Just Like Her by Fiona Zedde

Author:Fiona Zedde [Zedde, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B0D2DXNGMZ
Goodreads: 214077216
Publisher: Red Hills Publishing
Published: 2024-05-29T22:00:00+00:00

24

The day of Delphine’s visit to Willowbrooke arrived quickly. After arranging her absence from the office with Kimberly (while Karima prepared separately for hers), she left after lunch on Friday afternoon.

Her anxiety was so bad that she was twitching like a fiend in withdrawal when Karima, who’d insisted they take her new SUV, pulled into her driveway.

“Can I drive?” Delphine asked, eyeing the champagne-colored Porsche Cayenne. It was a stunning vehicle she’d taken note of a few times in the foundation parking lot. Maybe driving it would distract her from what she’d face at the end of the journey.

“Sure,” Karima said as she climbed out. “You can drive stick, right?”

Delphine rolled her eyes. “The questions you ask…”

Karima’s laughter rang out. She buckled herself into the passenger seat while Delphine got comfortable behind the wheel, adjusting mirrors and enjoying the quiet luxury of the butter-soft leather interior. Soon, they were on their way.

“You must get lots of speeding tickets,” Delphine said, pulling onto the highway and easily overtaking other cars to slip into the fast lane. The SUV’s tires whispered sweetly across the asphalt.

“Nope,” Karima said. “I have what the kids these days call self-control.”

They shared a smile.

The rest of the journey was peppered by easy conversation and laughter, their only stop a quick exit for Karima to pee out her coffee. Although Delphine mostly kept to the speed limit, they made it to the exit for Willowbrooke in a little under the usual two-hour drive time.

When she saw the highway sign for the town she had been avoiding for nearly twenty-five years, Delphine tensed up. Her hand shook with cold around the steering wheel, and it felt like a giant rock was sitting in her stomach. Unease prickled along her skin, and she tried—and failed—to stop her fingers from tapping against her thigh in anxiety.

“Are you okay?” Karima asked after it became obvious Delphine had mentally checked out of their previously easy conversation.

“No.” Delphine cleared her dry throat.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

She dredged up a grateful smile. “You’re already doing it by coming here with me.”

“Apparently, it’s not enough.” Karima’s hand rested on her arm, a light and comforting weight. “What else can I do?”

Keep your hand right there.

Delphine didn’t say it, though. She didn’t want to be quite so pathetic. But maybe Karima somehow read her mind, because her hand rested there for the rest of the ride.

“You’re not the same person you were when you left Willowbrooke, you know,” Karima said after a while. This was the first time she’d called the town by its real name instead of Mayberry. “You’re not a kid anymore. You have control over what happens this weekend. You can even turn the car around right now without telling anyone you made it here.”

“I know,” Delphine said. God, to turn around right now and never look back… She got a thrill just thinking about it. But she’d promised her sister.

Fall-colored trees lined the street as they drove toward town, passing a scattering of houses, each separated by low fences and lots of land.

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