God, she didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone cry that many tears, especially not silently.
Then Isabella leaned toward the handle and Fiona found herself trying (and failing) to shout, Don’t do it!
Isabella flushed.
Then she walked out of the room.
Fiona hovered over the toilet and looked down it hoping for the first time that Prentice’s excellent plumbing would be faulty.
It wasn’t.
Fiona floated back into the bedroom. It was dark, Isabella motionless in bed, her eyes closed but with her super keen, supernatural senses, Fiona saw that her hands were clenched so tightly they were mottled red but white at the joints.
Fiona watched Isabella a long time, not knowing what she was feeling but thinking something pretty colossal had changed in the way she thought about Isabella Austin Evangelista.
She only knew it had changed when Isabella finally fell asleep, her hands relaxed to open and Fiona saw the deep grooves that her fingernails had made in her palms.
It wasn’t even the new, angry, purple grooves.
It was the overabundance of white, fingernail-shaped scars that surrounded them.
Chapter Three
Ginger Snaps
Isabella
Isabella sat next to Prentice the next morning as he drove them toward Fergus’s home after they’d dropped the children off at school.
She had carefully missed the pre-school preparations, although she heard them because she’d opened her door so she could. Mostly Sally’s ceaseless chatter but also Jason’s low mumbles and Prentice’s deep rumbly commands. It sounded manic but fun.
She’d come down at what she’d hoped was the last minute (and she’d been correct) and did her best to be cool and detached from Sally and failed miserably. She couldn’t be cool and detached from the sweet, high-spirited, brown-eyed, brown-haired girl who looked startlingly like Fiona, a fact which had to be both heartbreaking and easing for Prentice.
Then she’d asked for a ride to Fergus’s to which Prentice agreed.
While on their way to school, Sally asked approximately one thousand questions about what “Mrs. Evangahlala” was making for dinner that night give or take a question or two. Then she’d stood at Isabella’s door of Prentice’s Range Rover, slapping it and waving madly until Isabella smiled and waved back. Only then did she turn and run toward the school.
Now, Isabella had her hands clenched tightly in fists, feeling the calming pain, her eyes looking out the window.
“This is the last time you’ll have to do this. I’ve a rental car being delivered today,” she told him.
“Aye,” he replied shortly.
Isabella forged ahead in her attempt to be polite. “I know Annie has a goodly number of guests coming this week but I’ll call around to some B&Bs and –”
He cut her off, “I wouldn’t do that.”
Isabella persevered, “Maybe there’s a cancellation or –”
Without taking his eyes from the road, he interrupted her again, “Don’t do it, Isabella.”
She found this vaguely surprising. He’d made it perfectly clear he didn’t want her in his home. He’d made it infinitely clear he didn’t want her around his children. Why wouldn’t he want her to find alternate accommodation?
“It’s no bother,” she went on. “They have cancellations all the time, I’m sure something will come up.
He glanced swiftly at her then back to the road. “Likely, aye.”
“So, I’ll make some calls.”