Chapter Thirteen Stella
Chapter Thirteen
Stella
My mother bitched and moaned the entire time I called a rideshare and stuffed her in it. She’d polished off a bottle of wine
while I was gone. Of course she did. That’s what all attentive grandmothers did while watching a toddler, right?
The woman would be the death of me unless Aubrey and this book guy beat her to it.
The one person I could count on was Lukas. Interesting, since I drove him screaming out of my life. More collateral damage
from the Tanners. Dead or not, they’d taken a bunch of us down with them.
Lukas arrived ten minutes after Mom left. He set a white Chinese take-out container in front of me on the table along with
a set of chopsticks. Our go-to meal—beef and broccoli and chicken lo mein. We’d each eat half a container, then switch. No
need to dirty a plate. We’d been sharing this meal since we started dating and continued to do so long after we divorced.
Oddly comforting. Despite everything, including the bickering and the simmering rage he sometimes brought out in me, that’s how being with him, like this, just the two of us, felt.
Call it habit or familiarity, we were bound together by a lifetime of unfulfilled dreams .
. . and a desperate secret that could destroy us both.
He dug around in his container. His focus centered solely on the food. “Why in the world did you go to the café tonight? I
thought you wanted to stay away from those two.”
“Your tone isn’t helping.” I couldn’t be any clearer about that.
He thrived on being practical, on planning out every move. It worked for him. Tonight, it worked on my nerves.
He dropped the container on the table. “Oh, I apologize, Your Highness.”
Okay, that tone was even worse. Condescending. Mocking. I wasn’t a fan of that either. “Is this really necessary?”
“You’re the one who called me.”
“Did I mess up a date?” I fired back the snide question, hating that I cared about the answer.
He sighed. “Stella, don’t.”
Right. Not my husband. Not my business. “Sorry. I’m on edge.”
His jaw unclenched a bit. “Understandably.”
His voice returned to its usual rich, deep sound, but would it kill him to deny the date thing?
“Is your mom still in the dark about what happened earlier?” he asked.
A safer but annoying topic. “She’d have to think about someone other than herself to notice my stress level.”
“I still can’t imagine her as a grandmother.”
There was a reason for that. “Everly loves her.”
“Good.” He smiled. He always smiled when he saw Everly or played with her or even talked about her. For a guy who never wanted
kids, he seemed to love one that wasn’t his.
For the millionth time I mourned what we lost and never had time to share.
“Damn, I can’t believe we’re deep in this mess again.” He sat back in the chair. For the first time, the weight of the world
swirling around us seemed to tug and pull at him.
“This is usually the part where you blame me.” The comment wasn’t meant as a shot. More like a sad statement of fact.
“Our marriage ended that night with the Tanners,” he said. “Not by law but in fact.”
He wasn’t wrong.
I can’t be a part of this, Stella. My career. All I’ve worked for. My oath. I’ll help you cover this up but then I’m out.
“Our marriage had been in a downward fall before that. I wanted kids. You wanted a job in the limelight, with the pressure
and the notoriety.” That was the tip, not the total.
“That’s not quite fair.” His voice sounded resigned. Sad in a nostalgic sort of way.
“You’re right. I’m sorry I mentioned it. Us.” And I was. Dragging the past into the present tainted the tenuous friendship
we’d forged and fought for. “The Tanners and that house and that horrid day took enough from us already.”
“Hey.” He reached across the table and rested his hand on mine. “It’s going to be okay.”
“How can you say that?” I desperately wanted him to explain. To promise.
“Aubrey’s secrets are bigger than ours.” He gave my fingers a final squeeze, then let go.
I immediately missed the lost contact. “I’m not convinced she cares. Honestly, she floated into that courtroom like she knew
her presence would touch off a battle and welcomed it.”
“Knowing her . . .” He rolled his eyes.
Enough said. “True.”
He smiled. Balance restored. “I’ll look into this Gabe person.”
A wave of relief crashed over me. Lukas had the resources and the contacts. He stepped up, just as I’d hoped he’d do. “Thank
you.”
“Is there . . .” Lukas shook his head. “Never mind.”
“What?”
He picked up his chopsticks, then lowered them again. Didn’t take another bite but looked lost in thought. “I’m not trying
to invite trouble—”
“Uh-huh.” I had no clue what was running through his head. “But you’re about to.”
He pushed the container aside. “Gabe is in his twenties, right? Seemingly obsessed with the Tanner mystery.”
That was the nightmare, yes. “I’m too tired to follow your thinking without more help.”
“It’s ridiculous, of course, but could he be Noah Tanner? Is that a possibility, even if it’s remote?”
Everything froze. My thoughts. My breathing. My ability to come up with a reasonable reply. “What?”
Lukas balanced his elbows on the table. “He was eight when he went missing. He’d be just shy of his mid-twenties. Old enough
to join forces with his sister and cause trouble.”
“No.” That had to be the answer. No. Sweet Lord, no.
“We thought Aubrey was dead. Maybe the assumption that Noah is gone is also wrong. Does he look like Aubrey or her parents?”
Lukas made an odd sound. “Who else is alive?”
Okay, no. He had to realize he was reaching. “We were there, Lukas.”
“But what did we really see?”
Blood. Aftermath of a bloodbath. Clothing . . . something . . . on the bedroom floor. Something I pretended not to see and
never questioned. Something that was missing and not explained in the police reports about the state of the house. I know
because I looked.
A chill passed through me when I remembered the piercing scream that bounced off the wall with a force that shook through
my body. My scream. “I can’t do this today.”
Lukas looked like he wanted to keep pushing his point, but he just sat there. A full minute passed before he continued. “I’ll
know more once I poke around.”
Lukas had dreamed up a new theory about Noah. A terrifying one. One that could blow everything apart.
Lukas broke the silence. “You’re forgetting one very important thing.”
Because my brain kept misfiring. “Clue me in.”
“The family excelled at lying. You couldn’t trust any of them.”
He wasn’t wrong. I knew because that list included me.