The Stillwater Girls(22)

HOW? She writes.

Lifting my shoulders to my ears, I mouth, “I don’t know.” And then I write another message: I’LL FIGURE IT OUT TONIGHT. Erasing that message, I write another: WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TO LEAVE LIKE MAMA AND EVIE.

Sage’s dark eyes widen, and she chews the inside corner of her lower lip, a little indentation on the side of her neck pulsing.

Writing one last message before we finish the dishes, I hold it up for her to see: I WON’T LET ANYTHING HAPPEN TO US.





CHAPTER 16

NICOLETTE

The fireplace crackles and a strong cup of coffee rests on a marble coaster to my right as I click through Brant’s social media and email accounts. Miraculously enough, he hasn’t changed any of those passwords—they’re still “BGNG777.”

Brant should’ve landed in Ecuador by now, completely unaware of what I’m doing thousands of miles away, across oceans and continents. I can’t help but feel dirty for snooping through his accounts, but after everything I’ve stumbled across lately, what choice do I have?

His inbox is clean.

Typical Brant.

A few junk emails from the day filter in, but nothing unusual. I click through his sent folder next, finding nothing but boring correspondence between himself and potential buyers. Clicking through his folders, I start with the one marked “Important” followed by the one marked “Nic,” which seems to hold nothing more than email confirmations related to gift purchases he’s made for me in recent years.

Of course he hasn’t changed his email password—there’s nothing remotely damning in here.

Navigating to his Facebook account, I go through his messages, most of them from female fans. Some going so far as to include propositions and topless photos. Each message has been read, but he’s never replied to a single one, from what I can tell.

I wonder what that means . . . that he’s never mentioned these messages to me before. Was he trying to protect me from them? Or was he trying to ensure I had no reason to doubt his loyalty to me?

For a solid hour, I pore over every hidden pocket of his social media accounts, only to come up empty-handed. From a private browsing window on my phone, a quick visit to a forum called cheaterfinder.net suggests I comb through our cell phone account as well. Minutes later, I’m perusing every cell phone e-statement I can get my hands on, scanning each and every number that has called Brant’s phone over the past several months.

Of the numbers I can’t recognize, only one of them shows up repeatedly. It’s a 212 number, and this New York caller only seems to ring him on Friday mornings, between nine and ten—when I’m in town doing the weekly shopping.

As I sink back into the sofa cushions, my blood alternates between hot and cold, as if my entire being can’t decide which way to feel in this moment, so it feels everything all at once.

A moment later, I perform a quick Google search of this number, but it yields no usable results. Logging in to my trust account next, I check the dates on the withdrawals. My mouth runs dry when I realize they correspond with the phone calls.

What are you doing, Brant?





CHAPTER 17

WREN

“Aren’t you too old to play with dolls?” the stranger asks Sage that night after supper. His stale breath fills the air around us when he talks, and even from across the room, his sharp, musty odor invades our space.

He gave himself a sponge bath earlier, using one of Evie’s lace-trimmed washcloths and forcing us to stand with our faces to the wall as he undressed. Being in the same room as a naked man for the first time sent a hot flush to my cheeks, but I was grateful because if he didn’t want me to see him, it meant he probably wasn’t going to make me touch him.

I know what men do with women. I read about it in a book once. Mama said it was trash, and she didn’t know how that book got mixed in with the others. That night she burned it in the fire, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what that fictional couple did. The way he kissed her. The way she touched him. Even now, my heart ricochets just thinking about it.

But the thought of the stranger doing any of those things to me forces a hint of bile up the back of my throat, and I have to look away.

“What’s it to you?” I ask him now.

His thick brows lift, as if my mettle surprises him, and he says, “Just never seen a young lady your age play with dolls, that’s all.”

“They make her happy,” I say. “Let her be.”

He places his palms in the air, a silent protest perhaps, and then he pulls a shiny, rectangular item out of his bag. It’s completely black on all sides and smooth as glass, almost otherworldly.

Next he digs into his bag and pulls out a long white string, only it’s thicker than the kind of string we sew with, and he sticks one end of it into the black rectangle and the other end into a silver square.

“Gotta get this charged up before we leave tomorrow,” he says.

“What is that?” Sage asks, rocking in her chair by the fire.

He holds it up. “It’s called a cell phone. You use it to call people. Everyone’s got one of these . . . everyone but you guys.” Lifting the silver square, he adds, “And this is a power bank. It’s how I have to charge this thing since you guys live like it’s 1881.”

The stranger laughs, his chest rising and falling a couple of times, and then he pushes his cell phone aside.