The Sinner - Molly O'Keefe Page 0,54

break?”

“Whatever,” he said and took off for the stairs. And, I could only hope, a very ugly surprise.

I smirked.

“Savannah?” Janice said from the front desk, holding the phone. “It’s a man named Matt for you. He says he can’t find Katie.”

MATT

“Did you check in the tree?” Savannah demanded as she came charging through the door. I’d expected her to come running, but the anger was a surprise. The woman from last night was gone like she’d never been. And maybe that was the secret to Savannah. The parts of her she let me see were so separate from each other they were like different people.

“Of course,” I said. “When the water balloons didn’t come at noon that was the first place I checked.”

“Where’s Margot?” she snapped and threw her purse down on the kitchen counter. She was back in her prison warden outfit, all straight lines and buttons, but her hair was loose, pulled away from her face with a headband. A variation on her theme.

Her beauty and all those buttons totally wrecked me.

I coughed and stepped behind the counter so she wouldn’t notice my totally inappropriate erection.

“Right here,” Margot said, stepping into the kitchen wearing her robe.

“Good lord, Margot,” Savannah said. “It’s past noon and you’re just getting up?”

“So it would seem.” Margot’s eyes twinkled as she crossed to the coffeepot.

“Where have you been?”

“Anthony took me to New Orleans for the weekend. I got home late last night.” She filled a china teacup with coffee and sipped it black. “What’s got you in an uproar this morning?”

“Katie’s gone,” I said.

Margot blinked and turned to Savannah. “Gone?”

“No one’s seen her today. God, I hope she’s just hiding,” Savannah said. “This is what she usually does.” Turning back to Margot, she said, “I heard you come in last night, and I figured you’d keep an eye on her.”

“I’m sorry,” Margot said. “I forgot you went to work today. She just got—”

“Lost in the shuffle.” Savannah’s anger vanished and she looked so guilt-stricken it made my stomach do a flip. “She’s so mad at me right now. Did you check the rosebush or the vin—” She stopped and swore. “They’re all gone. All her hiding spots.”

She bent her head back so she could stare up at the ceiling and feel terrible about herself.

I wanted to hug her, ease that stress the way she’d eased mine last night. The way she touched me as if she cared, as if she saw right through to the bone and heart and blood that I was made up of, to the hard kernel that remained from the accident, like scar tissue.

“I’ll look upstairs,” Margot said, putting down her cup.

“I’ll check my office.”

The women were gone, leaving behind their individual scents, lemon and roses and the slightly acrid tang of regret and worry.

I didn’t know how I could help, or if my help would be accepted, but I wanted to do something. Wished I could do something. Anything. For her.

Savannah came barreling into the kitchen.

“No sign of her?” I asked.

“She’s not in the office,” Savannah said, grim and stony-faced. “Did you check the sleeping porch?”

“No,” I said. “Why do you think she’d go there?”

“She’s eight and she’s mad, Matt. Who knows why she’s doing anything?”

It was a good point and I stepped into her wake, following her to my room.

Savannah

I opened the big wood-and-glass doors to the sleeping porch and listened for any signs of my runaway daughter. Again. It was a lesson in compartmentalization. What happened last night in this room just didn’t exist right now. I banished the ghosts of our animal selves some place far far away.

“I know you’re in here,” I said, opening a closet in the corner. Nothing but a long-forgotten winter coat and a dusty Christmas wreath.

Guilt was a stitch in my side as I scanned the nearly empty room. Only Matt’s neatly made bed - which I ignored - and duffel bag. The terra cotta flowerpots, cracked and covered in dust, sat in the corner.

The smell of him—sunshine and hard work and something clean, something totally Matt—was everywhere. And beneath that I imagined there was something of us, in the air.

I’d forgotten my daughter today. Forgotten her. And I wasn’t stupid. I knew, in part, it was because of Matt, because of this growing obsession I had with the man.

Did good mothers forsake their attraction to men for their kids? Was that what was required of me right now?

Because I didn’t want to let go of it. Even though I