The Promise of Us (Sanctuary Sound #2) - Jamie Beck Page 0,8
friends now. Not when he’d take Peyton’s side of everything.
She hit “Send” before hauling herself out of the car, which smelled like damp laundry that had been sitting in a warm dryer too long. She peeled the seat of her wet pants away from her bottom. Nice.
“Hello!” Claire called out as she entered her folks’ house. She leaned on Rosie while shucking out of her snow boots.
“Claire?” Her mom appeared from the vicinity of the kitchen, wearing a warm smile and a pink flannel robe. Saturdays at the McKenna home usually involved lazy mornings of crossword puzzles, breakfast strata, and gossip. “I didn’t know you were stopping by.”
Within three seconds, Claire found herself in the middle of her mom’s reassuring bear hug. Ruth McKenna was a champion hugger. When Claire was young, the overt affection had been a bit suffocating and uncool, especially in front of her friends. With time, she’d come to appreciate the comfort.
Her parents had suffered two miscarriages before they had Claire, and one after, which explained why they’d always treated her like she was made of spun glass. Things got worse after the shooting. Those surgeries. The recovery. Back then, Claire could hardly blink without her mom taking her temperature and calling the doctor. If her folks could’ve locked her in the house forever, they might have. She might’ve let them, too.
That was back in the days of frequent nightmares and panic attacks, when any unexpected sound or semblance of a crowd had made Claire nauseated, sweaty, and weak.
Bit by bit, she’d assimilated back into the familiar setting of her hometown, uninterested in venturing out into the nasty world where the news rarely made anyone smile. After all, life-changing danger had visited her just thirty miles up the highway. At least her previous years spent in tennis training and competition had given her a taste of big cities like Boston and the rural beauty of Vermont. Now, her simple, safe life seemed like the smartest choice, and not only because it helped keep the nightmares and panic attacks at bay.
“I just left Steffi’s house.” She yanked her scarf off and tossed it over the back of a wingback chair, then shrugged out of her coat and threw it over the scarf. “Can I borrow some PJ bottoms and toss my pants in the dryer while I’m here?”
Her mother’s brows drew together in that familiar pattern of concern. She had one of those pretty heart-shaped faces. Short, curly auburn hair fringed her forehead, framing bright-blue eyes so disproportionately large she looked like a Bratz doll. “What happened to you?”
Claire placed both hands on Rosie’s ivory handle. “An unfortunate run-in with a gnarly patch of ice.”
Her mom clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Are you hurt? How’s your hip?”
“A snowdrift cushioned the fall. I’d be completely fine if it hadn’t happened in front of Logan.” She started toward the kitchen. “As you might guess, I need chocolate. And maybe some Cheetos.”
To date, her unfortunate stress-eating habit hadn’t been a problem because most days she remained fairly calm, and so far, her body still melted calories like butter in a frying pan. Peyton’s impending arrival, however, might take Claire from a size two to a four.
“Let me go find you some bottoms,” her mom said as she went toward the stairs.
Claire rounded the corner to the kitchen, intending to beeline for the junk-food drawer, and nearly smacked into her dad as he stirred sugar into what she presumed, at this hour, was his third cup of coffee.
“Claire Bear!” He kissed her cheek. “What a nice surprise. Are you having lunch with us?”
She opened the cabinet below the silverware drawer and rummaged around. Oreos, Twizzlers, kettle corn . . . aha! She grabbed two bright-orange bags and tossed them on the counter. “If Reese’s and Cheetos count as lunch, then sure.”
“Uh-oh.” He chortled, taking a seat at the table, where his glasses rested on the open newspaper alongside a pencil. He pushed his glasses back into place and smiled. He wasn’t a handsome man—sort of average looking, with thinning brown hair, smaller brown eyes, and a dimpled chin—but his face radiated the kind of sincerity that instantly put you at ease and made you spill all your secrets. “What happened today, sweetie?”
How lucky to have two parents who not only loved her to pieces but knew her so well. Some adult children might complain about the daily reporting and general nosiness, but Claire didn’t. Her parents’ involvement gave her the