Gone Again: A Thriller by Minka Kent

Author:Minka Kent [Kent, Minka]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2023-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

GENEVIEVE

Present day

I collapse on our thrift store sofa Sunday evening, exhaustion wearing into my bones and my eyes so tired they cross if I focus on something across the room.

“Hey, Mom.” Charlie saunters from the hallway, sliding her phone into the back pocket of her shorts. “I thought that was you.”

She takes a seat beside me, but before I get a chance to appreciate it, my bedroom door swings open, and out walks my husband.

“Oh, hey,” Brad says, a half-empty beer bottle in hand. “Was wondering when you were coming home.”

He was wondering . . . but apparently not enough to pick up the phone.

My husband plants himself in his go-to recliner, and in a rare blink-and-I’ll-miss-it moment, they both gift me their undivided attention.

This is . . . unnatural.

“Did you two miss me today or something?” I ask.

“Something like that,” Brad says with a wink. He’s never been good at sharing any kind of emotion, not that I have much room to talk. Maybe that’s why we worked so well together in the early years: we had a ridiculous amount of sex, and we also had an emotional understanding. We didn’t talk about how we felt, and we didn’t need fancy displays of affection to know we were committed to one another.

These days I feel like the very thing that worked for us from the start has now backfired in our faces.

“Did you have dinner yet?” I ask.

“Dad ordered pizza,” Charlie volunteers.

I bite my lip to keep from reminding them we have an abundance of frozen pizzas in the freezer. I picked them up last weekend at the store—five pies for ten dollars. Dinner doesn’t get much cheaper than that.

At least they didn’t starve, I guess . . .

“Did you find Aunt Celia?” my daughter asks.

Brad’s gaze is trained on me.

I didn’t realize either of them cared.

“No,” I say. “But I talked to some of her friends today.”

“And?” Brad asks.

“There are some theories floating around.” I look to my husband. “Nothing with merit, though.”

“Maybe Uncle Rob did it,” Charlie says, blurting her accusation with the kind of casualness that could only come from a teenager. It catches me off guard for a moment. And then I remind myself Charlie and Rob have exchanged a total of maybe eight words—ever. He isn’t exactly an adoring uncle, and she isn’t exactly a textbook-perfect niece. There’s no attachment there, and I doubt there ever will be.

“Why would you say that?” I ask, not because she’s in trouble but because I’m curious.

“Isn’t it, like, always the husband or whatever?” She shrugs, picking at a hangnail on her thumb. “Maybe Uncle Rob was having an affair or something. Remember my friend back in Cross Beach? Stacia Drake? Her mom was cheating on her dad with their personal trainer, and the dad killed her, the other guy, and himself.”

Brad and I exchange looks.

“You were only nine years old when that happened,” Brad says. “You remember all of that?”

“It was all anyone was talking about for months.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.