Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
We were standing in the security line before I pulled out my phone and texted my mother. I started to type a few times before I settled on what to say.
I’m coming out to look for the book. Sterling is coming with me. Can we stay with you?
I hoped bringing Sterling would soften her up. My mother had been so angry when she’d found out what I was up to in Sawyers Bend and also furious that I’d lost the woman I’d told her so much about. She’d been thrilled I’d finally found a woman who caught my interest, as she put it, so excited to meet Sterling. I’d been frantically trying to figure out how to untangle the lies I’d told, and then it had all been over.
My phone remained silent as I loaded our bags onto the X-ray belt and took off my shoes, going through the ritual of setting my things out in the bin and waiting to be waved through the metal detector. On the other side, I checked my phone as I collected it from the bin. No text from my mom, and we were getting close to our boarding time.
“What gate?” I asked Sterling.
She pulled out our boarding passes, squinted down at the page, and said, “B24. Hey, Alice booked us in first class.”
I winced a little at the thought but didn’t mind.
“I’m sorry for the bill Alice is going to send you,” Sterling said. “But considering the length of the flight, I’m not complaining.”
“Me either,” I said, happy I’d be able to stretch my legs out in front of me.
The flight was already boarding by the time we reached the gate. My phone beeped just as I shoved our bags into the overhead bin. Sitting, I checked the screen. My mother.
Of course, you’re staying with me. Send me your flight information. I’ll kill the fatted calf for dinner.
Sterling looked over my shoulder as I responded to her text. “She’s still mad at you?”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“How can you tell?” she asked, rereading the text for a clue. In explanation, I scrolled back to older texts. After a few pauses for them to load, I got to those we’d exchanged the weeks before my lies were exposed. My mother’s rampant use of emojis screamed off the screen.
Sterling smiled down at the phone. She reached to scroll forward in time, reading the stilted texts we’d exchanged in the past twelve months. “Why haven’t you been home to see your mother in a year?”
I remembered mentioning that at Sugar Mae and Bob’s and the surprise on Sterling’s face. “The only person more pissed at me than you about all the lies I told last year was my mother,” I said. “She was furious that I had anything to do with the Sawyers, that I had lied about who I was, that I was chasing after the statue my father had died over. And most of all, she was mad that I lost you.”
“Me?” Sterling asked, looking up, her eyebrows pulling together. “Why am I on the list?”
“I told her about you,” I said, smiling a little at the memory of how excited she’d been. It wasn’t like Sterling was the first woman I dated, but the issues with my dad aside, my mom and I were close. She’d known Sterling was different even before I did. I sighed at the memory. “I lied to her about where I was working, who I was working with, put her off on visiting. But I told her about you. She was excited, wanted me to bring you out to meet her. Then the truth came out and—”
“She was pissed, huh?”
“When she found out I lied…oh yeah,” I replied, shaking my head at the memory of my mother’s rage. Her disappointment. “She was excited that I’d met someone, and the idea that I screwed that up over memories of my father… She wants everything with my father to have stopped the day he died. She doesn’t want him in the present. I think it hurts her too much. I think she needed to leave him behind for herself. But I can’t do that.”
“Of course you can’t,” Sterling said. She curled her hand around mine, her thumb rubbing the backs of my fingers. “He was your dad, and you loved him. He loved you. This scavenger hunt he sent you on…” She shook her head. “He really loved you. I’m sorry…my father…” She bit her lip and closed her eyes.
I wondered if she was trying to shut out the idea that her father had killed mine. If that had happened. Probably not with his own hand, but I was betting that if there was any proof out there, in the end, it would point straight at Prentice Sawyer. And none of that had anything to do with Sterling. I turned my hand to squeeze her fingers. “Sterling, no. Your father was a miserable human being, and that has nothing to do with you.”