Something She's Not Telling Us - Darcey Bell Page 0,80
still isn’t working.
When Rocco comes back into the living room, he sits down on the edge of the couch and buries his face in his hands.
Charlotte can’t breathe. “What’s wrong?”
“Good news. And bad news. I can’t tell which. She left her phone on the nightstand.”
“What does that mean? She doesn’t want to get in touch with us. Or anyone. And she doesn’t want to be found.”
“That’s the bad news. Speaking of being found, have you tried that app that lets you locate Daisy’s inhaler? Crazy as Ruth is, I’m positive that she’s taken the inhaler with them. I don’t expect you to believe me, but I’m sure she won’t harm Daisy. She cares about Daisy, or anyway, as much as . . .”
He can’t finish the sentence.
“I just tried,” says Charlotte. “It’s not working. It keeps loading.”
“Try again.” Charlotte does what Rocco says. As if the result will be different when he’s here with her.
The same spinning wheel. The same Oops! The same urge to throw the phone at the wall. Charlotte shows the phone to Rocco.
“She’s probably figured out some way to disable it. I always thought Ruth was extremely tech-savvy for such a flake. It was one—only one—of the many things that didn’t add up about her. Did you know she could speak Spanish?”
“It didn’t seem like it, in Mexico.”
“Well, she does. She hid it. Who knows what else she was hiding? I have no idea who she is, or how her mind works. That’s the shocking part.”
“I don’t understand,” says Charlotte. “How can you live with someone and—”
Charlotte’s ringtone sounds: It’s Eli. He says, “The cops are here now. I’ll call you when they leave.”
She says, “Call me before they leave.”
When she turns back to Rocco, he says, “Don’t you want to hear the good news?”
“I really do,” says Charlotte. “I want to hear any good news you can think of.”
“The strange thing is, it’s the same as the bad news. Her phone is here. Her contact list. We can call around and try to find her. I’ll bet we can find out where her grandparents live. Maybe she’s there, maybe they know where she is. That’s where I’d start.”
Rocco turns Ruth’s phone on. He knows her passcode.
“Jesus Christ. You may not want to look at this.”
Charlotte forces herself to look. The wallpaper on Ruth’s phone is a photo of Ruth and Daisy, in an old-fashioned photo booth. It’s from the same series as the picture that Daisy pasted in her book.
The expressions on Daisy’s and Ruth’s faces are goofier than in the photo in Our Mexican Adventure. Daisy’s grinning so hard that her face must hurt, and she’s bugging out her eyes. Charlotte has never seen that face before. The stabbing pain in her chest is so intense that she gasps.
Rocco takes Ruth’s phone from Charlotte and scrolls through Ruth’s recent calls.
“No.” His voice is hushed. “This makes no sense. I don’t get it. Unless she’s trying to get me fired—”
“What? What is it?”
“The last half dozen calls she made were to Andrew John’s office. Last night and early this morning. Maybe she wanted to lie about me.”
“Maybe,” Charlotte murmurs.
But somehow she knows that’s not the reason that Ruth is calling Andrew John.
23
Seven Years Before
Charlotte
It had been the most beautiful summer day, the kind of day you live the rest of the year for, the kind of day you remember all winter.
This was before Daisy was born.
Eli was in Panama for a month, visiting his family. Buddenbrooks and Gladiola hadn’t yet expanded. The business was still just the flower shop, and Alma was Charlotte’s only employee. How happy they felt to come to work every day! How simple everything was!
Charlotte had no way of knowing that she would never again—or certainly not for a long time—feel so free, so unburdened.
That day, her only worry was about Rocco, who was scheduled to get out of rehab in a few weeks. And she had no idea where he would live, where he would work, what he would do.
She’d hoped that Matt and Holly, her friends who ran the flower farm where she bought most of her stock, might find work for him. It would be good for him to be in the country. He would be happier than he would be in the city. It would be harder for him to get into trouble. Not so many bars and girls, not so much temptation.
Luckily, it was time for her annual trip to the farm. And during the wonderful