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“I love you,” Wil said, her voice unsteady but clear.
“I love you, too, Freddie girl.”
After hugging her mom for longer than she had in a long time, Wil drove home feeling completely scraped out. She couldn’t tell if it was good or bad or if it didn’t matter. Just as understanding her love for Katie had come entirely in retrospect, now knowledge of her complacency was barreling down on her, too.
It was as if, when her dad died, or even before that—probably before that, when Wil understood this monster lurking in her family—she’d taken herself to a safe house and left herself there, then carried on day by daywithoutherself so that the monster could never find her.
It hadn’t worked, though.
Goddamn it.
Wil wasn’t in the safe house anymore. Wherever she was, it was better. It wasn’t safe, but there was so much more room.
So she was welcoming the scraped-out feeling for now. It made space inside of herself to breathe and, when she got home, to curl around Almond Butter’s fat, purring body and actually sleep, which she needed, too.
It was ten days until Christmas, after all, and Wil loved Christmas.
Chapter Ten
Returning to her suite from a disguised coffee run in her dad’s Toyota Highlander, Katie was looking through the slider at the floor to make sure her babies wouldn’t dash out.
That was why she didn’t see her agent chatting cozily with her mother on the tiny sofa until after she opened the door.
“Katie!” April had on herwe’ll fight laterface, along with an off-the-shoulder tangerine cashmere sweater and tall leather boots.
“Look who’s here!” Diana stood, beaming, her hands around a teal Fiestaware coffee mug because yes, yes, she had made coffee,in Katie’s suite,and yes, yes, there was a plate of cream cheese Danish on the low table in front of Diana and April. In fact, there was holiday music playing on the sound system, and Katie’s babies were scattered about in contented poses because Diana had probably let herself in with a bag of Temptations, their favorite junk food.
Katie smiled without teeth. “Surprise,” she said, sitting down in a glider across from them and not very tidily concealing her irritation. “I must have missed a call?”
“Mm.” April sipped her coffee. She looked tired. To be in Green Bay by this time of day, she must have gone to the airportearly and spent the whole day en route. April hated flying. “This is delicious, Diana.”
“I smell Highlander Grogg,” Katie said. “Diana Price, did you have advance notice of this visit?”
Her mother kept the Highlander Grogg coffee in what she called the “back pantry” and only pulled it out, ground it, and brewed it for very special guests. It was not something she would do if April had suddenly showed up on her doorstep unannounced.
“April called me from the airport.” Diana’s eyes dared Katie to be even more impolite than she had been already, thereby corrupting Diana’s good-mother image. “You had made it very clear at breakfast that I wasn’t to disturb you for any reason because you were writing this morning. So I didn’t. When she arrived, you were out.” She raised her eyebrows.I am unimpeachable,her serene blue eyes told Katie.
“You came a long way for cream cheese Danish,” Katie said to April.
“In fact, yes.” Katie’s agent gathered her mass of curly hair into her hands, twisted it, and wrapped an elastic around it. “Flew first class, also. They’re really, really good.”
Diana gave April a big smile. “You’re so sweet. Thank you. And it’s always so good to see you and have a chance to talk. I know you two must have important business to discuss, so I’ll see myself out. Just holler if you need anything.”
April stood, opening her arms, and Katie watched as the two hugged like sisters separated at birth. Then her mom gave her a little wave and left the suite.
She looked over toward the kitchenette, where her laptop was glowing gently on the countertop, open to the scene she’d been in the middle of when she got to a tricky bit that she couldn’t figure out the words to express. Katie had given herself permission to run out for coffee in the hope that driving would help her brain untwist itself.It almost hadn’t worked, but then as she turned into the driveway she’d seen the entire scene in her mind’s eye—every line of dialogue perfect—and all she wanted to do was write it down before it got away and hopefully get through the rest of the scene before dinnertime so she could eat the stuffed shells her mother was making—which, it now occurred to Katie, she was makingfor April—and then call Wil.
What she didn’t want was this. With April.
Whateverthismight be.
“Your pages have been breathtaking,” April said. “I’m refreshing the Dropbox link every half hour, hoping you’ve updated.”
“That is a very good place to start,” Katie said. “I’m hoping you will finish by telling me they were so good you had to tell me in person, and that’s why you’re here, and then you will leave me alone to make more of those pages, since I am officiallyincommunicado”—Katie made sure to pronounce every syllable of the word—“and on retreat. As discussed. And planned for.”
April put her coffee mug down and crossed her legs. Katie had never seen the boots she was wearing before. They looked as though they’d been handcrafted by an angel in the kind of workshop that could only be located in—
Shit.