You spelled it wrong,he’d murmured.D-E-L-U-S-I-O-N-A-L.
With a rough sigh, I laid my forehead down on the cool marble, throat tight with an emotion I refused to name.
CHAPTER 15
Ineeded to get back on target.
I wasn’t hanging around Carter to try to win against Lydia.
The whole point had been to meet Dr. Pembleton, which, after two weeks, Istillhadn’t done. It was time to turn the board back in my favor.
So, when Carter reached out to me Sunday night and asked if I wanted to join them on their yacht for a lazy Sunday, I jumped at the offer.
“Is Carter coming to pick you up?” Mom asked on Sunday morning, dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a billowy white top. She was packing a bottle of sunscreen into a small bag, ready to head out to Ms. Jennings’s to park poolside for the whole day.
I was grateful for the excuse with Carter, because the idea of going to Ms. Jennings’s—of running into Beck after the closet last night—had my skin prickling. No, no more thinking about it. “Yep. Around noon.” So thatmeant I had about another hour of planning my whole strategy.
Rich men like Dr. Pembleton liked to be asked about their glory days, and honestly, I was interested to hear it from him. Dad used to recount his early days of law school with me when I asked, but it’d been years, and it’d be nice to hear Dr. Pembleton’s path.
“Jamie, you should come with me to get out of the house.” Mom grabbed her purse off the hook by the garage door. “Bring your book.”
Jamie, who ventured into the kitchen to the fridge, shook his head. “I’m allergic to the sun,” he deadpanned.
Under her breath, Mom muttered, “You must get it from your father.”
My father, who I hadn’t seen since Friday when he’d come down to grab his plate of dinner and take it back into his room. The sudden urge to snap rose in me. “How long is he just going to be like that?”
“I—I don’t know.” Mom sighed, hoisting her purse up her arm. “But we’ll be there for him throughout it, won’t we?”
It didn’t seem fair to constantly simmer on the back burner, waiting for him to wake up. But it wouldn’t beperfectof me to say that. I’d gotten good at biting my tongue. Especially when it came to Dad. “I just can’t believe one case has him so… shaken.”
Mom only nodded to that. After giving me a kiss on the top of my head and patting Jamie on the shoulder, Mom left. I hopped up from the breakfast bar, padding toward the staircase.
“What do you think Daisy’s doing today?” Jamie called after me.
I didn’t know. Her mom was off work today, so she shouldn’t have had to watch the kids. “Text her.”
“You text her.”
I looked at him over my shoulder. “Why do you act like I’m more of her friend than you are? You’re best friends, too.”
Jamie just scowled at me, and for once, Twin Telepathy didn’t save me. He made no sense.
The doorbell ringing kept me from prying further. “Oh, look at that!” I threw Jamie a smile before bounding forward, reaching for the front door’s knob. “Speak of the devil?—”
But when I hauled the door open, it wasn’t Daisy on the welcome mat.
It was Lydia.
In hindsight, of course it wasn’t Daisy. Daisy always just waltzed right in.
Of course it was Lydia. Holding a… “Whatisthat?”
“It’s a pie!” She thrust the glass pie dish toward me. “It’s raspberry. It got a little burnt on the top, so I figured adding powdered sugar would hide the charred bits.”
I wasn’t sure how she figured that, since there was barely any powdered sugar to hide the blackened pie crust. There were random slashes through the top, and mushed the deep red raspberries oozed up and out, looking almost like chunks of blood.
“Surprise!” she said with a megawatt smile. “I know it might seem random, but I made it, and I thought of you!”
