Page 24 of The Exit Strategy
How the hell does she have my full name?
Opening my door in my pajamas, holding my own fully caffeinated coffee, and wearing what I’m sure is a look of bewilderment, I step out onto the small porch.
“You weren’t at breakfast, dear,” a small older lady says, rushing the stairs. Well, she would consider it rushing. The woman has to be in her late seventies.
I set my coffee cup on the porch and meet her somewhere in the middle, where she shoves a basket into my belly.
“I’m Dollie, Frank’s wife. We hadn’t seen you in twenty-four hours. There are protocols here, deary.”
“Protocols,” I repeat. “For…missing breakfast.”
“For any unexplained absence exceeding twelve hours,” Marley shouts from below.
“Turn on your damn hearing aid, Marley.” Stanley points to his ear while wearing aduhexpression.
Marley does something on her phone, then returns to her clipboard. “It’s in the community handbook, section four, subsection B. Shall I send you a copy?”
“Ah, no…thanks. I was working. I’m fine.”
“Working.” Marley draws out the word while she writes it down. She’s probably writing me a ticket.
Cole’s chuckle causes goose bumps to rise on my arms, but I refuse to look at him. Instead, I focus on a woman walking through the golf cart brigade. I haven’t met her yet, but she’s watching me with calm, assessing eyes. She has a silver bob and reading glasses hanging from a chain around her neck, and where everyone else radiates concern, she emotes…patience. The unnerving kind.
The kind I’ve been forced to visit with at various times in my life.
“I’m Bea,” she says when she catches me staring. Shedoesn’t seem to have a golf cart. “I’m also a semi-retired therapist, but that’s not the point.”
It’sverymuchthe point, and every alarm bell in my body chimes at once.
“I’m fine,” I say again, firmer this time. “Really. I just got caught up in work.”
Bea tilts her head. Not in challenge. Not a confrontation. Just a quiet, measured look that makes me feel as though she’s dissecting all my lies. “Your brother once said that to me too.”
My—she knows Nolan?
“Do you often throw things away?” she asks. “Or only when someone you love betrays you?”
The baked goods nearly slip from my hands.
She’s seen the videos. Obviously. At over two million views, who hasn’t seen them? Nana Mae probably had a showing party with popcorn on the big screen over at the clubhouse for her—what did she call it—Screen & Steam club?
But there’s something about the way Bea asks—without judgment, without the morbid curiosity I’ve gotten from everyone else—that freezes me to the spot.
I don’t even have an answer. Not one that doesn’t crack open something I’m not ready to analyze.
“I—I should get back to work,” I manage while actively avoiding the concern on Cole’s face.
Bea nods as if she expected nothing less.Asshole old lady.
I’m panting as they all make haphazard U-turns in Cole’s driveway.
Bea’s question lingers long after she’s turned away.
I close the door and lean against it as if it’s the only thing holding me up.
“Both,” I mutter. “The answer is…both.”
My phone buzzeswhile I’m elbow deep in bank statements that afternoon. Unfortunately, I’d had to leave the sanctuary of my apartment and face a yawning, grumpy-assed Cole to get the statements I needed.
