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Carl walked past me, following dad into the kitchen. “Speak for yourself. I could eat more.”
I was alone for a moment before I followed them slowly. I sat at the breakfast bar as Dad got the frozen food from the fridge and Carl poured himself some more coffee. He grimaced when he took a sip. He always took his coffee black, but whatever Dad put in his own, it was always stronger than anything we could buy somewhere else. He just took another sip, the taste growing on his tongue.
Dad nuked some sausages, bacon, and pancakes in the microwave, then set everything on the counter top and they both sat down. Even though I wasn’t hungry, I grabbed a fork and stabbed a sausage, bringing it to my mouth and taking a bite. It didn’t taste half bad.
A pancake, that tasted awfully good, and two sausages later, I put the fork down as the other two continued to eat.
“So, Dad. What’s up?”
“Hmm?”
“You called us home, remember? What happened?”
Carl finished his food, poured himself some more coffee and turned his attention to Dad. Who, pretty much like my brother earlier, took his time eating, putting off answering. Usually, I was good at being patient with my dad, but I was starting to feel a little irritated. Finally, he finished his food, and threw away the packages, putting the dirty dishes in the sink.
“When’s your next race?”
“We don’t have anything for a while. But we’re comfortable, taking it easy in the meantime. Why?”
“Just wanted to know if you still have some cash you could spare to help your old man.”
I frowned at him. “Dad, we sent you more than enough money less than a month ago. You can’t have gone through it that fast.”
What the hell was he doing with it, anyway? Carl and I were racers, but I did a lot of investing on the side. I talked to both my brother and my dad into doing it, too. Neither one was into it, but I could talk Carl into it easier than I could my dad. If the stubborn bastard had listened to me ages ago, he wouldn’t need to keep bothering us.
I didn’t say any of that, though, because I knew it would just earn me a smack in the head.
“How much do you need?”
He gave the amount, and my eyebrows jumped up. We’d been sending him money for a while, but it wasn’t until some months ago when he started asking for more. We gave it to him, anyway. We weren’t exactly rich, but we weren’t hurting for money either. Still, all the money we’d been sending was a lot, and we were doing it two, three times a month now.
“Why do you need that much money?”
He frowned back at me. “All you need to know is I need the money. Will you help me with it, or not?”
He might as well have demanded we hand it over.
I shared a look with Carl. Yeah, we’d both had enough. Dad was okay, but… he was growing annoying in his old age.
We raced motorbikes for a living. It was okay, but it didn’t exactly pay the big bucks, not when you counted in earnings per year—which, I did. So, if he was thinking we were just going to support him now that we were living out on our own, he was sorely mistaken. If he wasn’t even going to tell us what the money was for, he was on his own.
“It would take a while to clear out the funds.”
I didn’t want to keep taking from our bank account. It was all the money we lived on, and though it was considerable, we would need it in the case of an emergency. I had a few stocks I could liquefy, but I didn’t like doing it just to hand the cash over.
“If you can wait, I can maybe have it for you in a couple days, five days tops.”
“Nah, it’ll be fine.” He grinned. “Will you boys be sticking around town?”
Carl and I shared another look, and we rose at the same time.
“Actually, dad,” Carl said, slowly. “Something came up and we need to go back. Something to do with our schedule. We left the hotel so we could leave early. We just stopped by to know what you wanted, and say goodbye.”
“Huh,” he was frowning again. “That’s too bad. I was hoping you’d stick around longer.”
I shrugged. “Sorry, dad.”
He waved it away. “Don’t worry about it. It’s work, you can’t exactly help it. Just don’t forget to keep in touch, all right? Maybe you can stay a while next time.”
Neither of us said anything to that.
“I’ll call to give you the details when we have a race next. Or email.”
“That’d be great. You boys take care, now. I know you gotta drive fast, but try not to wreck and break anything, yeah?”
“Sure, dad. We’ll see you around.”
We grabbed our bags on the way outside. I wondered what we were gonna do. We didn’t have a permanent place we lived, work pretty much took us all over the place, so we usually just stored the stuff somewhere when we didn’t need it.
“Let’s go to Emma’s place.”
The words were too sudden, breaking me out of my thoughts. It took me a moment to register. Then I scowled at my brother.
“Don’t you think we’d just cause her trouble?”
I wanted to go, I’d been thinking of it, but he didn’t know she was having as hard a time of it as we were with our dad. Probably worse for her.
“What, with her mom? We could just mention we saw her or heard she was in town and wanted to say hi because we haven’t seen her in so long.” He rolled his eyes. “It’s not like we’re going to tell her we spent the night with her daughter.”
That would not go over well.
“Even if we’re not, we have a reputation here, and yours is worse than mine. Yeah, it’s one from our high school days, but that sort of thing never dies. Not to mention, it’s gotten worse. A lot of people would assume just because of our occupation.”
“Whatever. We just play it like it’s a random visit on our way out of town because we haven’t seen anyone else from our high school days around. It should be an excuse she’d buy.”
I still wasn’t sure, but I kept my mouth shut and let Carl drag me over. It wasn’t so far from our home, just a couple of blocks over, around a corner. I would have been surprised Carl knew where she lived, but Mrs. Davis was pretty involved in town matters. Besides, I knew where she lived, too.
We dropped our bags beside the front steps, and I let Carl go up them and knock on the door, giving three sharp raps. We didn’t have to wait long. Sharon Davis opened the door, dressed casually with her hair held up.
She frowned at both of us when she saw us, but the look was more confused than unwelcoming.
“Carl and Abe Thomas. I didn’t hear you boys were in town.”
Carl, ever the charmer, smiled disarmingly. “We got here early yesterday to see our dad. But something’s come up so we’ll be leaving a little early.”
She looked around, saw our bags, and her frown cleared almost entirely.
“Oh, I see.” She eyed us curiously. “What can I help you boys with? I doubt you came by just to see me.”
“Mrs. Davis, we thought we saw Emma last night, she was out on the street going somewhere. We thought we’d stop by and say hi before we left town.”
The frown was back. “You boys remember my Emma?”
“She’s only a year younger than us. We saw her around, but she didn’t really have a lot of friends. No one else from high school is around for the weekend, and we haven’t seen her since her high school graduation.”
She eyed us both a little suspiciously and then shrugged her shoulders. “I’m afraid you boys are a little too late. If you saw her last night, she was probably going to a friend’s house. She left earlier this morning.”
Fuck.
She’d clearly said she was around for the weekend, though. What happened to make want to leave so quickly? Another argument with her mom, maybe?
“I appreciate you boys stopping by to pay my daughter a visit, but you might have to try next time.”
Only, I didn’t think there would be a next time. Emma had mentioned coming home every
couple of months. But not only would it seem like stalker behavior if we came back after two months asking after her, after how she talked about her relationship with her mom, I doubted she’d be coming back.
“Do you know where we could find her?”
Her eyes narrowed at Carl’s tenacity, but she sighed and didn’t argue. “She works at Central General Hospital as an intern, in the city, but I don’t know where she lives. If you want to get in touch with her, that’s where you start.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She just gave them both a narrow-eyed look. “You boys take care, now.”
It was practically an echo of our dad just moments ago. Then she went back inside and closed the door behind her.
Carl walked down the steps and grabbed his bag. I took mine and followed him.
“Well, there you have it. She’s not even in town. Probably left when we woke up.”
“Let’s go pay her a visit.”
“What?” I gave him an incredulous look that he didn’t see because he wasn’t looking. But he looked determined in a way I hadn’t seen in a while when he wasn’t getting on a bike, about to go on a race.
“She isn’t here, we haven’t seen her. We met her mom. “
