The Fate Series Box Set (Robin and Tyler Book 4) Page 3

  My honesty has never been challenged this much. I grab my netbook off the end table and open my browser to Google. As asinine as it sounds, I type the words, What is the statute of limitations on keeping promises after death?

  The search results load in a fraction of a second, but I don’t feel like reading them. The internet can’t help me, not unless there’s a Google search engine wired directly to Heaven. I was so close to selling the McMullen Loft and raking in the commission, but I couldn’t do it. It was as if promising Grandpa on his deathbed put a curse on me ala Jim Carey in Liar Liar.

  Fuck my life. I throw my arms in the air and fall sideways on the couch. The television clicks on, its volume up entirely too high. I jump, bolting out of the couch as fast as if I’d been electrocuted. My house is haunted. My heart races as I look around the room expecting to see a ghost. But then I realize the remote control was under my head when I plopped over.

  A wave of relief gushes over me so quickly it hurts. Now I’m imagining things. I thought I was expecting Grandpa to die. I thought I was totally prepared for him to leave the earth—it was his time and he knew it as well as we did. So why has it turned my entire life upside down?

  And what the hell did he mean by telling me to find my happiness?

  Chapter 5

  My entire condo of personal possessions fit into seven of the twenty large U-Haul boxes I bought with my U-Haul rental. And one box is just purses. Talk about a total lack of stuff-size to box-size ratio. All of my furniture is on a one year lease from Suzie’s Staging and Home Organizing and although I’ve always felt like she didn’t give me the real discount she had promised when I moved in, I couldn’t be happier with my decision now.

  It’s eight o’clock when I finish packing. I haul the first of the seven boxes to my door, only to freeze in panic when I reach the doorknob. Only one person knows I’m moving out, and that’s the middle-aged woman in the rental office, who likes me so much she gave me back my deposit without checking out the condo for damage. I’m not particularly chummy with anyone in this complex, but I also don’t feel like answering the one question everyone will ask if they see me.

  Because I have no idea why I’m moving. It just feels like the thing to do. I don’t need my job anymore, not that I could even go back now after the fallout with Maggie. Money isn’t an issue. What do you do when money isn’t the issue? This is what people dream of their whole lives, and now I have the opportunity to pack up and run away with no cares at all and I’m only twenty five.

  It could be the right thing or the wrong thing to do, but I won’t know until I actually do it. And the rush of driving my SUV with the U-Haul traveling along behind it, not knowing where the hell I’m going, is keeping me from calling the whole thing off. Worst case, I will just find another place in Houston to live.

  Best case, I’ll discover why Grandpa did this to me.

  Dropping the box at the front door, I decide to wait another hour or so to take them outside. Yeah, right. As if moving in the middle of the night doesn’t make me seem even guiltier.

  The black leather couch feels cold when I sit on it. Not cool to the touch, but cold as if it’s shunning me, as if it’s not my couch anymore because I’m moving. It knows I’m a traitor. That terrible feeling comes over me again, starting as a tight clenching in my chest and the more I think about it, the more it spreads into my entire body. I feel sick.

  A slight tapping sound catches me off-guard. My foot stops tapping in a nervous motion on the floor and I sit up, my ears straining to hear the sound again. And it happens again, only this time it’s so loud I bolt up from the couch and throw my hands up as if preparing to fight. Who is at the door? No one visits me at this time of night. A murderer probably wouldn’t knock…

  Tiptoeing across the room, I grab my phone and prepare to dial 9-1-1. Then I creep to the front door, taking tiny footsteps. The knocks grow louder. Whoever it is really wants me to open the door so they can slash my throat. Okay, yeah, so I don’t know when I became so morbidly terrified of simple things, but I did.

  I peer through the tiny peephole in the door.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. It’s Miranda, my niece.

  I twist the deadbolt to the unlocked position and pull open the door cautiously. “Miranda?”

