Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake) by Rachel Caine (books to read in your 20s female TXT) 📕

I look past him at my daughter. She seems completely clueless. “What? What did I do?”

I sigh. “Check your phone.”

She does, whipping it out of her pocket, and I see her expression go from guarded to shocked to utterly horrified. “Oh no.”

“Oh yes.”

“Vee? She broke my window?”

“Not broke,” Vee says quietly from behind me. “Kinda jimmied. Didn’t know you’d ignored my message.”

“Dumbass, I didn’t even know about it! You can’t just . . .” She’s actually angry. Lanny, for the first time I can remember, is holding her friend—maybe even her crush—to account. “Do you know what kind of trouble you could have caused? Oh my God, you’re lucky Mom didn’t shoot you!”

Mom almost did, a fact that makes me shiver. The gun feels heavy in my hand, and very, very lethal. “Go lock your window,” I tell my daughter. “Vee. Couch. Now.”

I trail her on the way back, and stoop to put my gun away. When I straighten up, she’s trying so hard to look inoffensive that it’s nearly comic. “I just wanted to make sure she was okay,” Vee tells me. “She texted me about the boys who put up that flyer on your door. There’s one over ’round my place on the telephone pole too.”

“Did you take it down?”

“’Course I did, what do you think I am?” She seems offended I’d even ask, but with Vee, honestly, I kind of had to. “I expect that guy who sent me the letter put it up. Right?”

Her instincts are good, but I just say, “I don’t know for certain. I guess since you’re here, you might as well stay the night. I don’t want you walking around in the dark.” The fact she was foolish enough to do that makes me itch, but that’s Vee: smart and stupid at the same time. That’s also being a teenager. Lanny’s growing out of it. I hope that Vee will too.

“Where’s Sam?” she asks. I notice that Vee’s usually Ms. P when it comes to me, but she treats Sam differently. Not sure what I make of it, or if I should make anything of it at all . . . and then it hits me, and I suck in a startled breath.

Sam.

I grab for my phone. There’s a notification from the alarm company on the screen; I swipe past it and see a missed call from Sam. He must have seen that the alarm triggered.

He’s okay.

I shut my eyes for a second in real relief, and then hit dial. He picks up on the first ring, and I hear the roar of road noise immediately. “Gwen?”

“Slow down,” I tell him. “We’re okay. It’s okay. Vee set off the alarm. Everything’s fine. Are you all right?”

“Oh, thank God. Yeah. I’m fine. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Take your time. The crisis is canceled.”

“In our house, it’s always just postponed,” he says, but he sounds better. More relaxed. And I can tell he’s slowing his speed to something reasonable. “I love you, Gwen.”

“I love you too. Please get home safe.”

“Oh,” Vee says as I hang up the call. “He ain’t here? Wow. Guess I really did put my foot in it. Y’all didn’t have a fight, did you?”

“No, Vee, we didn’t have a fight.” In her world, violent breakups seem far more likely than happy relationships. “You didn’t just come here to make out with my daughter, did you?”

“What? That’s ridiculous.” She lies pretty well, now that she’s settled. “I wanted to tell you about the flyer in my neighborhood. And make sure everything was okay here.”

“And you wanted to tell me something you found out,” Lanny says from the hallway. How long she’s been there, I don’t know. She’s looking at Vee with very adult eyes right now. “That was really, really dumb, Vee.”

“I know. Sorry.” Lanny sinks down on the couch near Vee, but not next to her. I notice the space. So does Vee. “You’re mad.”

“Disappointed. What did you find out?”

I shift my weight as the meaning of that hits me. “Wait, what? What is Vee doing looking into anything?”

“Vee,” Vee says primly, “is helping. I told you I had a part-time job, didn’t I? Well. I work for Mailboxes For You, the one with all the storefronts all over town, which Lanta says is where you got mailed something you wanted to trace—”

“Wait, what? How do you know about that, Lanny?”

“I’m not blind,” she says. Cool as spring water. “I know the look you get when something to do with Melvin shows up. So I looked at the footage on the security system. You got a package. I saw the mailing envelope on your desk. Mailboxes For You, return address in Knoxville. It isn’t the place that Vee’s working. I just asked if she could find out who paid to send it. Just looking up a receipt, Mom. Nothing dangerous.”

She doesn’t know that. I don’t know that. But we’re well past that now. I look at Vee. “And?”

She pulls a piece of paper out of the pocket of her tight-fitting skinny jeans and hands it to me. It’s folded small, and clammy with sweat. I open it carefully. It’s a printout of a receipt, a courier package addressed to me here on Monday.

The return address is the Mailboxes For You on the other side of the city. But the credit card charge has a name on it.

The name is Penny Maguire.

It takes me a second to link the last name back to Sheryl Lansdowne, but once I do, I stare at that name hard until my eyes burn. Then I fold the paper up and put it on the coffee table. “Thank you,” I say. “And if I could ground you, you’d be grounded for a month, Vee. Best I can do is tell you that you do nothing else. No poking around. No asking questions. Nothing. Is that clear?” I don’t even wait for her answer. I turn to my daughter. “And you’re damn lucky that