Series: Webs We Weave Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145038 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 725(@200wpm)___ 580(@250wpm)___ 483(@300wpm)
She relaxes even more. Maybe it eases Hailey knowing she’ll have these answers, even if they aren’t the ones she’s actively been hunting down. It’s something.
I feel good knowing I can give her that.
“We have company,” Oliver says while facing the monitors.
Nova bends back down to the computers, and he expands the frame that shows security footage of the portico. A Bentley has just parked beneath it.
Our moms have arrived.
FIFTEEN
Phoebe
The room has not frozen over. The air has not been vacuumed out. Our moms entered the Berkshires mansion as if they belonged. As if nothing has transpired these past few months.
It’s hard to pretend that we’re in a normal stasis when rage and hurt have made a toxic home in my heart.
It’s difficult to look at her. My mom—Elizabeth. My brain screeches like a record scratch every time my eyes meet hers, like it’s trying so hard to rationalize how the mom who raised me could be the same woman who might’ve had a hand in kidnapping Trevor.
I’m nothing if not stupendous at putting on a façade, and I make sure to contain the swirling, pent-up anger from twisting my face. Rocky’s doing less of a stellar job—but the rage in his gray eyes that screams I hate the world and everyone in it isn’t a new feature that they’re surprised by. I’m sure they think he’s just in one of his many moods that could be attributed to just about anything.
Woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
Saw a black cat.
Accidentally drank expired milk.
The list is quite endless.
We’ve all lit cigarettes as we wait for Everett to arrive, and we’ve remained on our feet like he could be here any minute. The full-windowed sunroom has a view of an overgrown backyard and mossy green pond. Fallen russet leaves blow across the weeds as the evening sun descends.
Elizabeth and Addison found a crate of old records and laughed over which we should listen to. Discarding Korn and keeping the Supremes and Blondie. I dusted off a few records, and Rocky even helped fix the player.
Melodic female vocals now flood the room, and we’re all casually smoking like we’re catching up on lost time between jobs. The feigned normalcy draws my heartbeat to my eardrums, pounding louder.
“This place is darling,” Addison compliments, her gaze roaming around the vaulted ceilings, and she tugs off her gloves. “Where’d you find it?”
“I didn’t,” Rocky says. “It’s Nova’s place.”
Elizabeth seems proud. “He’s always so good at finding the diamonds in the rough. Isn’t he?”
“Quite,” Addison says, slipping her a furtive look that I can’t decipher. With her hair newly dyed a deep shade of red and without glasses, her eyes pop. She seems less mousy than when I saw her at the country club, and more like a trial lawyer who could slit my throat.
Truth be told, Elizabeth and Addison might as well be Thelma and Louise—only replace the nineties jeans with ankle-length designer dresses and trendy cat-eye sunglasses. Elizabeth perched her Dior pair atop her head, while Addison keeps her Chanels hooked in the collar of her blouse.
The music switches to a poppy tune, and Elizabeth raises her hand with the cigarette pinched between her fingers like she’s trying to pause space and time. “This song,” she says excitedly. “You remember, bug?” She whirls toward me in a sea of honey-blonde hair. Her eyes carry a vivacious energy that hasn’t dulled in all the years I’ve known her.
But it’s Debbie Harry’s silky voice on “Heart of Glass” that has tossed me back into the past. I fight the urge to go there. To experience the pang and heartache of nostalgia.
“I don’t remember,” I lie horribly, unable to hide the bitter edge in my voice. Be nice. Be pleasant. But why? Why do I need to hide these feelings that torment me?
She frowns deeply, her eyes dimming. “Phoebe?”
Rocky glances to me, then to Elizabeth. “Remember what?”
She pauses briefly to slip me another confused look before she tells Rocky, “Phoebe was what—ten, eleven?” She takes another pause, waiting for me to confirm.
I don’t speak. Bitterness drives into my heart. How could she dredge up this memory right now? Is it manipulation? Or is it just love?
Off my silence, she continues with a breezy smile. “Anyway, I got this call to pick her up from summer camp, and when I get to the office, she looks mad as a hornet. Ready to pluck out the eyeballs of the girl sitting next to her.”
Rocky’s brows rise, and he swings his head to me for an explanation.
“She called me the Scarlet Witch,” I say. “I didn’t know it was a comic-book reference. I thought she was just being extra cruel.”
“It was still cruel,” my mom confirms. “That was the day Phoebe got her period. Bled right through her jeans. On the drive home, we stopped for ice cream and this song came on the radio. We turned it up and sang our lungs out.” Her hazel eyes meet mine, and she searches them for answers. “You do remember that?”