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Her dad kept his eyes on the road. “You didn’t seem like you were into it.”
Did he want an apology? One almost fell out of her mouth anyway. She bit at her lip as he pulled into the driveway. She was still struggling to think of what to say when he killed the engine.
She started to climb down from the cab and was surprised when he did the same.
“You’re coming in?” she said.
“I want to talk to your mother.”
Those words had weight to them, and she knew—she knew—they were going to talk about her. Probably thinking up some way to manipulate her into spending more time with him.
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
“I’m not your enemy, Becca.”
She didn’t have an answer for that, so she bolted up the stairs as soon as they were through the door. He could talk to her mom all he wanted; she didn’t have to be a part of it.
Her mom would probably scrub the gutters with a toothbrush after this.
But maybe Becca could use this distraction to her advantage.
She pocketed her keys and crept down the stairs. Sure enough, they were talking in muted tones in the kitchen.
She could hear her mother’s voice. “Bill, you can’t show up and expect me to force her to—”
Then her dad’s whisper. “I don’t want you to force her to do anything. But something obviously happened, and I warned you—”
“Bye!” Becca yelled, opening the door wide. She could still smell paint. “Going to Quinn’s!”
“Becca,” her mother called. “Wait just a min—”
Becca slammed the door.
Then she hopped down the steps, jumped into her car, and started the ignition.
But at the end of her block, she didn’t turn right, and she didn’t head for Quinn’s house.
She turned left and drove straight to Chris’s.
CHAPTER 18
When she pulled into the driveway, the garage door stood open. The Merrick brothers were outside, hauling bags out of the garage to load them on a flatbed trailer. It was hitched to a red pickup with their name and a landscaping logo on the side.
She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. This gave her absolutely no chance to reconsider what the hell she was doing here. She’d planned to talk to Chris privately, to mention what had happened to her house, to demand answers.
Confronting him in front of his entire family was not part of the plan.
Sunlight warmed the air as she climbed out of the car, though she was glad for her jacket when a breeze raced through the trees to whisper down her neck. The scents coming from the garage made her think of the garden center at Home Depot, something damp and woodsy and not entirely natural, like mulch and topsoil overlaid with a hint of Miracle-Gro. The open garage revealed a huge space that clearly doubled as storage for Michael’s landscaping business. Pallets were stacked along the walls, with bags of things like soil and white sand and red cedar chips. Tools hung everywhere, crammed into every space imaginable, though there had to be a method to the madness.
Michael was closest to her. He dropped a bag labeled LIMESTONES CREENINGS on the pile at the front of the flatbed. He wore a red tee shirt and jeans and his arms already sported a fine layer of dust. As usual, his voice wasn’t friendly. “You know it’s the twenty-first century?”
She had no idea what he was talking about. “What?”
He swiped his hands on his jeans and turned back to the garage. He called over his shoulder, “Ever hear of a phone?”
She straightened her back and stared after him. “Ever hear of manners?”
He was already heaving another bag onto his shoulder, his expression lost in the shadows. “You mean like driving up to someone’s house uninvited?”
