Chapter 40
NAOMI
What have I done?
Veronica is lying on the floor of the living room of my former house, unconscious. I’m still holding that rock in my right hand. There’s blood on it, and there’s blood on my hand, but not a lot of blood. An amount that could be easily washed off.
I kneel down beside her, worried there’s a chance I might have killed her. But I can clearly see her chest rising and falling. She is still alive. Unfortunately.
No, I didn’t mean that. God, I didn’t want to kill her. I’m not like her. I just wanted to keep her from calling Jeremy.
And I definitely should not have done this. Whatever the consequences would be for me coming over to the house and trying to pick up Teddy, the consequences of assaulting Veronica with a rock are going to be far worse. Ezra is not going to be happy with me.
Now what?
“Mommy?”
Teddy’s voice floats down from the top of the stairs. Oh no. This is getting even worse. Any chance of getting out of here and pretending like maybe a burglar came in and did this has just flown out the window.
But maybe I can make it work.
I sprint over to the foot of the stairs.
Teddy is still standing at the top, peering down at me quizzically.
From where he is standing, he can’t see Veronica lying on the floor.
And even though all I want to do is wrap my arms around him and carry him away from here, I’ve got to get him back in his room while I sort this out.
“Mommy, you’re here!”
He looks so delighted, it almost breaks my heart. He starts to run down the stairs, but I step onto the stairwell to block his way. “Don’t come down the stairs. I need you to stay in your room.”
His little face scrunches up. “But why?”
“Because I…I dropped a dish, and it broke all over the floor.”
“Was that the loud noise I heard?”
My chest tightens. “Uh-huh. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Teddy frowns, an expression that suddenly makes him look so much like Jeremy. “Why are you here? Daddy said Ronnie was watching me.”
“He changed his plans.”
“Why?”
Oh God, these questions are going to continue for the next hour if I don’t do something about it. “Teddy,” I say in a hushed, urgent voice. “Go to your room and watch monkey videos.”
His eyes widen as he instantly falls silent.
We so rarely give him that warning that sometimes I worry he may have forgotten it.
But from the look on his face, he hasn’t forgotten.
He is going to lock himself in his room, and he won’t come out until somebody tells him that it’s time to eat snickerdoodles.
Now I can deal with the Veronica situation in peace.
Veronica is still unconscious on the floor.
I don’t know what to do. Can I slip out of here and hope that maybe she won’t remember any of this?
But of course she’ll remember. She got a good knock on the head, but she has a healthy twenty-eight-year-old brain.
I’m sure she’ll remember everything that happened and tell Jeremy about it the second she regains consciousness, which could be any minute now.
I need more time. I have to figure out what to do.
Her phone fell just about a foot away from where she is lying on the floor. The screen lights up, and it lets out a loud buzz. She just got a text message.
I scoop her phone off the floor and read the message on the screen. Naturally, it’s from Jeremy.
Just got off the plane. Had a missed call from you. Everything okay?
I can’t answer it without unlocking the screen. But it looks like the phone only requires a fingerprint to unlock it, and I’ve got her hand right here, within easy reach. I pick up her limp hand and press her thumb into the fingerprint reader. The phone jumps to life.
The first thing I do is reconfigure the phone so that a password is not required to get in. Now I can respond to any concerned messages from Jeremy. I quickly type in a text before he can get nervous and call:
Everything is fine! Butt dial!
Good. Is Teddy OK?
Whatever else I can say about Jeremy, he is a good father. Despite everything, I get a tug from reading his message. At least my answer to this question will be honest.
Teddy is fine! Just playing upstairs in his room.
OK great. I’ll call tonight from the hotel.
And then he writes:
I love you.
Ugh, is this a typical example of how the conversations go between the two of them? They tell each other how much they love each other? God, I didn’t get here a moment too soon.
I need to nip this in the bud. Right now. Before “I love you” becomes “Will you marry me?”
But how?
Maybe I can somehow reason with Veronica.
She doesn’t actually want to be saddled with a husband and child.
All she wants is Jeremy’s money. Maybe I can offer her an arrangement where she gets some sort of financial payout in exchange for leaving us alone.
I hate the idea of negotiating with her, but I’m out of options.
But then again, she’s not going to listen to me. The second she wakes up, she’s going to go right for her phone to call Jeremy. Even if I hide her phone, she can just run out of the house and flag down a neighbor.
No, I’ve got to make sure that we have a chance to talk this out properly. I have to make sure she is a captive audience until I get what I want.
I wonder if Jeremy still keeps the duct tape in the same place.