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“Do you want anything to drink?”
“No.” I smiled, doing my best to appear relaxed.How could I be with what I needed to ask her?It was too soon to start, though. I glanced around at the frames that crowded her coffee table. “Wow, your grandbabies have grown.”
She picked up one close to her. “Do you remember Johnnie? He’s on the baseball team now. This was taken last year. He has one more season before he graduates. And this”—she plucked a blue frame with a little girl in a tutu off the table—“this is Jenni. She’s just a darling. You never met her. She’s the youngest of the three. Travis is in the one closest to you. Do you remember the boys?”
“A little, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you.”
She patted my arm then leaned back. “It has. Such a shame what happened to your sister.” Her eyes misted. “I’ll never forgive myself for not being more involved. If I hadn’t gone to Rachel’s that day, maybe Summer would still be here.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think what happened could have been avoided. If not that day, then another. It wasn’t the first time Mom took us to the lake.”
“She was a sweet little thing.” Estelle wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.
That wasn’t a path I wanted to go down. “I came today to try to remember some stuff about my mom.” Her lips pressed together as she waited for me to say more. “Do you remember where she used to work?”
“Well… your mama didn’t work.” Estelle glanced away, her fingers pulling at a loose thread on her blouse.
I stilled. I didn’t want to read into what Estelle didn’t say about how we grew up after Dad died. The way our mom had behaved sometimes and the men that had come and gone at odd hours told me things I didn’t want to admit. “Did she sell drugs or something else?” She was a drug addict. That I knew for a fact. The other, I wasn’t sure about.
“I don’t know about that.”
“I remember a lot of men coming in and out of our apartment.”
She nodded once.
“Did a man live with her? He had curly blond hair.”
Estelle shook her head. “I’m sorry, Winter. To my knowledge, no one lived there but you three. But if someone who fit that description did, I don’t remember.”
“It’s okay. I don’t remember either.”
I stayed for a half hour and caught Estelle up on what I’d been doing for the last few years. It was the least I could do for everything she had done for me and my sister growing up.
Back in my car, and with a pit of loneliness taking up space in my stomach, I couldn’t handle visiting the lake. That could wait for another day.
Before heading back to campus, I checked my phone. It only made me feel worse. Landon hadn’t called or messaged me. Not once.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SHANE
Things were not going my way. The plan had been to check in with Mom after classes but before she went into the hospital for her shift and ask her if she remembered anything regarding Winter, then I would work out. It didn’t happen. She had to work a double and had gone in early. Since I was already on the road when I found out, I changed course to Grandad’s.
Just after dinner, traffic wasn’t too bad. It was still light out. When I got off the highway, I lowered the windows. It was cooler out, but I was still hot from lifting and would probably need to grab something else to eat later. Maybe Grandad would be up for going out too.
Once there, I let myself in with the key he’d given me years ago. “Grandad?”
I wandered deeper into the house until I heard him yelling. He paused, then more shouting came from the office. The door to his study was open, and I stopped in the entryway. He met my gaze and waved me in.
The sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled and shoved up past his elbows. Rarely did I see him with rumpled clothing, but he was. That alone set me on edge.
“This should be over with.” The pen he held went flying. “I pay you good money to make sure everything is taken care of.”
I stood near his desk as a bad feeling washed over me. He was always yelling at someone. I couldn’t remember when something hadn’t set him off, when he’d been happy for an extended period. For someone who had more money than God, but maybe not as much as Uncle Lucas, the old man was a grumpy fuck.
“Fine. But I want it done here, in my office.” He slammed the phone down then scrubbed a hand over his face, looking every year of his age at that moment.
The call had been about me. I braced myself to hear whatever he would tell me. From what he’d said, it had to be the attorney on the other line that Grandad had hired to represent me when I was arrested.
