Page 81 of Her Hidden Smile

“A little bit,” I admitted.

“I’m proud of you,” she whispered.

“There’s nothing to be proud of, Mom. You’re the one who taught me to not notice that kind of shit, and I also watched you with Zuri and Nia. I just took a page out of your book.”

“Renzo’s right,” my dad said.

“I call bullshit, but whatever.” She took the beer out of my dad’s hand and took a sip, then handed it back to him as she blushed.

“Now back to her agoraphobia. Are you prepared to marry someone who is housebound for the rest of her life?” Dad asked me.

“Absolutely,” I answered. “But she isn’t totally housebound. She has her farm. She feels comfortable on her land. Dad, if I thought the best thing for her was to stay just as she was, I would happily live with her there, for the rest of my life. Hell, no matter what, I want the wedding to be in her orchard. But here’s the thing, I don’t think she’s happy living her life just on the farm. I think she wants a bigger life.”

“Are you going to try to get her some online counseling?” Mom asked.

“That’s where I plan to start,” I said. “And, I know that there are a couple of more people in her life who have been pushing for her to come out into the light so to speak.” I laughed. “I don’t expect anything any time soon. But eventually my girl will get there.”

“Like I said.” Mom smiled. “She sounds remarkable.”

I woke up on my couch. My hands hurt, and I tried to rub my wrists. It was when I tried to move them and I couldn’t, that I remembered what had happened.

I tried to sit up, but my feet were tied together the same way my wrists were tied. My hip was on fire.

“So, you’re awake. Maybe now you can tell me where Lisa is.”

“Who are you?”

“The last time we played that little game, you passed out and I almost slit your throat on accident. Are you sure you want to play again? Tell me where Lisa is.”

“I don’t know. She told me she couldn’t make it for lunch until Monday.”

“Fuck!” He jumped up out of my sofa’s matching armchair and threw the knife across the room. It flipped over and over and over, until it stuck into my pearl-gray paint. “What do you mean she won’t be here today? She’s always over here on Saturday.”

“She didn’t tell me why she couldn’t make it,” I whispered.

“It’s probably because of that Roan Thatcher guy.” He plopped back down into the armchair. “Call her. Make her come over now.”

“I told you, she said she was busy.”

There was no way I was going to have Lisa come over to my house and be ambushed by this whack job. I needed to start talking to him. Find out how he knew Lisa. See if I could talk some sense in him.

“And I’m telling you, you need to call her.”

“It’ll probably just go to voicemail.”

He looked around the living room, then his eyes rested on my desk in the corner. I knew the instant he spotted my cell phone. He stormed over to it, then marched over to me, grabbed my arm, and pulled me into a sitting position.

“Call her!” he demanded.

“I can’t. My hands are tied.”

“Do voice command.”

“My phone doesn’t work that way, I haven’t set it up,” I lied.

He stalked over to the wall where his knife was, pulled it out of the drywall, and came back to me. I cringed backward, figuring he was going to push it against my throat again. When he grabbed my hands, I didn’t know what to think.

With one slice, the twine around my wrists fell away.