Chapter 45
Kinsley
Chapter Forty-Five
Apparently, the girls had finally agreed on a movie because they were watching Mean Girls when I entered. I sat down without disturbing them and chose a lollipop from the bowl of sweets, the same time Samantha offered me some popcorn. I shook my head and showed her the lollipop in my hand, my stomach turned nervously. Thomas still didn’t reply to my text, and I started to get anxious. I pulled out the map from my pocket and grabbed a pen from the table, drawing a question mark over the flower shop.
“What are you draw—” Samantha started, but a loud knock on the front door cut her off.
The four of us turned our heads in the direction of the sound, and Samantha went to open the door. I pricked my ears while keeping my eyes ahead, listening. I heard muffled voices followed by approaching footsteps.
“Kinsley?” Thomas’s voice reached me over the noise from the movie, and a wave of relief rushed through my body.
So, he did get my message. He stepped into the room, his eyes landing on me. He exhaled, a measure of tension leaving his body and his features softened too. I stood up and hurried to him.
“Sorry for the interruption,” he said to the other girls, getting a hold of my hand. “We have to go. Family stuff,” he lied, nudging me toward the door.
“Can we help somehow?” Aaliyah asked, and I glanced back, stopping Thomas.
“I will text you later,” I promised, exchanging a smile with her, but as soon as Samantha entered my vision, I snapped out of it. “Thank you for the night,” I added quickly, rushing out the door, leaving the three girls behind.
Thomas shut the door and cupped my cheeks into his hands. “Are you all right? I was so fucking worried.” He breathed heavily, pulling me into a kiss, and I melted against him, my heart racing.
“Yes, just can we go?” I glanced around the creepy hallway.
We hurried down the stairs, out to the empty street, and we didn’t slow until the car doors closed behind us. We sat in silence, trying to get out of the shock, and only when we left Coldwater behind, I opened my mouth.
“So,” I started. “I took a picture of the ring just in case.” I pulled out my phone to show him.
“Ring?” Thomas asked, knotting his dark brows but keeping his eyes on the road.
“I sent it to you. Isn’t that why you came?” A confused expression formed on my face.
Thomas shook his head, and I bit into the inside of my cheek.
“Hyacinth Cooper Bowman is Samantha Jones’s dead mother,” he said, and my stomach dropped.
“What?” I suddenly felt dizzy. Aaliyah was right, people either died here or left. I pulled out the lollipop I still had in my pocket and tore off the wrapping paper before sucking on it. The sweet and sour cherry taste melted in my mouth, making me feel like my tongue just experienced an orgasm. The dizziness stopped and I let out a relieved sigh. When I turned back toward Thomas, his eyes were on me and he had a different expression on his face than before.
“If you wanted me to pull over again, you should have just said so,” he said with a husky voice, and my breath hitched.
I turned my eyes away from him and forced my mind back where it should have been.
“You said Hyacinth is dead?” I asked, chewing on my bottom lip, and Thomas nodded, his attention on the road again. “And that she was Samantha’s mom?” I thought back to the red-haired woman.
“I went to talk to Aaliyah’s sister,” he explained. “She contacted her mother, who remembered seeing Lizzie argue with a woman named Heather Jones the day of her disappearance. Guess what?” he added with a nervous chuckle. “She looks identical to Hyacinth Cooper Bowman.”
My eyes widened and I unlocked my phone, opening the photo I had taken at Samantha’s. My mind was so focused on the boy and the ring that I completely forgot about that small black-and-white picture of the Bowman family. Thomas turned onto the ground road that led to the lake house, and my throat went dry.
“She had your mother’s ring,” I whispered, my eyes still on my phone’s screen.
“What?” Thomas glanced at me, and I cleared my throat, trying to pull my eyes away from the screen, but they stayed fixated on Heather—Hyacinth’s laugh.
“She was wearing Lizzie’s ring,” I repeated louder, and Thomas hit the break right in front of the house before getting ahold of my phone.
He zoomed in, then zoomed out to see the whole picture, and a part of the wall with the old photos became visible. I leaned closer to take another look and sucked in a breath. There was something I had missed earlier, at the edge of the frame, in the heat of the discoveries, and I reached out toward the screen.
“Is that—” I zoomed in.
“Shit.” Thomas took a deep breath as his father’s picture stared back at us from the screen.