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Fuck off. That was Abby’s favorite phrase. Half the time she said it just to say it, no heat behind the words at all. Once, a woman sitting next to them at a coffee shop kept eavesdropping. She finally leaned over and gave Abby a little speech about how using profanity showed a lack of intelligence. The woman was sixty-something and Abby told her to fuck off, too.
Elisa needed to know how this saved conversation ended. She’d fill in the rest after she knew the punch line to the messages, no matter how horrible it might be. She tapped the arrow-down key, watching blurred lines of black ink whiz by, incomprehensible and temporarily mysterious, and landed on the final one.
CONCERNED:let me help you
ABBY:It’s too late. I think he’s going to kill me.
“Elisa?”
She jerked at the sound of Josh’s unexpected voice. Her hardgasp of surprise touched off a coughing fit. The wordcaughtscreamed in her head as she struggled to regain her composure.
Her instinct was to drop the laptop. Throw it aside, hide it. But Josh could see her. He stood in the doorway to her bedroom, her private sanctuary, and watched every move she made.
His eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”
Too late.
Chapter Six
Random questions bombarded Elisa’s brain. Did Josh recognize the laptop? Could he read the panic in her eyes? She tried to mentally sort through each thought as she closed the laptop with shaky hands.
She had to swallow twice before any words came out. “Don’t sneak up on me.”
That was a house rule. The need to repeat it took some of the edge off the panic flowing through her. She welcomed being pissed off because it gave her something else to think about.
She couldn’t tolerate people showing up without warning... or surprises... or anyone invading her space. He knew better, which made her wonder if scaring her was a way to get revenge for her questioning him. For her daring to ask a question about his missing fiancée.
“Right.” He shook his head. “Sorry.”
She noticed for the first time that he held two takeout cups.
“I felt bad about how we left things last night and I broughtyou coffee as sort of an . . . I don’t know . . .” He shrugged. “Lame peace offering, I guess.”
He wore a navy suit and looked like he’d just stepped out of a business meeting and into her bedroom. If he was waiting for her to say something, well, she couldn’t. Not then. Not anything coherent. Adrenaline pumped through her. She could feel it race around, pinging from here to there, scorching her nerves.
People liked to wax on about what they would do in a dangerous situation, if their fight-or-flight instinct would kick in. She knew from experience she didn’t possess an innate ability to quickly assess and decide. Her body’s first option was to shut down... or it had been. But maybe not anymore. Maybe a person could panic, fail, and change their trained behavior because instead of physically and emotionally folding, this time energy coursed through her. It gave her power and wiped out the blinding fear, if only for a little while.
“May I come in?” He hadn’t crossed the threshold and actually entered her space. “I really would like to talk, just for a minute.”
She forced her fingers to wrap around the edge of the laptop and moved it to the cushion next to her. She stood up, trying not to draw any attention to it. It wasn’t odd for her to be on a laptop or working in her bedroom. This was all normal... or as normal as her life got these days.
His gaze dropped to the computer and stayed there for a few seconds before returning to her face. “I didn’t mean to mess up your workflow.”
He showed up, surprised her, and now lingered. His actions were the very definition of interrupting someone’s workflow. But she was intrigued and the fluttering sensation had moved back down from her throat to her stomach, so she could handle this impromptu meeting. Shewouldhandle it.
A tense silence surrounded them. Her usual move would be to rush in and say something to ease the discomfort. That’s what she did. She fixed things. She tried to make life easier for the people she cared about. But she didn’t have an interest in taking that road this time. He came, blustered right into her room, so it was up to him to carry the conversation.
“I know you’re worried about Abby,” he said. “We don’t agree on who she was at the end, but I’d like for us to get around this.”
This. Elisa wasn’t sure if the word referred to their fight or to Abby. “Okay.”
“Needless to say, I was pissed when she left me. Even before that, she’d started questioning me and everything I did or said. Judging me. Telling me to calm down, which I hate.”
All of that sounded like motive to Elisa. It was also new information. Josh never talked about issues in the relationship. He certainly never offered that information to the police. He’d presented as if they were super happy and Abby being gone was a total shock.
Elisa had mentally dissected every conversation, every lunch date, every text exchange of funny memes and Abby never gave a hint either. She got quieter and stopped showing any excitement for wedding things. Elisa had chalked the change up to wedding jitters, but now she knew better. Abby’schange in tone, in personality, signaled the slow unraveling of whatever Abby and Josh shared.
“Remembering how tense the relationship got near the end infuriates me because I was willing to stick it out. She wasn’t. That’s why I said what I did at dinner last night.” He took a step forward and handed a coffee to Elisa.
