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12
“Did the police say when they would have an update?” Alexa’s father asked as they cleared the dinner dishes.
“No, but these kinds of cases rarely get solved,” she said, carrying a stack of plates to the kitchen.
She usually saw her parents on Sundays for brunch, but she didn’t feel right about not telling them after she’d moved into the Residence Inn. They were her best friends. She didn’t keep secrets from them, and especially not secrets about her safety, not after what had happened to her on that dark stretch of road ten years earlier.
Not until recently anyway.
She hadn’t told them about the time her tires had been slashed or about the man who’d broken into her apartment, and she’d had to lie and say that the people who broke into her apartment had taken her jewelry and her TV in order to avoid her parents’ radar-like paranoia.
But that didn’t mean she wanted to make keeping secrets a habit.
“Did they dust for fingerprints?” her mom asked, already beginning to load the dishwasher.
The only thing her mom loved more than crime shows was using the language of crime shows in everyday conversation.
“They did everything,” Alexa said. “But the people who do this kind of thing are usually smart enough to wear gloves.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” her dad said, planting a kiss on the top of her head. “Do you need money?”
She smiled. “No, but thank you.”
“That hotel is going to cost you a fortune,” her mom said. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay here while you look for a new apartment?”
“I appreciate it, but I just don’t want the commute,” she said. “Especially with the gym. I’d have to leave at an ungodly hour.”
“Well, we certainly don’t want you on the road more than you need to be.” Her dad took three dessert plates down from the cupboard. “Where’s the pie, Jean?”
“In the fridge.” Her mom turned off the water and shut the dishwasher, then dried her hands on a dishtowel. She tucked a piece of chestnut hair threaded with gray behind one ear. “Want me to cut it?”
“I’ve got this bad boy under control.” The pie was huge, a mound of whipped cream covering the top, chocolate shavings dotting its snowy surface.
“Costco?” Alexa asked.
“Your favorite,” her mom said.
Her dad dished the pie while her mom poured coffee and they carried everything into the living room.
Alexa set her plate and mug on one of the end tables and tucked her legs underneath her on the couch. She had to resist the urge to sigh aloud. After days of moving her personal belongings from the apartment to the hotel and talking to the police about what had happened, she was exhausted. She’d loved her apartment, but nothing had ever been home quite like the house where she’d grown up.
She took a bite of the pie. “Hmmm… so good.”
Her mom smiled. “Feel free to take the rest of it. We don’t need it in the house.”
“Speak for yourself!” her dad said, his eyes shining with humor behind his glasses.
Alexa laughed.
“So,” her mom started, “anything else new in your life, Lex?”
Alexa shook her head, cursing herself for the weakness of talking to her mom about Nick a couple months earlier. She hadn’t disclosed details about the legal complications of their relationship, but what she had given her mom had been enough to get her mom hoping Alexa was on her way to breaking her no-boyfriend streak.
She knew her mom too well, recognized the too-casual tone of her voice for what it was: an archeological expedition.
“Do you want to ask me about Nick, Mom?”
Her mom smiled. “Is that his name?”
