Page 99 of Seeing Harper

“Who?” Libby asked.

“Joel. He was sitting with me, and no one else has had access to my phone.”

“Are you sure you didn’t just accidentally delete them?” Libby asked.

“Anything is possible I suppose, but no, I did not.”

Libby shook her head as she sipped her coffee. “Finish your gingerbread, baby,” she said as she got up and went back into the kitchen.

Harper happily did as her mother asked.

A few minutes later Libby was standing beside her with two containers. One was the square cake pan the gingerbread had been baked in and was now covered with foil. The other was the glass bowl the whipped cream had been made in and was topped with it’s matching sealing lid. “Here, take this with you.”

“I’m going outside to work with Dad.”

“No, you’re not. You’re going back to Summer’s or whatever it is you want to do today. I’m going to deal with this here and now. I’ve heard enough.”

“Mom…”

“No. It is not your responsibility to keep the peace between your father and me, and it is not your responsibility to swallow your feelings because he’s kissing the ass of a possible business connection. This is all bullshit, and I’ve had enough. You take your breakfast with you and you go have a wonderful day. And don’t you worry about a thing, I can handle your father, and he can handle the bastard that disrespected my daughter. He might be able to explain it off as vaguely misunderstood to your father, he cannot explain it away to me. He needs to go and frankly I don’t care who likes it or not. I’ve heard and seen enough.”

Harper sat in her chair, her hands on the containers her mother had prepared for her to take. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

“For what? For having enough and not taking anymore? You should never have been put in the position of having to accept any behavior that you were not comfortable with. Joel is an asshole of the first degree. He’s probably been like this all his life and sees nothing wrong with it. And I know all about the attraction humans have to shifters, but that doesn’t make any out of line behavior acceptable. Had you been just encountering someone in general, you’d have taken care of it and not even considered holding your tongue or your fists. But because your father put you in the position you were in, you felt like you couldn’t rock the boat. Guess what? I can rock the damn boat. So, go back to Summer’s and don’t you for one minute even consider being sorry. You didn’t do a damn thing. This is your father’s mess and I’m going to clean it up. Today.”

Harper took a deep shaky breath and let it out slowly.

“I love you, baby. I’ll see you later.”

“I love you, too, Mom.”

Harper picked up the containers Libby had packed for her and pushed the chair she’d been sitting in back to the table.

“Oh, before you go, let me take a picture of your message thread where you think he deleted messages that you received from Clay.”

Harper put the containers down and took out her phone. She pulled up the message thread and held it out for her mother. “You can see the time stamps from when they were received and also the deleted time stamps. I was in the restaurant with Joel then. Only the waitress or somebody else in the restaurant might have had access when I left it on the table when I went to the bathroom, and I highly doubt that.”

“Me, too,” Libby said as she snapped a photo with her phone and put it back in the pocket of her jeans. “I’ll talk to you later,” she said, hugging her daughter tightly. “Love you.”

“I love you, too, Mom.” Harper gathered the containers and walked to the door. She looked back at her mother.

“Go on, now. I want you gone before I start showing my ass like I haven’t since your father came back from the military. I think he’s forgotten that I’m easy to get along with because I choose to be. He’ll remember after today.”

“Call me if you need me.”

“I won’t need you, but I’ll call you later anyway.”

Harper reached up to the pegboard beside the door where all the keys hung when not in use. She took the keys to her car off of it and slipped outside. She wasted no time getting in her car and starting it up. She waited only long enough for the engine to level off from her starting it, then backed out of the drive way and headed off toward Summer’s house.

Libby sat down at the table and waited as she enjoyed the piece of gingerbread and a dollop of whipped cream she’d served herself before she sent the rest away with Harper. Just as she expected, it was less than ten minutes later that the door opened and Travis and Joel stepped inside.

“Where’s Harper? Was that her car I just heard driving away?” Travis said, as he took his place at the table, expecting to have his own gingerbread for breakfast. He gestured for Joel to sit across from him.

Libby nodded, then took her last bite of gingerbread, taking the time to lick the fork exaggeratedly. “Damn, that was good.”

“You make the best,” Travis said distractedly. “She better be coming back. She gave me her word that she’d be here to help with this.”

Libby leveled an expression at him that had his Tiger wincing in the back of his mind. “She came to uphold her promise and I sent her away.”