend—in person. Now, more than ever.

For Elena, the week held yet another unexpected loss.

On Tuesday night she called Landry to report that Tony Kerwin, the guy who had been harassing her last weekend, had dropped dead of a massive heart attack.

“A heart attack? How old was he? I thought he was your age.” Landry’s father died the same way, but he was in his late seventies, overweight, and had been battling heart disease for years, thanks to a fondness for anything deep-fried and smothered in southern gravy.

“Tony was my age,” Elena told her. “It was one of those fluke things. He never showed up for work on Monday—which I’ll admit made me very happy because I was dreading seeing him, and of course I had no idea anything was wrong. But then today when he didn’t come in and didn’t call in, I guess someone reported it and the police got the landlord to let them into his apartment. They found him dead on the kitchen floor.”