“I know,” Shannon hissed, and pointed two fingers back at her eyes. “I damn well know. I look in the mirror every day and see her eyes. I have her eyes. I have her goddamn cheekbones and chin, too.”
“And you have nice eyes, so just focus on that. And besides, maybe it’s the kind of thing she needs to tell us in person. Maybe it’s important,” he said softly, but in a firm voice that brooked no argument. “We need to find out what’s up. End of the month. Her hours were cut, but she gets her final two hours the last day of June. We need to plan for it. Take the day, because it’s an all-day thing to get to Hawthorne in the middle of god-knows-nowhere. No excuses.”
She shoved her hand through her hair, yanking it back into a ponytail. “Why are you so determined to believe she might be innocent?”
His lips parted, but he took his time. His mother wasn’t an innocent woman, not by any stretch of the law. She might not even be a good person. But he believed that there was a difference between the things she’d done, and the things the district attorney had said she’d done.
“Because we need to be certain.”
She closed her eyes, as if the conversation pained her. Hell, it pained him. When she opened them, the look in them was one of defeat. Even so, she nodded. “I’ll go with you.”
“Good. I need you there,” he said, and flashed a small smile.
“Now there’s something I need to tell you, and if you so much as pull a big brother act, you will go alone. Is that clear?”
“Crystal.”
Then, she told him she was seeing her ex again, and even though he wanted to slug the guy for having hurt her, he understood what it was like to be unable to let go of something.
* * *
She cranked up the volume on “You’re the One That I Want” on the radio in her cherry red BMW as she drove home. She needed the upbeat, dancey number to reset her mind. Belting out the celebratory tune as she turned onto her street, she let the lyrics fill the hollow and angry space between the conversation with Ryan and the rest of her day.
The music was her buffer, and as she sang, she choreographed the number in her head, the dance and the movement ushering the hard kernel out of her heart. Dance had always been a way through tough times for her. Today she would lean on it even more. She had a plan for the rest of the afternoon. She’d review the video from the Edge rehearsal, take notes and tweak here and there, then that evening she’d work with her dancers.
Tomorrow, she was off to San Francisco.
Tuesday Brent would join her briefly.
Wednesday afternoon she had to fly to L.A. with Colin to meet with the reality show producers.
The busy week would keep her focus off her mom.
As she flipped her right blinker to descend into the condo’s parking lot, she spotted a car she’d never seen before parked outside the gate. A Buick. She was used to Audis, BMWs, SUVs, hybrids, Mini Coopers, and plenty of electric cars at her building. This vehicle was the answer in a which one of these things doesn’t belong game. Buicks weren’t common cars. They were old. They were hand-me-downs. Though she hadn’t memorized the rides of all her condo mates, she was sure she’d have remembered this earthy brown vehicle that hailed from days gone by.
She didn’t remember it.
A young guy in jeans, boots and a worn black T-shirt leaned against the trunk of the car, his elbows resting on the metal, smoking a cigarette.
He was doing nothing wrong. Technically.
But cars didn’t park by the gate. Young guys didn’t smoke and wait by her building. He didn’t look familiar at all. But Stefano probably hadn’t looked familiar to her dad either. Her spine crawled.
Better safe than sorry.
She heeded the warning bell. The automatic gate rose for her as it picked up on the transponder in her car that gave her access. Rather than slide into her regular parking spot in the garage—a garage that someone could easily enter by foot—she made a loop around the cars on the first level and exited on the other side.
The guy was still there. She couldn’t tell if he was watching her, or just waiting.