Page 81 of Roar for Me
“Why the hell would you do that?” A fourth voice. Aurora looked up to find Jen, of all people, standing in front of the now crowded table.
“Not you too, Jen! Doesn’t anyone have work today?”
“I got someone to cover my study hall and ran over when Katie told me you left work early.” Jen squeezed in next to Carrie and introduced herself to Aurora’s friends while Aurora sat in disbelief.
“How would Katie know I left early?”
“Remember when you wanted to put the tracking app on her phone, and she only agreed to it if you put it on yours?” Lizzie reminded her.
Aurora slapped her palm to her forehead. “And she called all of you?”
“Not exactly. She told me, and I’m guessing she told Jen, as well. I called the cavalry.” Her sister propped her head on her elbow. “Start talking.”
“Bossy,” Aurora started, then launched into a brief watered-down version of her and Duncan’s fight on their last night. Reliving that experience didn’t make her feel any better. It only seemed to make the emptiness worse. She went on to explain the guilt of betraying Jeff, and the forever they’d promised one another. At the four pairs of eyebrows staring at her, she reminded the ones that had known him that they’d had it engraved inside their wedding bands.
“Bullshit.”Lizzie spat. “Three of us were at your wedding. Your vows said, ‘Until death do us part.’ Not ‘always and forever.’” Her sister shook her head.
Jen raised her gaze from the table. Her eyes held a world of pain. “Didn’t Duncan tell you what happened with the court case?”
Aurora nodded. “His lawyer said it was the most one-sided custody case he’d ever seen. But the kid is grown now.”
Jen shook her head. “He didn’t tell you the whole story, then.”
A large, noisy group broke through their conversation. Jen looked up as the group of women sat down at a nearby table, then ducked her head and held up a hand to shield her face. They all gathered in as Jen pointed behind her hand to a skinny redhead with a short pixie cut sitting with her back to them. She was the loudest, gesturing wildly.
“You have to be kidding me. That’sMariah!”Jen hissed. “That bitch—”
“I can’t believe he’d go behind my back like this!” a visibly distraught Mariah cried.
“Your ex is a piece of work, Mariah,” one of her companions said.
“I didn’t even want child support. I just wanted him gone.”
“Didn’t you offer to terminate his parental rights?”
“No, Ibegged.I wanted my new last name to match my son’s, but Todd couldn’t adopt him without Duncan signing that form.”
She’d asked him to dowhat?
“He fought me on visitation for years through the court. Thankfully, Uncle Joe found reasons to keep ruling in my favor.”
Dear God.Aurora squeezed her eyes shut.
“Finally, my lawyer threatened to charge him with harassment if he contacted me again. That was six years ago. And I finally had some peace and quiet.”
She risked a glance at Jen, who was pretending to be in conversation with Carrie. Old acting skills were useful. She caught Jen’s eye, who gave her a pained smile. She’d tried to warn her.
“Now he’s gone and tracked down Ryder directly. And the lawyer says I can’t do anything about it. I don’t know how he even found him! Did he hire a private investigator?” Mariah was somehow ranting and scarfing down food at the same time like a middle schooler. “Ryder started asking questions again. And I can’t take his video games away anymore to get them to stop.”
Aurora tore into her baguette. Bread always helped her with nausea.
“Crap, we have to get back to school.”
The group at the table quickly wrapped up their leftovers and ran out. Aurora’s table fell silent as a graveyard until Jen let out a sigh.
“She’s the real reason I had to leave Riverton City Public. Their high school is up the road. That’s how I knew where you were when Katie gave me the address she saw on her tracker app. Anyway, we got assigned to the same school, and I couldn’t take her bad-mouthing my friend for longer than a year.”
“You knew her?” Aurora’s appetite was gone again.
