Along Came Trouble(23)

She waited until they were in the woods behind the house before she exhaled.

“I always wanted to sneak out,” she said, pushing a branch above her head and holding it there so it wouldn’t smack Henry in the face as they passed underneath.

Carly turned to smile over her shoulder. The sun filtered through the tree cover and bounced off her crazy curly red hair. “You were too much of a good girl, huh?”

“Way too much,” Ellen agreed. All those years of being the perfect daughter, the perfect sister, hadn’t taught her anything except how to let people walk all over her.

She’d learned more about how to be assertive since her divorce than in the previous three decades combined, and even so, she kept discovering things she’d missed. Today, the cheap thrill of disobedience.

Not that they were technically disobeying. She didn’t have to be home when Caleb turned up to install locks she hadn’t agreed to yet. She was a free woman, and it was a nice morning for a walk. Humid, but that was Ohio in July. At least it wasn’t too hot yet. Carly had knocked just when Henry was getting bored, and Ellen had figured, Why shouldn’t we take a ten-minute stroll downtown, buy coffee and chocolate chip muffins, and head over to the elementary school playground?

Of course, this bold logic broke down when she considered that Carly had snuck around to Ellen’s back door to issue the invitation, and they were fleeing through the woods to avoid being captured by Caleb’s agents.

And yet Ellen was slightly disappointed not to have been caught. A perverse part of her hoped Caleb would show up with the deadbolts any minute now and get angry when he figured out she was gone. Imagining him riled up made her heart pound against the sternum strap of her pack, anxious and exhilarated.

She wanted to get a rise out of him. If that made this outing a form of revenge or rebellion or ass-backwards flirtation, she didn’t care.

“That bird is?” Henry asked.

Catapulted back to the world outside her head, she took a few seconds to find the bird Henry had spotted. “Down there? That’s a goldfinch.”

“Doing?”

“Looking for food, I guess.”

“His food is?”

“They eat berries, seeds, that kind of stuff. Worms, too.”

“Henry wants a worm.”

That made her smile. “A gummy worm like Grammy Maureen gave you?”

“Yas.”

“How about a cracker instead?” She pulled out the package and passed him one over her shoulder, and he got busy crunching instead of talking.

“Central Path?” Ellen asked when they emerged from the woods. The gravel artery ran straight through the middle of town, splitting the main road into one-way veins on either side.

“Nah, let’s stick to the pavement. I probably shouldn’t show my face on the path again this year.”

Carly’s accompanying smile was bright but false, reminding Ellen that Central Path was where the infamous photo of Jamie and Carly had been taken.

“Are you really doing okay?” Ellen knew it had to be hard on Carly, first losing Jamie, now risking cameras and rumors every time she stuck her head outside. Though she was certainly better equipped to handle the pressure than most people. Carly had a thick suit of emotional armor that she rarely took off.

Back before she got pregnant and her husband walked out on her, she’d been a choir teacher at a ritzy private school in Columbus. Ellen liked to imagine Carly in front of a gang of awkward twelve-year-olds. She’d have been one of the tough teachers, the kind who had firm rules and a wry sense of humor. The kind who set standards her students killed themselves to meet.

But she had a soft side, too, much as she hated to show it. Once, in an unguarded moment, Ellen had caught Carly looking at Jamie with such simple, perfect adoration, she’d been embarrassed to witness it.

She hoped the two of them would get a clue sometime soon.

“I’m fine,” Carly said. “This week has been all kinds of crazy, but it’ll blow over. The press will figure out I’m boring eventually and find someone else to chase after.”

The sun beat down on the crowns of their heads and the tips of their shoulders. Henry’s weight balanced on Ellen’s hips and pressed the balls of her feet into the asphalt. “Cracker,” he said, and she passed another one back to him.

“I miss Jamie,” she said, and then shook her head at her own tactlessness. Missing Jamie was the last thing she was supposed to talk to Carly about.