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I hung up, my hands still shaking when Connor walked in from Nowhere.
“Hey, heard you had a rough night. Sorry I missed you at the party. Got there late but heard you were a real hit.” He held out a cup. “Brought this for you. Latte from the same place we get the lollipops. Thought you might need it.”
I took it, trying to act calm, hoping he didn’t see that I was shaking worse than a shack in a hurricane.
“Thanks. It’s great,” I said, afraid caffeine on top of nerves might take me down, except that I needed a distraction.
“I wasn’t sure you’d be here. Figured you might be with Kaden,” he said, walking over and dropping onto the couch, remote already in hand.
“Why would I be with him?” I asked. Had he seen Kaden? Did he already know I’d gotten a call? Said he was coming back here? Gram had said she couldn’t talk on that line. Was it tapped?
“He said he was going to your house,” Connor added. He kicked his boots up, yawning. “I might need a nap. I’m wiped.”
I stared at Connor, no longer caring about the party, what an idiot I’d looked like, or what I’d flashed. I might care about that tomorrow, but not now. Was Kaden going to my house to try to find my gram?
“Myhouse? You mean where I lived Topside?”
“Think so.” He squinted at the television.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Of course he didn’t.
I grabbed my phone and my bag and hightailed it out of there.
By the time I pulled up, Kaden looked like he was saying goodbye to my mother on the stoop in front of my house. She didn’t seem to be wobbling or holding on to anything to stay upright. It was only three. She tended to not be too bad until closer to six. He probably smelled the booze on her, but at least she wasn’t falling down.
Kaden had a thing for high-end sedans, and in this neighborhood, his stuck out like a sore thumb. With the overgrown hedges, my mother didn’t see me as I made my way to his car and slid into the passenger seat. Even if she had, she might not recognize me anyway.
I watched from the window as he headed over. He got in the car and didn’t so much as blink at my presence. He put the car in drive and pulled away from my house.
My voice was as calm as I could manage when I said, “Why were you talking to my mother?”
Please, don’t let it be about Gram.If he picked up on nerves, he’d think it was because he was here at all, not that I had something to hide. If I wasn’t worried about Gram, I might be furious, so it wasn’t a stretch to think I’d be out of sorts.
“There’s a lot of unanswered questions. Do you really need to ask why I’d want to speak to someone who knew your grandmother?”
He didn’t say anything about Gram calling. He probably would’ve said something about that if he had. So that just left him coming here and snooping without so much as a heads-up.
“You didn’t think maybe you should have spoken to me before coming here?” Had he seen the bottles? Probably. More often than not, Mom would leave them scattered around the house. I used to clean them up, but now that I wasn’t there…
“No. I didn’t.”
“Did your snooping pay off?” I asked, fury replacing the nerves.
“Other than finding you had a penchant for stubbornness right out of the womb? No. Your mother didn’t seem to know much at all.”
He said it like it was a joke she’d made, as if she hadn’t said it in her snide way. He spoke like he’d had a normal chat with a regular parent.
I could hear her in my head still, the way she’d always carried on about how I thought I knew best, right before she took another swig of her vodka and passed out on the couch.
“I’m surprised she remembered,” I said, wishing she’d forgotten for a change. “Pull over here. I left my car back there.”
“Hank will get it,” he said.
“Pull over. I want to get it myself.”
He did as I asked.
