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An hour in, Reese came across a box of her old schoolwork and notebooks. Her heart leapt when she saw an old camera, and then under more papers, a familiar phone.
“Oh my God! My phone,” she said, hoisting it in the air as if she’d scored the game-winning touchdown.
Cam jogged over. “Good work! Now we need to find the charger.”
She frowned at that. She’d forgotten that phones from long ago didn’t use USB chargers. “Damn. I hadn’t thought of that. Okay, I’ll keep looking through these boxes. We must be close.”
Cam found an old laptop an hour later, but like the phone, he couldn’t find the charger. They went through each piece of paper and box they came across, but nothing had to do with Jennifer. Reese looked at all the junk around her and realized they’d barely made a dent. Going through the rest of it could takes days. Maybe weeks, if she included the whole house.
“Reese, this is huge. We have the phone and an old laptop. These are going to be gold. We’ll look online for chargers. We’re bound to find something.”
“You’re right,” Reese said, trying to hide her excitement.
“I’m surprised your mom kept this stuff,” Cam said as they climbed the basement stairs.
“She probably thought they had some value, otherwise they’d be long gone.”
They reached the landing and found Fran in the kitchen making something. She’d cleared some of the newspapers cluttering the dining room table.
“I made lunch. You can stay for lunch.”
It wasn’t a question, but an expectation.
Reese wanted to get the hell out of there, but Cam was already saying yes and asking if she needed any help.
So much for that.
“Did you find anything?” Fran asked.
“We think so. We’ll see,” Reese said. The less her mother knew, the better.
“You must have said some very terrible things for Jennifer to be so angry,” Fran said as she sliced a tomato for sandwiches.
Reese’s skin prickled at her mother’s criticism. She opened her mouth to speak, but Cam was already doing it for her.
“Jennifer deserved any terrible things that were said to her. She has a dark heart.”
Fran’s brown eyes opened wide. “Is that so? I had no idea.”
No idea!
Reese wanted to scream, but instead she took the salad to the dining room table and did some breathing exercises while Cam handled her mother. How many times had she come home in tears because of Jennifer? It was her father who had tried to step in. He’d been the one who’d listened to her, who’d talked to Brian about the situation. He’d cared until he’d left. Her mother had simply told her to toughen up.
“Yes, Fran. She was a bully. Everyone knew that. I was here when Reese told you about it. I know you told her to develop a thick skin and fight back, so I guess she did.”
Cam spoke to Fran thoughtfully but also firmly. He wasn’t about to let her get away with anything, and that was why Reese loved him so much. No matter what, he always had her back. She was never going to have a better friend than him.
“I read all the things Reese said. I would have never told her to say those things.”
Reese bit her bottom lip to keep from exploding. Her mother said things like that all the time. And yet…
“Sometimes people drive you to do things you normally wouldn’t. But enough about that. Maybe we should have that lunch.”
Reese ate so fast it gave her a stomachache. And before Fran could pull out a dessert, Reese was dragging Cam to the front door.
“We really need to get going,” Reese said. “I’ll call you later, Mom.”
Fran’s eyes opened wide in surprise, but she didn’t stop them.