  She’s standing there with a dejected look, her brown hair mousy and in unwashed tangles around her face. I’ve never seen her like this. Granted, I don’t see her much at all except on holidays and occasionally when Maggie brings her to the office, but this girl won Class Favorite the last two years in a row and maintains a straight A average. What does she have to be dejected about? Her plaid pajama pants are frayed and dirty at the bottom and her tattered flip-flops have seen better days. On a closer look, her eyes are swollen and red. Something is not right.

  She looks at the floor. A pained expression flickers over her face. “Could I come in, maybe?” she asks. Her voice is small with a weak thread of hope.

  “Of course.” I throw the door open and step aside, feeling like a total ass for making her wait in the hallway so long in the first place. What the hell is wrong with me?

  She grabs a fat backpack off the floor in the hall and pulls it inside with her, looking around the room with curiosity as she walks inside. I don’t think she’s ever been to my condo before. Maggie has only been once, and that was to give me a ride to work when my car broke down.

  “How do you know where I live?” I ask, the words falling out of my mouth before my brain can think to make them sound less offensive.

  She stops, turns to me, and looks at the floor again. “I’ve heard Mom say you live here. I looked for your name on the mailboxes and found your apartment number.”

  “Oh,” I say. Makes sense. We stand in silence for a moment, me with the door wide open and her picking at her nail polish in the middle of my living room, backpack at her feet.

  “Are you moving or something?” she asks. Shit. I forgot about my move-in-secret plan. I close the door, ensuring that no one else will overhear. “Um,” I start, briefly wondering if I could make up some lie that will seem convincing, but not coming up with anything. “Yeah.”

  “When?” she says, looking at me in the eye for the first time since she arrived. I smile, hoping it will make her smile too. It doesn’t.

  “Oh you know.” I scratch my elbow and shrug. “Right now.”

  She sucks in a long breath of air and sighs. “Figures. I didn’t know that, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”

  “No, no it’s fine. Really. I can move tomorrow.”

  “Who moves in the middle of the night, anyhow?”

  I throw my hands in the air. “Someone who wants to keep it a secret.”

  This gets a tiny smile out of her. I take that tiny smile and roll with it—hoping to lighten the tension in here. “So I guess I’ll have to kill you now that you’ve caught me.”

  This does not get a smile out of her. She swallows, her eyes far away. “That would be great, actually. Can you make it quick and painless?”

  “Uh, what?” I smile stupidly, wishing this was still a lighthearted moment, but knowing it’s not.

  “Slow and painful is okay too. I don’t really care.”

  I sit on the arm of the couch. “Miranda, what’s going on?”

  She opens her mouth to speak, closes it, opens it again and says, “Can I have some water? I’ve been walking for hours.”

  I find the box marked Kitchen, rip it open and make her a glass of water. Miranda takes the glass with shaky fingers and drinks a small sip. I get my phone off the coffee table and unlock it. “I’m calling your mother. She’s probably worried sick about you.”

  “No!” Miranda rushes forward and pushes my hand, forcing the phone to press against my chest. “She’s not worried about me. She kicked me out.”

  “What?” There’s no way my sister would kick out her own daughter. All she does is brag about her and borrow her clothes. I point to the couch. �
�Sit.” With eyes wide like a toddler, Miranda sits as she’s told. The more I look at her, the worse she looks. There’s a large purple bruise on her upper arm, and her eyelids are swollen. It’s dawning on me now that there’s a completely different side to my sister that I know nothing about. “Tell me everything,” I say, my voice soft.

  Miranda takes another sip of water, obviously buying for time. “Where are you moving?” she asks.

  “Tell me what happened,” I counter, my hands on my hips.

  “Hollywood? Paris, maybe?”

  “I don’t know where, actually, I’m just going.”

  “Wow.” She nods, biting her lip. “That’s totally bad ass. I heard you quit your job.”

  “I didn’t quit—I—” The look on her face says she knows I didn’t quit. No telling what Maggie has said about me. “I—, I just decided I needed a new, er, career.”

  Miranda looks around the room but her eyes are far away. “I want to come with you. Take me with you. I don’t care where we go.”

