Cynda and the City Doctor - Theodora Taylor Page 0,44
went to visit my aunt in Canada for a while. Didn’t mean to worry you. Will check in again when I have a chance.
“No, of course, I didn’t tell him she went to Canada. Even with the border closed, he might go looking for her there. But Cynda…” Billie frets her lip. “Do you think that’s where she really is?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. There’s a heavy stone in my stomach now. “I mean she hasn’t gotten in contact again like she said she would. Also, I didn’t know she had an aunt in Canada. Did you?”
Billie shakes her head, her eyes big and worried. “I think we need to try to find her. Make sure she’s safe.”
“Me too,” I say. “But how? Like hire a detective?”
A new idea occurs to me then. “Wait, could you ask your mysterious Russian with the beach house right on the ocean to help us?”
“How did you know he’s Russian? And has a beach house on the ocean?”
“Girl, I am from small town Missouri. We don’t even have to sip the tea. We get all of it with just a whiff. Now, are you going to tell me this long story or what?”
Billie averts her eyes. “There’s nothing to tell.”
“You are so obviously lying!” I shoot back before the words are hardly out of her mouth.
“Okay, I’m getting off the phone now.” Billie shakes her head with a bitter laugh.
“But wait, I want to hear more about the sexy Russian? Is he mafia or a hockey player? I mean why else would a Russian be in South Caroli—”
“Bye, Cynda!”
This time Billie doesn’t give me a chance to protest again before hanging up.
“Whatever,” I grumble at the “Call Ended” notification.
But at least I didn’t have to explain to my best friend why I was currently living with my ex-lover in our back house.
A new text arrives just as I’m walking in through the back house’s kitchen door. It’s from E. “Laundry done and waiting outside your door along with the mail.”
The twins had been weirdly wonderful during the days I’d been gone. A hadn’t texted me again to intervene in any arguments. And I guess the severity of this virus finally sunk in with E after I had to isolate myself away from them. No more requests to visit friends or go to parties, only offers of help.
My heart cheers as I walk past Rhys, who’s at Grandma’s desk. For somebody who has two weeks off, he always seems to be working. I should ask him about that after I’m done folding the laundry.
But both that question and my joy fade when I open the door.
There’s a letter on top of the mail pile. From R. Smith.
Those movies where someone’s talking about nothing as they walk into the street, then get hit by a car… seeing the letter from the biological mother I’d placed in a hidden away box a few weeks ago—that’s what it felt like. Like getting hit by a car out of the blue.
Why would she be writing me? Again?
I bend down and pick the letter up.
“Who’s R. Smith?”
I don’t know how long I’d been staring at the front of that envelope before Rhys came along and asked me about the person I hadn’t told anyone about. Not even Billie or the twins.
Damn his height. He could easily read the address over my shoulder.
“No one,” I answer and decide at the same time. I shove the letter into my back pocket and making my smile dazzling in a way that’s meant to distract. “Laundry’s here! Those sibs of mine might be useful after all.”
That was actually an understatement. The twins had taken over grocery shopping and all the laundry since I’d been in quarantine. And from what I could tell, they were keeping the house clean and themselves alive with minimum squabbling. They’d even made us pancakes yesterday and left them covered on the back house’s front step.
They’d been so great about everything, I hadn’t been left with much to do, save cooking and cleaning and looking for jobs in Pittsburgh. But I was only cooking for two now—a man with a normal appetite—not two vacuums disguised as teens. The back house was much smaller than the one I’d been cleaning since coming back to Guadalajara. And as for looking for jobs, well that wasn’t going so well. Surprisingly, not many Pittsburgh hospitals were interested in interviewing an ED nurse in April who didn’t actually plan to move to the city until