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“Kat has a flight back the UK today. I completely forgot, she’s been calling me all morning. My phone was on Do Not Disturb.” He glanced around for his keys while I trailed him. “Shit, if she misses her flight because I wasn’t there to get Amelia then I’m never going to hear the end of it. She’s gonna be so pissed. Where the hell are my keys?”
I didn’t much care about Kat’s flight, she could catch the next one. “My car is behind yours anyway. We’ll just take mine. You can call and beg your girlfriend’s forgiveness on the way.”
He nodded, chasing after me without putting shoes on because he probably rightly realized I wasn’t waiting for him. I got behind the steering wheel while he slid into the passenger seat, screwing his nose up at the state of my car. “Jesus, Lyric, this thing is a death trap if ever I saw one.”
I just glared at him and revved the engine. The car zoomed backward out of the driveway, tires squealing on the blacktop.
Lleyton clutched the holy-shit bar dramatically, but once I’d straightened the old girl out and was headed toward Kat’s place, he called her.
It went to her voicemail. Over and over again, his calls went unanswered. A growing sense of unease prickled at the back of my neck, growing because he wasn’t saying anything.
“Lleyton. What time was Kat’s flight?”
His teeth were mashed together. “Ten minutes ago.”
My breath caught. “Where is Amelia if Kat is on a plane? Would she have just left her at the house?” I fought back tears at the thought of my little girl waking up alone in that big house, scared and feeling like we’d abandoned her.
But Lleyton shook his head. “Kat loves Amelia. More than she loves me probably.” He cleared his throat. “She can’t have kids of her own, Lyric. It’s why she clings to Amelia so hard. She wouldn’t just leave her in the house alone.”
It did explain how motherly she was to Amelia, and I would have felt sympathy for her. But I couldn’t feel anything until I knew where Amelia was. “So where are they, then?”
Lleyton scraped his hands through his hair. His white teeth sank down on his bottom lip.
It was his tell. His giveaway that he was lying. I’d grown used to it over the early years of Amelia’s life, whenever he promised he’d be there for us when he knew very well he wouldn’t. But I hadn’t seen it lately, not since he’d started dating Kat and they’d become a more permanent fixture in Amelia’s life. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Kat wants to move back to the UK. She wants Amelia to go with us.”
I glanced over at him sharply. “What? You aren’t taking my daughter to live in England, Lleyton!”
He held his hands up. “I know. I know. I already tried to tell her that. I’m not willing to move there either and be apart from Amelia. But what if…?”
I was ready to steer the damn car right off the road. “What if what? Speak, Lleyton! For God’s sake.”
“We got her a passport so she could come to the UK. It was just supposed to be on a holiday! I swear. Kat wanted Amelia to meet her parents.”
I shook my head over and over, reading between the lines. “No. No, she wouldn’t have.”
Lleyton didn’t answer. He just kept calling, redialing every time it went to Kat’s voicemail.
“I don’t know where to go,” I mumbled to myself helplessly. Did I go to Kat’s place, hoping she’d left Amelia behind? Did I go to the airport and demand they ground the plane? “We need to call the police, Lleyton! If you’re right, it’s kidnapping!”
“It’s ringing!”
My heart thumped. I drove aimlessly now, circling the streets of Providence, desperate for Kat to pick up the phone and tell me my daughter was safe.
Kat’s screech of anger was so piercing even I flinched on the other side of the car. She yelled so loud Lleyton jerked the phone away from his ear.
Even still, he and I both heard every word Kat screamed down the phone line. “I was nearly late for my flight, Lleyton! You’re so lucky it was delayed or I wouldn’t have made it! You are the most inconsiderate, immature, irresponsible man I have ever met. You swore to me you would be there on time, but I couldn’t get a hold of you, no matter how many times I called. I had to call Lyric, and even she wasn’t around. What is wrong with the two of you? What if there’d been an emergency with Amelia? Do you have some aversion to phones or is it just when it’s me on the other end? If Lyric’s grandmother hadn’t answered and come to get Amelia, I would have had to drive her back to you and then I definitely would have missed my flight. You really are a piece of shit sometimes, you know?”
I froze.
Lleyton carried on like Kat hadn’t just rocked my entire world. All that was in his voice was relief that he’d been wrong. That his girlfriend hadn’t abducted our child. “I’m so sorry, baby. I swear, when you get back, I’m going to make it up to you. Dinner. Candlelight. The works.”
Kat sniffed on the other end. “You’d better.”
But all I could hear was her saying my grandmother had picked up Amelia. “Kat,” I choked out, strangling the steering wheel. “Who picked up Amelia?”
Lleyton looked over at me like I was stupid, but put Kat on speakerphone “She said your grandmother, right, babe?”