  I frown. “I can’t do that.”

  “Yes you can. I’m eighteen.”

  “You have school.”

  “No I don’t.”

  “No wonder Maggie kicked you out! You’re an excellent student.”

  She cuts me off with a shake of her head. “I can’t go back. It would be too humiliating.”

  I take a deep breath. “You need to tell me what happened.”

  She matches my serious look with one of her own. “Promise me I can come with you.”

  “Tell me.”

  She stands up, her red eyes staring straight into mine. “Promise.”

  “I don’t even know you,” I say in a moment of desperation. The words hit her like a slap in the face and I immediately regret it. Of course I know Miranda; six-year-old me was there the day she was born, clinging to Grandpa’s hand and as he showed me her crib in the nursery. I just don’t know her. Maggie and I never hang out outside of work and to me, Miranda is just another weird teenager who I could never connect with. Kids hate me, teens included.

  She turns toward the balcony for a moment, and when she looks back, her eyes fill with tears. “I’m pregnant, okay? Please take me with you.”

  Chapter 6

  How could I say no to that? An hour later, all seven boxes plus one backpack are in the U-Haul and Miranda and I are cruising down Interstate 45, going north. I’ve never driven with a trailer before, and it’s proving to be a challenging task. Gusts of wind swoosh against the trailer and it tugs my car this way and that way, making me keep a death grip on the steering wheel. Miranda’s cell phone is charging via my car’s USB port and she’s playing Angry Birds. We haven’t spoken at all, but at least she seems content.

  This is beyond weird. I have so many questions to ask, but can’t seem to ask any of them. The girl in my passenger seat is going through more emotionally than I ever have, and I can’t even talk to her. We share the same blood—Grandpa’s blood—and I can’t even make myself talk to her, comfort her, anything. Relation or not, we’re strangers.

  My stomach growls in an embarrassingly loud protest two hours later. “Are you hungry?” I ask.

  “God, yes,” she says, clutching her hand over her stomach. She reaches for her backpack and unzips it. “My wallet is in here somewhere.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say, practicing a new type of smile that I hope will make her feel better. “I’ll pay. Grandpa really took care of us, didn’t he?”

  “What do you mean?” she asks, zipping her backpack closed and shoving it under her feet.

  I want to say duh, but I stop myself. “His inheritance.”

  She cocks her eyebrow at me, completely unaware of what I’m talking about. I change lanes to let an impatient motorcycle driver behind me in the fast lane. “I never knew he had so much money saved up. I always thought the old man was broke, ya know?”

  “I didn’t get any inheritance,” she says with a shrug. “Well he left me his glass figures that I’ve always liked, and some other things. But not money if that’s what you mean.”

  I almost swerve off the road in shock. “Grandpa left you ten thousand dollars. It was in his will.”

  Her eyes light up. “You’re shitting me. There’s no way.”

  An angry feeling wells up inside me. “Maggie didn’t tell you? You didn’t get a cashier’s check after he died?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Mom gave me the stuff Great Grandpa left me, but she didn’t say anything about money.”

  “Why would she keep money from you?”

  Miranda kicks her backpack. “I don’t know, but money would help a lot with my situation right now.”

  I touch her arm in what I hope to be a comforting gesture, but it makes the awkwardness grow thicker inside my SUV. Without a word or another forced empathetic look of pity, I put my hand back on the steering wheel.

  The road ahead of us is dark and empty. “I guess we’ll keep driving until we find an exit with some food,” I say just as my stomach grumbles. The clock on my dashboard says it’s just after midnight. I’m not even tired.

  “Turn here,” Miranda says, pointing at an exit sign that leads to a dark county road with no brightly lit McDonald’s signs.

  “Why?” I squint at the upcoming exit. “Where are we?”

  “Fuck if I know,” she says. “I’m sick of being on the interstate.”

  She doesn’t understand that the interstate is safe. It always leads somewhere no matter what, and home is right behind us, about three hours away should we decide this was a terrible mistake. Which it totally is. But in the spirit of throwing all caution to the wind and going wherever life takes me, I let my foot off the gas and take the exit.

