Vicious Carousel (Suncoast Society #25)(32)

Tilly counted that as a win, and Betsy couldn’t argue with her.

Then Tilly got her computer booted up again, pulled up a resume template in Word, and handed the machine over to Betsy.

It felt…weird to be holding a laptop again, even though…before…she’d spent hours on one at work, or sitting on her sofa in her small apartment in front of the TV at night doing stuff on one.

“What do I do?” she asked Tilly.

“Fill the stuff in where it says. I won’t do it for you. If your fingers were broken, yeah. No offense, my love is of the tough kind, believe it or not.” She pointed at the laptop. “Get busy.”

Twenty minutes later, Tilly was reading over her shoulder and proofreading a printed copy of it. “That looks good. I’ll e-mail the file to you, along with Shayla’s e-mail address.”

“Why hers?”

“She’s a writer. You are going to text her and ask if she’ll proofread it for you.”

“I don’t want to impo—”

Tilly glared at her as she held up a finger, silencing her. “What did I just say?” she quietly asked.

“To text Shayla and ask her to proofread it.”

“Did I ask you to question me?”

“No, Ma’am.”

Tilly’s face broke into a beaming smile and she threw her arms around Betsy as she laughed. “Okay, seriously, save that only for fun. Learn to stop questioning your friends when we say something. If I thought it would be an imposition, I wouldn’t have told you to do it. Shayla already passed along to me that she would help you if you needed it. Okay? That was a test. And yes, you failed, but hopefully you’ll learn to trust us.”

“I do trust you guys.”

“Then trust us when we say we want to help you. All right? Or get back into the healthy habit of not being afraid to ask. Asking is not a bad thing. You might get a yes, or you might get a no, but you’ll never get an answer if you don’t ask. Right?”

“Right.”

“Now text Shayla and ask her.”

Betsy reached for her phone. In less than two minutes, Shayla had texted back that she’d be waiting to receive it and get to work on it for her immediately.

Somehow, Betsy managed to blink back her tears over that reply and e-mailed the document to Shayla from her phone, where Betsy had created a new e-mail account.

Tilly smiled and held up her fist.

Betsy fist-bumped her back.

“And now, for the next part.”

“What’s that?”

Tilly’s smile faded as she pointed at Betsy’s phone.





Apparently, even Tilly knew the limits of Betsy’s endurance. She told Betsy to plug her mom’s cell number into the phone but not hit send, that she would make the first contact. Fortunately, Betsy knew the number by heart.

She hoped it was still a good number, because her parents didn’t have a landline since they’d moved up north. They hadn’t needed one.

Betsy’s hand trembled as she handed the phone over.

“What’s her name?” Tilly asked.

“Karen. Karen Lambert.”

Tilly took a deep breath and crossed her fingers before punching the speaker option button and then hitting send.

In the quiet of the house, Betsy could clearly hear the phone ringing on the other end as the call connected. After three rings, Betsy was sure that it would go to voice mail, but then a cautious woman’s voice answered.

“Hello?”

Betsy choked back a relieved sob that it sounded like her mom. Tilly took over. “Hello, my name is Tilly Cardinal-LaCroux, and I’m calling from Sarasota, Florida. I’m trying to reach Karen Lambert on behalf of her daughter, Betsy Lambert.”

There was a long pause. Betsy closed her eyes, afraid—no, certain—that her mom was going to hang up.

Then, “Is she all right? Please, tell me, is she okay? Is she alive?”

Tilly took the call off speaker mode, stood, and as she spoke quickly headed down the hallway and into the men’s bedroom office where she closed the door behind her.

Stunned, Betsy sat there quivering, terrified, unable to process. She both did and didn’t want to know came next, wanted and didn’t want to hear what Tilly said.

She felt like a faker sitting there in her pricey, new business suit and good shoes—better than she could have bought before on her salary—and the concealer caked across the injuries on her face. She wrapped her arms around herself and somehow managed not to cry as she waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Twenty minutes later, she heard Tilly’s voice as the office door opened and then she walked down the hall, still talking.

“Yes, here she is.”

Then Tilly was standing in front of her, the phone held out to her in one hand, and a box of tissues in the other.

When Betsy looked up, she realized Tilly had been crying.

Correction, was still crying.

Tilly shook the phone at her.

Betsy finally reached out and took it, choking back fear and regret and dread as she forced the word out. “Mom?”

It sounded like her mom had already been crying, but she loudly sobbed when she heard Betsy’s voice. “Bets? Is that really you, baby? Oh, my god, we were afraid you were dead. We love you so, so much.”