It wasn’t until Barbara had pulled the car out of the garage that she realized she’d forgotten her purse on the kitchen counter. She left the car running as she dashed back inside, afraid something might stop her from leaving again. Sure enough, as she crossed the kitchen from the side door, she heard a strange, soft murmuring coming from the living room. Hannah talking on the phone, maybe? But the conversation was oddly one-sided, and Hannah’s voice was strangely high. Barbara inched around the corner to see what she was doing out there.
Hannah was sitting on the couch with Cole’s legs stretched across her lap, the rest of him tucked warmly into the crook of her arm. Hannah must have woken him the second Barbara left the house—exactly as she’d told her not to do. She was reading to him, too, from The Missing Piece, her favorite book when she was little. For years, Hannah had slept with it under her pillow every night.
Barbara swallowed the urge to snap at Hannah for defying her. Instead, she clenched her jaw and forced herself back out to the car. So she could find the person she really needed to be snapping at.
Fifteen minutes later, Barbara was pulling up Stella’s long curved driveway toward the huge mansion at the top of the hill—a new-made-to-look-old structure set deep in the woods. With a stone facade and rambling wraparound porch, the house was big enough for a family of seven, maybe more. And yet there poor, husbandless Stella lived with all her money and her Botox and her two measly messed-up children.
Barbara forced herself to take a deep breath, pasting a smile on her face as she headed up the polished stone walkway, which went on forever before turning toward the front steps and two absurdly huge red doors. Stella wasn’t going to admit that something had happened to Cole in her home. Barbara would need to ease her into it, charm her a little. She took another breath and smiled harder before she rang the bell.
A teenage boy opened the door, Aidan, presumably. He had shaggy surfer hair, a freckled nose, and large golden-brown eyes. Barbara had once asked Hannah what he looked like. She’d said, Cute, I guess, unimpressed in that way Hannah always was by boys. But even Barbara had to admit Aidan was a good-looking kid. She could only imagine the piles of broken hearts he’d left in his wake. What a stroke of luck that he’d answered the door. She was much more likely to get something out of a cocky kid like Aidan—too arrogant to be careful—than Stella.
“You must be Will’s brother, Aidan?” Barbara smiled so hard it made her cheeks ache. “My son, Cole, is in class with Will.”
“Yeah?” He looked past Barbara, staring vacantly as if trying to process Cole not being there behind her. Was he high, or slow, or something? Was that what Stella was hiding? Barbara had also asked Hannah what Aidan was like, but she didn’t know. He was new to school and a year younger and didn’t really hang out with anybody, she’d said. Certainly not, Barbara suspected, the group of popular kids that Hannah counted as her closest friends. Hannah did say there were rumors that Aidan had gotten into trouble at his last school, and he’d already gotten into more than one fight at Ridgedale High.
“Well, Cole’s not here right now, Aidan,” Barbara went on, tilting her head a little to the side to make eye contact. “But Cole has been spending a lot of time here lately. Do you maybe know if the boys saw something here that they weren’t supposed to? Like a TV show or a video game or something?” Or, you know, you doing something horrible. Barbara stepped closer and tried to soften her expression. But her face felt like it was made of rubber. “We don’t think for a second you did anything wrong, Aidan. I’m sure whatever happened was an accident.”
“An accident?” He looked angry all of a sudden. Really, really angry. Like someone who had something horrible to hide. “Seriously, lady, what the hell are you talking about?”
There was a voice then, coming from inside the house. Stella, surely. Shoot. Just when Barbara was getting somewhere. With his hand on the doorknob, Aidan turned to shout back. “Cole’s mom!” And then, annoyed: “How would I know? Why don’t you ask her?”
A second later, Stella appeared in the doorway, shooing Aidan off until he disappeared into the house behind her. “Excuse me, Barbara.” She crossed her long, muscular arms. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes aglow. “But can I help you?”
So much for charm. At least Barbara could cut to the chase now.
“I need to know what happened to Cole, Stella.”
“Have you lost your mind, Barbara?” Stella looked her up and down. “Are you seriously accusing us of something?”
“Cole said that something happened here that scared him.” That might as well have been the truth. “He’s too afraid to tell me exactly what, but he’s positively traumatized.”
“So you thought it was appropriate to try to traumatize my son by interrogating him outside of my presence?” Stella worked her neck like a teenager. “What are you, Barbara? The Mommy Gestapo?”
“I’m just trying to help Cole,” Barbara said, her voice cracking unexpectedly. She couldn’t get emotional, not now. Not in front of Stella. She’d go right in for the kill. “If it was Will who was traumatized, I’m sure you’d be asking the same questions.”
“Listen, Barbara,” Stella said, her voice trembling. She checked over her shoulder to be sure that Aidan had gone. “I think I’ve been pretty patient with you and your husband, but I’ve had just about all the bullshit accusations I can take for one week.”
“I’m here as a mother who’s worried about her son, Stella. I’d think you could have some compassion. I just want to restore calm to my household.” Barbara should leave it there, she knew. But there was that look on Stella’s face—so smug. “Maybe it’s hard for you to understand, but not everybody lives for drama.”
“Drama?” Stella snorted. “I’m sorry, is that some kind of dig? You don’t even know me, Barbara.”
But Stella’s best friend, Molly, did and it was she who’d said that Stella was a drama queen. Barbara wanted so badly to rub that in Stella’s face, but Steve would have killed her.