AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I just want to make sure . . . we’re both okay.”
“I’m okay.”
“All right.” She wanted him with her. Especially after the debacle of the evening before.
“Did that man stay all night?” Owen asked carefully.
“No. He left a couple hours after you went to bed.”
“I don’t like him.”
Delta looked in the rearview mirror at her son. “You hardly talked to him. He’s going to help us.”
“He thinks you killed Daddy with the knife.”
“That’s not what he thinks. He’s a policeman, and it’s going to be all right.”
Owen’s eyes suddenly flooded with tears. “I’m sorry, Mama. I told him . . .”
“It’s not your fault, Owen! It’s not your fault.”
Delta’s throat was hot as her son blinked back tears. She tried to talk him out of pre-K some more as they pulled into a spot and parked. She felt like she’d almost convinced him when one of his friends showed up at the spot where they were stopped on the sidewalk, skipping his way ahead of his mom to the front door. Seeing him, Owen swiped the remaining tears from his face and pulled himself together. The effort broke Delta’s heart.
He started to run on ahead of her as well, then he stopped and came back and held her hand. “I won’t talk to that man anymore.”
“Okay . . .”
“I won’t tell him you killed Daddy.”
“Owen.” She sucked in a shocked breath. “I did not . . . do anything to harm your father.”
He looked up at her.
“Is that really what you think?”
He shrugged his little shoulders, and this time he raced after his friend and didn’t look back. She checked him in, staring after him as he joined the other kids, wanting to scoop him up and run away somewhere, anywhere safe. But he was with his friends and seemed purposely to be avoiding looking at her.
She left the pre-K on leaden feet. She felt both zapped of energy and yet charged with the pressure to do something. She needed her son to believe in her, even if no one else did. She’d handled Tanner’s attack and death all wrong.
She got back in her car and fought the urge to cry. Fingers wrapped around the steering wheel, she held back the tears by sheer will. Nope. She wasn’t going to cry. She’d had enough of that. She needed to be proactive. Do something. Find out something that would take her out of this terrible limbo.
Maybe she would go see Woody today. Ask about the fender bender and the guy who’d argued with Tanner. That would at least be something.
She looked back at the closed door to the pre-K, aching. First, though, she was going to Smith & Jones to see her parents.
* * *
Every nerve in Ellie’s body was buzzing as she drove toward West Knoll. She kept bouncing from Zora and Brian to the fact that she’d been fired and back again.
What happened to them? An accident . . . had to be a terrible accident . . . couldn’t be anything more sinister, like what happened to Tanner . . .
No, that was an act of passion. That was Delta . . . or maybe someone else, she grudgingly allowed. But Zora and Brian were an accident.
“McCrae’ll be on it.” she said aloud.
It occurred to her that the Five Firsts were down to just two. She was sorry they were gone individually, but as far as their special group? She was glad it was in shreds.
She picked up her phone. Come and get me and give me a ticket. Swiping through her favorite numbers, of which McCrae was one, she touched the screen to make a call.
