Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 163209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 816(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 816(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
“Drive safe,” was Laila’s easy response, and Jeremy had no choice but to walk away.
-
Laila’s quiet pin-pon alert dragged Jeremy out of a light doze Thursday night, and he pushed his books aside to pick up his phone. He could imagine Laila’s disgruntled tone as he skimmed her message, and it was enough to bring a helpless smile to his face: “Cat and Jean dipped out, my fiancé abandoned me, and my show tonight is a rerun. Barkbark is refusing to bring back the ball when I throw it. I am bored out of my mind.”
“You’re welcome to come hang out with me,” Jeremy sent back.
“At your place? I don’t love you that much.”
“But I’m studying fallacies. It’s very exciting.”
“Liar. What’s today’s French lesson?”
“Objects around the house.” Jeremy sent her a picture of his desk, which was now covered in sticky notes of vocabulary terms. Laila’s subsequent crack about his handwriting was to be expected, and Jeremy gave a put-upon sigh as he obediently rewrote a few of the messier ones. He was trading out the papers when Laila came back with,
“Think you’ll be home tomorrow?”
Home, she said, knowing he was technically home already. Jeremy toed at the leg of his desk and let his gaze track his room. The bedroom was frozen in time, a tidy snapshot of the son his parents wished they had, with serious books lining the bookshelves and a well-made bed in boring beige. He’d hung a dozen-odd pictures of his friends and teammates on his wall, but he’d made sure to only choose photographs where they were out of uniform. His Exy awards and trophies were tucked away in the closet behind a monochromatic slew of uncomfortable clothes.
“I don’t know,” he finally typed out. He hadn’t asked yet, hoping that a week of quiet obedience would smooth away the lingering edges of his mother’s anger. “She might fight it, especially since school is starting so soon.”
“Hard at work, I see,” Annalise said from his doorway, and Jeremy jumped so hard he dropped his phone. “Who are you texting?”
“Laila,” Jeremy said as he collected his phone again.
“The Egyptian.”
“Her mother’s Lebanese,” he said, but Annalise ignored the correction. Jeremy tugged his study guides closer and neatly stacked the LSAT book on top of his French notes. Annalise was less likely to rat him out than Bryson was, but it was best not to take any chances. “Her father’s been reassigned to Thailand. Maybe she’ll let me go with her next time she visits him? I could scratch Bangkok off the bucket list and pop around Asia for a week or two.”
“With what money?” she asked, but didn’t wait for him to react to that unkind dig. “Oh wait, irrelevant. You don’t have a passport.”
Jeremy held onto his smile for all he was worth. “Somewhere I do.”
Mathilda had always kept the family’s most important documents in a fireproof cabinet in her home office, but she’d removed most of Jeremy’s paperwork years ago. His medical records were still there, but his passport, social security card, and birth certificate were nowhere to be found. Jeremy had turned every room in this house inside-out more than once looking for them. If he could just find them, he could hide them in Laila’s safe, but he always came back emptyhanded. He had to assume his mother had moved them to a safety deposit box; they were gone until she felt like giving them back.
Annalise’s accusation was quiet: “You don’t want to go to Thailand, anyway. You just want an excuse to visit Seoul. Why? Dad won’t see you.”
“Osan.” Jeremy took his phone apart and put it back together. “Maybe he would. Could he really turn me away if I was right there?”
She said nothing. For all that had broken between them four years ago, Trent Knox was an open wound they would always share. They’d been cut in different ways by his long absences and abrupt departure, and Annalise would always take their mother’s side first, but they didn’t have the heart to really fight about him.
At length Annalise beckoned imperiously to him. “Get the door for me. My hands are going to be full with my laundry.”
Annalise was the only one of them allowed to live on her own year-round, a reward for being the least disappointing child. She avoided coming home whenever possible, but her washer was acting up for the fourth time this week and she was in dire need of clean clothes. Jeremy was idly surprised she hadn’t just gone out and bought more to hold her over until maintenance could come by, seeing how she still had unfettered access to her college fund.
Jeremy pushed such thoughts away as he stood. “I’ll carry it down for you.”
Annalise stepped back to let him out of his room and pointed to where her laundry basket was waiting off to one side. Jeremy scooped it up and followed her to the stairs. They were halfway down when the doorbell rang, and Annalise sent a disapproving frown at her watch. It was late to have guests, but Warren’s rotating schedule at the hospital made for an unreliable social life.