With This Heart(58)

I snorted and looked down at the tiny map on my phone. We were only minutes away from the house. Would they even be home?

We stayed silent the rest of the way until we pulled down a nice suburban street that looked straight out of a movie. There was a tire swing in some of the lawns and most of them had white picket fences.

“ Looks like it’ll be a nice family,” Beck offered as I inspected the numbers painted on each curb. 1039, 1041, 1043…1045.

“ Stop! It’s that one!” I pointed to a blue house with cream shutters and a bright red door. It was a bungalow style with ivy wrapped beautifully along the fence. There were two cars parked in the driveway: a Prius and some kind of SUV.

“ They care about the environment.”

Beck smirked and swung his head to look at me. “Because they have a Prius?”

I half-smiled, unable to peel my gaze away from the house. “I bet they recycle. I bet their son was the president of the Recycling Committee at his school.”

Beck’s smile fell. “He was in high school?”

Don’t do it Beck, I wanted to say. We can’t let emotions ruin the plan. “Yeah. A senior.”

Beck mashed his lips together until they formed a thin line and then turned back to the house. A second later, the back gate opened and a middle-aged man with a cool goatee trotted around to hop into the Prius.

“ Duck!” I said as soon as he came into sight. I lifted the latch on the outside of my seat and flew the seat backwards until I was lying as horizontally as possible. Beck groaned but followed my instructions until we were both mostly out of view.

“ This is ridiculous. He totally saw us.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, unwilling to give up. “No, he’s leaving. Let’s go talk to the wife while he’s gone.”

Before he could offer a rebuttal, I moved to hop out of the passenger side door. Except my shoe got caught on the door because I wasn’t used to rolling out of a vehicle. I face planted into the grass with the second half of my body still lying on the floor of the Camper.

To his credit, Beck asked if I was okay before completely losing it to hysterical laughter. “You’d make a terrible spy.”

“ Oh please! We would have been caught if I didn’t tell you to duck,” I fought back while I picked grass out of my mouth. We hurried across the street. I feared we didn’t have much time. Maybe the husband was running to the corner store for ice or something.

I tried to inspect my surroundings while we waited for someone to answer the doorbell. The lawn was recently mowed and there were children’s toys strewn around the front yard. I was inspecting a bright red wagon when the front door started to open.

“ Can I help you?” A sweet voice asked. I turned to see a woman with light brown hair piled into a messy bun on top of her head. She was wearing a simple pair of khakis and a button down cotton shirt.

“ Oh, hi,” Beck began, and I cut him off.

“ Hi. Um, I know this is awkward, but our Camper broke down and neither of our cell phones are dead. I mean charged. Neither of them are charged from our camping trip last night. Is there anyway we could use your phone?” It was possibly the worst lie I could think of, but I was hoping that she wouldn’t read too much into it. Did we look like criminals? I should have made Beck take his hat off. Did he look like a drug dealer? Usually not, but now that I was looking at him out of the corner of my eye, he did have the build to be in a gang.

The woman’s face morphed from confusion to pity. “Oh, wow. Yes, come in. I’ll grab a phone.”

Overwhelming guilt smacked me all at once. I wanted to yell at her for being so trusting. Beck said I was slightly-dysfunctional; this poor woman shouldn’t have let us in. She kept leading us back toward a living room and then turned to face us. “Are you two from around here?” she asked politely, apparently wanting to make small-talk before finding the phone.

I didn’t trust Beck’s manipulation skills. I was the one with a mission. “We are, but we moved here recently,” I paused trying to hold my tongue back, but it was no use. It was now or never. “We knew Colby though.”

The woman’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh no, I’m so sorry. Please have a seat, let me get you a drink and the phone.” She flew out of the room and Beck grabbed my arm. “Abby, what are you doing ? That wasn’t subtle at all,” he hissed quietly.

I shook out my hands, feeling like I’d just held up a bank and now I was stuck with hostages that I didn’t know what to do with. “Okay. Okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do,” I whispered, trying to calm my breathing.


“ Here you go, you two,” she said as she reentered the room with two glasses of lemonade and the phone. Lemonade. God damnit woman, don’t serve us sugary drinks when we’re manipulating you!

Beck bolted over to help her with the drinks and then he took the phone. “I’ll go… call a tow truck,” he fumbled, and the woman gave him an awkward glance.

The second he was out of earshot, she sat down and patted the couch cushion next to her. “Were you a friend of Colby’s from school?” she asked gently. I tried to morph her features to see what she would look like as a teenage boy, but I failed miserably. I couldn’t picture what Colby could have looked like at all.

“ Um, yes,” I lied, and then took a giant gulp of lemonade. “I mean, I knew of him, but we weren’t really friends,” I added once I had swallowed. I didn’t want to lie to his mom anymore than I had to.