Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
That evening, just after sunset, Lucy tried calling Noah again. Her call wasn’t screened, so it rang a few times before she reached his voicemail. This time, however, the machine let her leave a message.
Excitement and anxiety flooded her as she realized Noah must’ve cleared out his mailbox. Instead of questioning why he did it so suddenly, she tried to think of what she wanted to say to him. When the beep sounded, she felt ill-prepared and stumbled through her opening.
“Uh, hi, Noah. It’s me. Lucy.” She swallowed the excess saliva that had collected in her mouth and went on.
“I know you’ve been avoiding my calls, and you probably don’t want to talk to me, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d call me back.
I’m worried, but you already know that. I just want to know that you and Megan are safe and…
well, I guess that’s not all I want to know.
I’d prefer it if you told me everything. ”
She laughed.
“You know, now that I’m actually saying this out loud, I’m starting to realize how unfair you’ve been to me!
Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?
” Tears welled in her eyes. Her heart pounded worse than it had during her drive to the City when she thought Brendan might’ve been on death’s door.
“And you took Megan without even telling me. I know she’s not my actual niece, but I’ve been helping take care of her, and that means something to me! ”
Her lip trembled, and her voice shook. She knew if she didn’t wrap this up soon, she would really lose her ability to articulate herself.
“Look, I know this is rambling, and I probably haven’t said anything to convince you to call me back, but I don’t care. I’m mad at you, and I’m scared for you. If you don’t call me back soon, I’m going to?—”
She couldn’t come up with an adequate threat, and the lump in her throat was growing, so she decided to leave him to his imagination about what she would do if he didn’t call her back. She hung up the call and blinked back the tears before they had a chance to fall down her cheeks.
She stared at the phone for a few seconds, feeling a sickening mix of emotions. She wouldn’t call him again; there was no point. She knew it was probably best to stop trying to reach him for the time being, but giving up felt like giving up.
Lucy wasn’t a quitter, and the only thing she hated more than being in the dark was sitting around on her hands, doing nothing while someone she cared about might be in trouble.
In a last-ditch effort to find out what was going on, she decided to go to his house and take a peek through his windows. She wouldn’t break in, but if there was some obvious clue as to where he was that could be seen through a window, it wouldn’t be such a big deal, right?
It was a moral gray area to say the least, but Noah hadn’t left her with many alternatives.
However, when she pulled up to his house, she noticed a dented, light-pink car in the driveway. She put the Jeep in park along the curb out front and scanned the front of his house, noticing a light on inside.
Someone was there.
But it couldn’t have been Noah. Or at least, that wasn’t his car.
She slipped out of the Jeep and slowly walked toward the car in the driveway, acting as if she were just passing it on the way to the front door. It was junky and old, and the pink paint was chipping everywhere. The owner had a handful of stickers on the back bumper.
Normally, she wouldn’t be this nosy, but under the circumstances, she thought it was okay to take a quick look through the rear window on her way past. There were random clothing items strewn about, fast-food wrappers, and what looked like a couple of empty wine bottles.
In the front seat, the car’s ashtray was overflowing with ash and cigarette butts.
The front seat had a few boxes stacked on top of each other, and the whole scene was giving Lucy the impression that whoever had driven this car had been living in it.
Lucy thought it was unlikely that Noah would’ve arranged for someone to stay at his house while he was away, since the entire “trip” was unplanned.
Unless it wasn’t?
God, the constant questioning would drive her insane, but what else could she do with so little information to work with? She remembered the bumper stickers and wondered whether she was jumping to conclusions.
It could be as simple as a salesperson had come by to sell him something.
But if they were inside the house, someone had to let them in.
Maybe Noah was there, and his car was just in the garage.
This gave Lucy a little bit of hope, and she hurried to knock on the front door.
She heard the sound of heeled footsteps approaching from the other side of the door, then saw the top corner of a woman’s face looking out from the window in the door.
She had bleached blond hair and hazel eyes, painted with heavy black shadow and accentuated with noticeably fake lashes.
Lucy smiled, even though she could tell the woman wasn’t smiling back.
Although she was a stranger and it was weird that she would come to answer Noah’s door, Lucy was determined not to put this person off if she could.
After all, she might be the only one who could tell her where Noah was, so she had to stay on this woman’s good side if possible. She waved, and finally the door opened.
“Yes?” the woman asked. She was a lot shorter than Lucy, and her clothes were wrinkled in the way that only sleep could do.
She slept in her jeans.
Interesting.
“Hi,” Lucy said, keeping her smile steady despite this new, somewhat troubling information. “I’m, uh…looking for my friend who lives here.” She hesitated to call him “Noah” in case this was just a random squatter who didn’t need access to any personal information. “Is he around?”
“That depends. Who’s your friend?”
She really didn’t like the way this woman was looking at her, nor was she comforted by the fact that the woman was already being evasive.
Still, she kept her composure as best she could.
“He lives here,” she repeated. “And no offense, but I’ve never seen you around, and I know you don’t live here, so I would really like to speak to the man of the house. ”
“The man of the house?”
She nodded confidently. “Yes.”
“Edward?” the woman asked with a raised brow.
Edward?
She knows him as Edward.
Lucy gulped. “Uh, yeah. I’m here to see Edward.”
“He’s not here right now.”
She stretched onto her tiptoes to look over the woman’s shoulder, but the woman closed the door a little tighter. This struck her as very odd behavior, and suddenly, she could no longer keep her composure. She dropped the smile and the pleasantries.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “And what are you doing here?”
The woman narrowed her eyes, clearly not thrilled with being questioned.
“I’m Brook,” she said slowly. “Brook Murphy. And I’m here because this house belongs to my husband, Edward Murphy.”