I arrived at the curb in front of my own house, beside her open driver's window, with my dog at my hip.
She looked at me.
She looked across the street at the bungalow.
She looked at the gray Hartsdale Fire T-shirt on me. The bare legs. The bare feet. The wet hair. The dog. The fact that I had very clearly just walked out the front door of a house that was not my own.
Her face did something I hadn't seen it do since the eighth grade.
"Astrid Matthews."
CHAPTER 4
Astrid
"Audrey, I beg you."
She didn't move her hand off the steering wheel. She didn't put the car in park. She just sat there, half-turned in her seat, her seatbelt cutting a diagonal across the pink scrub top.
"That's a firefighter's shirt."
"I know."
"That is Easton Ford's house."
"I know."
She opened her mouth to say something else. I held up my free hand.
"I will tell you. I will tell you everything. I will sit at my kitchen table and tell you every single thing I have done with my morning. But Audrey, please, I need to put on underwear first."
There was a beat.
Audrey's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"Underwear."
"Yes."
"You were at his house."
"Yes."
"In his kitchen."
"Yes."
"And you have not been?—"
"I'm aware."
"ASTRID."
"AUDREY."
"How long were you over there?!"
"Twenty-five minutes."
