Page 10 of Sharp Lies

Too far away. Too far away to get there as quickly as I wanted to, and that killed me. All that stuff I’d said about loving my nomadic life was so wrong. So, so wrong! Why had I thought it was a good idea to drive all the way to California? Why had I left Illinois at all? Why hadn’t I stayed close enough to my mom that I could get to Oakville quickly and take care of her if she needed me?

“I’m in California,” I said quickly. “But I’ll drive all night to get there, and all of tomorrow. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I hung up without waiting for her answer, because I already knew everything I needed to know. My mom had been in a car accident, and I was on the other side of the freaking country, fooling around with being a free-living hippie. Stupid!

I threw my phone into the passenger seat of the van and turned it on. Full tank. That was something. A thought later, and I’d grabbed my phone again, my mind spinning through the details. According to the first search I did, it would take around twenty hours to get from here to Chicago.

Twenty hours. That meant I would be there tomorrow evening if I drove all the way through.

And that was exactly what I was planning to do. Because the moment my mind unfroze and I started thinking again, I realized the other reason I’d hesitated to leave Oakville in the first place. Tony McCarthy and his father. His dad had come into the hospital and outright threatened me with bodily harm if I didn’t do what he asked. He hadn’t outright threatened to harm my mother but he’d been so full of threats that I didn’t think it was a stretch to assume he’d meant to. And also that was the part that had made my decision for me. His son had already hurt me, and I wasn’t sure Mr. McCarthy could do any worse. But when it came to my mom, I wasn’t budging. She was my whole world, and I’d have sold my soul to the devil himself to keep her from harm.

But what if it hadn’t been enough? What if taking the money and leaving hadn’t satisfied McCarthy? Or maybe something I’d done since then had made him think I wasn’t holding up my end of the bargain? I wracked my brain but couldn’t think of anything that might qualify as not following the rules. I’d kept my mouth shut and left town. I hadn’t talked to anyone but my mom since then, and my aunt on occasion. Hell, I hadn’t even talked to my friends since I left! What could he possibly have found fault with?

And did it matter?

If he’d decided that I wasn’t following the rules, it wasn’t going to matter why he’d decided it.

Fuck, maybe I was being paranoid, and he had nothing to do with any of this. But I couldn’t know that for sure, and the fact that my mother—who was an excellent driver—had just randomly gotten into a car crash that landed her in the hospital, when I had a man like McCarthy threatening me...

Well, it was suspicious.

And I was putting it on the list of things to think about on this very long drive back to Illinois. Where my mother was in the hospital and possibly dying.

I threw my van into gear and stomped on the gas, going through the route in my mind and trying to figure out what the fastest way would be. The search had told me twenty hours.

I wanted to do it in fifteen.

***

BY THE TIME I WAS WITHIN an hour of Oakville, I was vibrating with tension and fear. I hadn’t heard from my aunt again since that first call, and though that seemed like a good thing—after all, if my mom had taken a turn for the worse, surely Aunt Susan would have called to tell me so—it didn’t feel good to be kept in the dark like this.

Especially with all the suspicion running through my mind.

I couldn’t get rid of the idea that this crash hadn’t been an accident at all, but I still couldn’t figure out why the McCarthy clan would have done it. Even worse was the thought that I was driving right back into their territory. The last time I was in this town, I’d just run from Tony, leaving him in the lurch, and then had a confrontation with his father. I’d taken dirty money in exchange for keeping my mouth shut and split. And now I was back.

I wondered suddenly whether my mother’s accident had been a way to get me back here. Was this some sort of trap? Had Tony—or his dad—lured me back here for some nefarious purpose?

“You sound like you’re living in a spy novel,” I told myself firmly. “Get it together.”

I needed to calm down and turn on my rational mind because my mother was in trouble and needed me to be steady. She wouldn’t thank me for going in there all full of conspiracy theories, and I wouldn’t thank myself if she took a turn for the worse because I’d upset her with my crazy ideas.

I needed to settle down and remember who I’d been when I lived here. Oakville wasn’t the home of the girl who mindlessly flitted from city to city without a couch to her name. This was the town where I’d been solid and dependable. My mom’s partner in crime, in charge of paying half the rent and all the bills. I’d been a waitress and a baker, a daughter and a friend. And I needed to become that person again.

The thing was, Oakville didn’t look like it had changed at all while I was away. The main street looked exactly the same, with the same shops lining the sidewalk and the fountain in the middle of the square looking like it hadn’t even been cleaned since the last time I was here. There weren’t many cars on the road—everyone was at dinner, I suspected—and the place looked just as peaceful as I remembered. It was late summer, so the trees were starting to change, and I could imagine that the air outside was getting chilly, but aside from that...

I’d changed.

Oakville hadn’t.

And I wondered if that was going to make it even harder for me to fit in here again.

***

SUSAN WAS SITTING WITH my mother when I got into her room, and I ran to her and dove into her arms, holding back the tears that had been threatening since that first phone call.

“How is she?” I whispered.

“Sleeping peacefully,” she whispered back. “She’s medicated, but she’s not in a coma, and everyone is telling me that’s good news.”