Page 10 of Lovely Darkness

“Nothing.” He turns and walks to the door and I jump up to follow. He opens the door slowly. McKay never did care that his bedroom door creaked like a mofo when he lived in this room, but I did. So I oil it regularly and it pays off tonight by not making a sound.

Nathan and I peek out into the hallway.

Empty.

He looks down at me, shooting a dirty look.

I point up at him. This point says, Don’t start with me, I fucking heard something.

And he understands all my points so he rolls his eyes and crosses the hallway to Maggie’s room. He opens the door slowly so he won’t wake her, just in case she’s in there, but she’s not in there. Just an empty bed. And it’s not even messy. She didn’t even sleep in it.

“I knew it.” I say this out loud and I do not say it quietly.

“Shhh,” Nate chastises me. “We have guests upstairs.”

I lower my voice to a whisper-yell. “I’m tired of this! We are her parents, not Adam!”

“Indie.” Nate is tired. And he’s really not bothered by Adam’s possessiveness of Maggie, which kinda pisses me off. But then again, it’s probably my fault because he never got to be Maggie’s father, even before Adam took her away from us. His voice is low and grumbly. “If she’s with Adam, she’s fine. We should just go back to bed—”

“No! I want to know what they’re up to.” I push past him and go down the hallway. I briefly consider waking McKay up and telling him that Adam is gone again, but McKay is like Nathan. They both let Adam do whatever he wants. Especially when it comes to Maggie.

I stop at the top of the stairs and listen for more noise. Nathan stands next to me. We wait for several seconds, then he says, “She’s fine.”

“Fine? She’s six years old, Nathan. And she’s out in the middle of the night with a very bad guy.”

Nate scoffs. “Let’s go back to bed.”

But just as he says that we hear one of the French doors in the back of the house open and close. I point at him again. This point says, I told you so, which earns me another eye roll in the hazy darkness.

I go down the stairs, my bare feet naturally silent as I creep my way down the hallway towards the kitchen and then smack right into McKay’s bare chest.

“Fuck’s sake, Indie.” He pushes me off him. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Maggie’s missing.” That’s Nate.

“Yeah,” McKay says. “I heard Adam get up and I followed them.”

“Did they leave in the truck?” I ask.

“No. They’re on the boat. Fishing, I think.”

“Fishing?” This one word drips with disbelief. “Come on. Fishing?”

McKay shrugs. “What? He takes her fishing like every day. It’s a thing they do.”

“Every day,” I sneer. “Not in the middle of the night.”

“It’s practically morning,” McKay says. “Lots of people leave to fish at this time of the night. Right, Nate?”

Nate is yawning, slowly and cavernously, like he hasn’t got a care in the world. “Yep.”

“How come the two of you don’t care that he takes her out in the middle of the night? I don’t get it. If that were me”—I poke McKay in the chest—“you sure as fuck would have words with Adam about it.”

“Name one time,” McKay drawls in his Southern accent, “Adam Boucher took you fishing as a child.”

“That’s not nice.”

“Indie.” I’m on Nate’s last nerve now. I can hear it in his voice. “Can we please go to bed now? Maggie and Adam are fine.”