  The paved road trickles into a bumpy gravel stretch that’s barely big enough for one car, and probably not big enough for my SUV and U-Haul. I slow to a crawl and drive until we come to a T in the road. The faded green sign shows a left and right arrow, with the right one going back to the interstate and the left one going…

  “Salt Gap?” Miranda swipes her finger across her cell phone then squints back at the rugged street sign. “Is that a town?”

  “Hey you’re on Google maps!” I yell, pointing at her phone. “That’s cheating!”

  She drops her phone in her lap and holds up her hands in surrender. “Sorry, you’re right. Totally cheating.”

  “Well, since you’ve already cheated…where are we?” I ask, crossing my arms as my car idles at the intersection.

  “We’re in middle-of-nowhere-assed-west-Texas.”

  I motion for her to continue. She shrugs. “It doesn’t show up on the map. But we should definitely turn right to see what the hell a Salt Gap is.”

  We turn right and drive on an even more rickety gravel road that’s even narrower than the one before it. We drive for what feels like miles. I can’t stop imagining that a werewolf will jump out of the shadows or Bigfoot will tackle our car and eat our brains. Well, maybe that’s zombies. Okay, now I can’t stop thinking that zombies will suddenly be in the middle of the road, waiting to eat our brains.

  We are exactly nowhere. No street lights, no houses, no stores. Not even a happy little yellow striped line in the center of the road, reminding me that I’m on public territory. We could be entering a Texan Hannibal Lectors’ secret hideaway and not even know it.

  “There,” Miranda says suddenly, her voice making me jump. “A sign.” She squints as she reads it. “Salt Gap, Texas.”

  I echo her, reading the tiny little line at the bottom, “Population 1209.”

  We look at each other do something unexpected. We laugh.

  “We have to stop here,” Miranda says. “We’re from a place with a population of four million. This should be good.” She makes a puppy face over her smile, and because she seems happy for the first time tonight, I agree. What the hell? It’s just a tiny dot on the map of Texas with twelve hundred and nine people who are probably all related. W
hat’s the worst that could happen?

  “What’s the best that could happen?” Miranda says.

  “What?” Did the girl just read my mind? “You mean worst, not best.”

  “No I mean best. So many people focus on the worst thing that could happen to them, but why not focus on the best?” She leans back in her seat and looks at the roof of my car. “We could drive into town and be hailed as gods because we’re in a fancy new SUV and these people have probably never even seen cars. Then they’d build us a mansion and shower us with gifts and we’d live happily ever after as the reigning queens of Salt Gap, Texas.” She crosses her arms all matter-of-factly. “That’s the best that could happen.”

  “You’re weird.”

  She smiles. “Let’s stop here. I have a good feeling about it. Plus I have to pee.”

  The town of Salt Gap is exactly that—a gap in between miles and miles of empty land. We follow the main street, aptly named Main Street, from one end of town and back. It takes about ten minutes. There’s a small grocery store called Big Chief, two gas stations and several family-owned stores in the main part of the town. Miranda points out how almost every store name starts with Salt Gap.

  Her window rolls down at the touch of a finger and she sticks her head out like a puppy on its first car ride. “Salt Gap Cleaners, Salt Gap Cycles, Salt Gap Archery.” These people love their hometown, eh?” She wipes the hair out of her face. “Oh! Salt Gap Diner. Open twenty-four hours. Park this bitch, I want some pancakes.”

  My stomach growls in agreement. We stop at the diner and both of us topple out of my car. Sitting for so long has turned my legs to mush. Judging by the way Miranda is slouched over the hood tells me her legs are mush too. I’m about to ask if she needs any help, being pregnant and all, when she says, “I’ll race you!” She pushes off my car, making it wobble, and hobble-skips toward the door. I burst after her.

  We reach the heavy wooden doors of the diner and Miranda pushes her body through them, laughing with a mighty ha ha ha because she beat me.