Same situation. This is not ur fault, Riley. U r a romantic and u assumed ur man was too. But turns out he is just a regular dude. Harsh.
xx,
Jenna B
Personal Success Concierge™
Bestmillenniallife.com
Dear Jenna,
That is maybe the most depressing thing about this whole situation: “turns out he is just a regular dude.”
PS: Who are Kourtney and Scott?
All best,
Riley
Hey Riley,
I hope ur kidding. If not, I am going to need to revoke ur Millennial card, haha, lol!
xx,
Jenna B
Personal Success Concierge™
Bestmillenniallife.com
Dear Jenna,
I’m going to sleep now. I know I’m going to have to talk to Jay about this eventually, but not while he’s on a date. Ugh. I can’t even type that without feeling sick.
All best,
Riley
Hey Riley,
Try some peppermint tea. It’ll help with the nausea. And if u pour a little Tito’s in there, it’ll help with the broken heart. And remember the wise words of T. Swift, the queen of breakups, “If somebody hurts you, it’s okay to cry a river, just remember to build a bridge to get over it.”
xx,
Jenna B
Personal Success Concierge™
Bestmillenniallife.com
CHAPTER 32
The phone ringing in the middle of the night with bad news is a cliché, but it’s a cliché for a reason. So when my phone rang at 2:47 a.m. I knew it was not going to be good.
“Riley, can you come to Tuttle Gen?” It was Thad.
I sat straight up in bed. “What is it? Is it David?”
“No, it’s Tabitha,” he said. “She’s okay, but she’s had an accident and is asking for you. Third floor, room 302.”
I drove to the hospital as fast as I could and parked in one of the four empty spaces in the lot closest to the door. Given that it was almost 3 a.m., there weren’t many people around. I locked my car and literally ran inside, zipping past two men on a smoke break at the requisite twenty feet from the hospital building.
“Hey Riley, you okay?” One of the men called out to me.
I turned around and in the dark I could barely make out Jack and another man sitting on a bench, the orange tips of their cigarettes like two floating pinpricks of light.
“Oh, hi Jack,” I said, but didn’t stop moving. I didn’t have time to chitchat. “I’m fine, a friend of mine has had an accident.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Hope she’s okay!”
“Thanks.” I gave him a backward wave as I approached the front doors and hurried toward the elevators. I’d never been to the hospital at this time and it felt spooky. The halls were dark, and although I saw the occasional person working, the place felt empty. I reached her room and knocked on the door, holding my breath, afraid of what I might find on the other side.
“Geez, finally,” Tabitha said as I walked in.
Her impatience reassured me that whatever happened wasn’t life-threatening, but the sight of her lying in the hospital bed in the context of everything that had happened over the past three days was more than a little disturbing. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“Of course I’m not okay,” she said. “I’m going to have to wear a freaking boot under my wedding dress!”
“Thanks for coming, Riley,” Thad said. He sat in a chair next to Tabitha’s bed and held her hand tight in his. “Babe, I keep telling you—don’t worry about the wedding.”
“I’m not pushing anything back,” she said firmly. “In nine days, we are getting married if I have to be rolled down the aisle in this bed.”
He put his hands up in surrender. I had a feeling that was going to be a familiar gesture for the rest of their relationship.
“Just tell me what happened,” I said.
Tabitha took in a big breath. “I’ve come across some new information, and in the course of gathering this information, I . . .” she paused. “I made an error in judgment that caused some physical harm, so I will need you to pick up where I left off.”
Thad made a scoffing sound and Tabitha shot him the evil eye before continuing. “Carl is clearly overwhelmed and time is of the essence here, so I decided to do some research and drive around to all the tobacco farms in the area. You know, knock on doors, talk to the owners, fish for information—that sort of thing.”
I was aghast. “Tabitha, that is really dangerous!”
She waved me off. “Thad came with me. Besides, I’ve taken Krav Maga for six years and carry a can of pepper spray everywhere I go. No one is going to mess with me.”
“And yet here you lie in a hospital bed,” Thad said. You could tell he was more scared than angry.
“You know it has nothing to do with that,” Tabitha said with a sweetness not typical for her.
“Go on,” I said, anxious to find out how we ended up where we were.
“I visited three farms in the area and was able to talk to the owners at all of them. I dug around for information—did they spend much time in Tuttle Corner? Did they see a cardiologist? I asked them any question I could think of that would prove a connection between them and the Davenports. They all ended up with a big fat zero. The fourth farm is owned by someone named Dwayne Statler, who was out of town when Arthur was killed. I never was able to get ahold of the owner of the fifth farm, so I went to the county registrar and found out it was someone named Charles Krisanski.”
“Krisanski?” I asked, a gnawing feeling starting in my stomach.
“Yeah, do you know him?”
“Maybe. Go on.”
“I dug a little deeper and soon
