Should I try to get it? Pull it out of her fingers?
No.
Too risky.
Tip-toing through the clutter, Charlotte moved into the hall and opened the door to Alice’s old room.
“Mariska? Darla?” she whispered.
Two heads peeped from the closet.
“She fell asleep. Let’s get out of here. Quiet.”
The three of them crept out the back door, the way they’d come.
Back on the street, they released a collective sigh.
“I thought we’d be in that closet the rest of our lives,” said Mariska.
“We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know if that man was killing you,” said Darla. “I had to hold Mariska to keep her from flying into the room.”
“I was going to beat up that boy,” said Mariska.
Charlotte chuckled and then sobered at the memory. “I was under the bed during the whole thing. I was about to help her when he left. It was terrible.”
“What happened?” asked Mariska.
“I don’t know. The two of them were going to smoke pot, I think, but when Crystal went to get it from her closet, something happened. She started crying. The man got mad and they fought. She threw something at him and I thought he was going to kill her.”
Mariska clucked her tongue. “She shouldn’t be hanging out with men like that. You’d never hang out with a man like that. Declan is a sweetheart.”
Charlotte had to agree. “I guess I’m lucky.”
“You’re not lucky. You’re smart,” said Darla.
“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, as soon as her boyfriend left, Crystal threw herself on the bed and cried herself to sleep. That’s when I was able to sneak out.”
“I heard her, it was heartbreaking,” said Mariska.
They fell quiet as each dealt with her own nerves during the walk back.
Darla broke the silence.
“Did I hear Crystal talking when she was crying?”
Charlotte nodded. “That’s what I was just thinking about. She kept saying, I’m so sorry, over and over.”
“Sorry for what?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Do you think she was crying over what she did to Alice?” asked Mariska, as they reached the point where they’d each turn off to their respective homes.
Charlotte sighed. “I don’t know.”
Chapter Sixteen
Mina heard the girls’ boots on the tile kitchen floor before she saw them. The twins both wore their riding clothes.
“No breakfast?” asked Payne.
Mina looked at her watch. It was already eight and she hadn’t even made coffee.
“I’m sorry. Make yourself some toast or cereal.”
“But we always have bacon on Sunday,” moaned Gemma.
Mina sniffed. It was true. They always had bacon on Sundays. “Do you have time before your lesson? I could put it on now.”
“I’m good with cereal,” said Payne opening the refrigerator door to grab milk.
Gemma scowled at her sister and then did a double take at Mina. “Were you crying?”
“No. I’m tired.” Mina wiped at her eyes, unsure how much she wanted to share with the girls. She wasn’t exactly lying. She’d been unable to sleep for most of the night, which was why she’d overslept. Thank goodness Kimber wasn’t alive. He would have lost his mind to wake up bacon-less on a Sunday.
The girls will be fine. Both without bacon and without Kimber, who had only ever had two speeds: blustering and unavailable. The girls hadn’t been close to Kimber. Which was a shame, considering. He’d acted as little more than a provider of food, clothing and money, and that was the way he liked it. While he’d done the right thing and taken the girls in after his brother’s death, it hadn’t been a choice he’d made happily. At first he’d refused and then, shortly after his brother’s will was read, he had a sudden change of heart. It might have had a little to do with her own constant harping.
There was no way she was going to let him deny his responsibility to those girls. To any of the orphans caused by that crash, for that matter.
Kimber wasn’t an idiot. He knew she would take care of the girls without asking for his help beyond financial assistance and he knew letting her play mother would keep her around to take care of his every whim. He knew she wasn’t able to have kids, she’d told him as part of her argument for taking in the girls. She did become a mother though, and Kimber was back to being Kimber—aloof and uninterested in everything but businesses.
He’d always been a selfish man. All he ever really wanted was to be a childless bachelor entertaining an endless string of floozies. If he hadn’t gotten ill, he would have had the house to himself again, even if his floozy days were long over. The girls would be going to college soon, and Lyndsey had moved out to the apartment over the barn years ago—
Lyndsey.
How was she going to help Lyndsey? Why did she have to be there when he fell? How could she help her without incriminating herself?
I can’t go to jail.
Who would take care of the twins?
Behind her something buzzed and Mina turned to see her silenced phone glowing on the countertop. She didn’t recognize the number and picked it up.
“Hello?”
“Mina, it’s me.”
“Lyndsey?” She turned away from the girls and whispered into the phone. “I was just thinking about you. We need to talk.”
“I’m in jail.”
“What?”
Mina gasped and turned to find the twins both staring at her. She forced a laugh and rolled her eyes as if Lyndsey had told her a joke and walked out of the room to the front porch.
“Mina? Are you still there?”
“Yes. I was in the kitchen with the twins. I don’t want them to hear.”
“You have to get me out
