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“So, you’re going to let me help?” She could hardly believe he’d changed his mind.
“I gotta go to LA tomorrow anyway, so we’ll see. Don’t look so pleased with yourself,” he said to her spreading smile, then motioned to the box of pasta resting on the counter. “I got nothing to go with this. So come on. We’ll get something to eat at the mall.”
Driving to Vivian’s house, Elizabeth squinted against the dark sky and flooding rain. Five o’clock and it was pitch dark except for the headlights streaming at her from the cars heading the opposite direction and the tall sodium vapor streetlights that lined the highway. After leaving the office with a stack of paperwork and the knowledge that tomorrow she’d promised to meet Amy, Mazie’s daughter, she’d picked up Chloe and shuttled her into the car. Elizabeth wasn’t sure why Amy wanted to meet with her, what that was all about. Nothing good, as far as she could tell, but maybe she was being too pessimistic. She wished she’d never agreed to attend the group tonight.
She glanced at her daughter in the rearview mirror.
Propped in her car seat, Chloe seemed to be asleep. Her eyes were closed and she was exceedingly quiet for her. She had been for all of the ride.
“Hey, pumpkin. You okay?” Elizabeth asked her.
Chloe didn’t immediately answer and Elizabeth’s heart went to her throat. “Chloe?” she tried again, her voice more strident.
Her daughter’s eyes opened slowly and she stared vaguely straight ahead. Elizabeth could tell she wasn’t completely awake. Worried, she glanced around for a place to pull over. Something wasn’t right.
“Where are we?” Chloe asked.
“We’re almost halfway.”
“To where . . . ?”
They’d gone over the fact they were going to Vivian’s not fifteen minutes earlier.
Elizabeth couldn’t see anywhere to pull over. “To Lissa’s, remember? We talked about this.” Had her daughter just gone to sleep or had she fainted? Was this one of the fainting episodes the teachers at school had called her about? The reason she’d kept Chloe home? “I’ll turn around. Maybe we should just go home.” Or to the doctor.
“No!” Chloe declared, blinking, her voice stronger. “I want to play with Lissa.”
“Were you asleep?”
“You promised I could play with Lissa!”
“I know. Don’t get upset. I’m just concerned that you’re not well, like what happened before.”
“I want to play with Lissa,” she repeated, and even in the dark interior, Elizabeth thought she noticed tears forming in the corners of Chloe’s eyes. “You promised,” her daughter charged.
“Okay. Okay.” Elizabeth braked for a stoplight. With one eye on the glowing taillights of the car in front of her, she said, “I just want to be sure you’re all right.”
“I just had my eyes closed,” Chloe insisted, but Elizabeth suspected she was lying.
“Would you tell me if you didn’t feel well?”
“Yes . . .” Chloe met Elizabeth’s concerned eyes in the mirror, then glanced away, her face set in concentration.
Elizabeth’s stomach knotted.
The light changed and she eased onto the gas, following the car while still glancing in the rearview to her daughter.
Chloe said almost inaudibly, “I thought I saw Daddy . . .”
“Daddy . . . ?” Elizabeth’s throat tightened. “You mean you were dreaming?”
“He’s mad because we killed him.”
“What? Chloe, my God. We didn’t kill him,” she choked out nearly ramming into the back of the car she’d been following. Her Escape started to fishtail, then caught, staying miraculously in her lane. “That’s not right, honey.” Her conscience asked, Didn’t you? With your thoughts, didn’t you wish him dead and somehow cause the accident that took his and Whitney Bellhard’s lives?
“I was mad at him,” Chloe admitted in a small voice, tucking her chin into her neck. “I didn’t like that woman touching him.”
Elizabeth’s mouth went dry. “What woman?” Her hands were suddenly slick with sweat on the steering wheel. What was this? Had her little girl somehow seen Court with Whitney Bellhard? Had Court allowed it? For the love of God! Or was this all in her daughter’s mind? The product of a vivid imagination and all the gossip she might have heard?
