Page 91 of Battle of the Bookstores

Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay.

Where are you??

A few minutes after that:

I’m looking at flights to PV. Mom’s freaking out.

“Shit,” I whisper. This is why I can never truly relax—no matter how much time passes, at any moment, my mom could self-destruct.

And I’ll be damned if I allow my innocent sister to suffer the consequences.

“Everything okay?” Ryan asks, but I’m reading the next message from Georgia, sent four hours ago.

I’ve found a flight tonight. Call me when you can, ok?

“I—I need to call my mom.” I glance up at Ryan, who’s watching me with concern. “I’ll just…One second.”

I step into my bedroom and call; Mom answers—and she’s crying. All the ease and comfort I’ve felt this evening vanishes. I’m a ball of tight muscles, gripping the phone and bracing for impact.

“Mom? Mom, are you okay?”

“He’s gone,” she says through sobs. “I woke up and Darrell was gone; he took all his things, and no one knows where he is.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say, and I mean it.

“We were having a wonderful time, Jojo. I don’t know what happened.”

Probably the same thing that’s happened all the other times with all the other men. Except this time, she’s in a foreign country, and my sister is flying to her rescue.

“Mom, why did you ask Georgia to come? She has classes and exams.”

“I didn’t ask! She offered.”

But what kind of mother wouldwanttheir daughter to dosomething like this? Decades of resentment are churning inside me, and I try to stuff them down.

“Okay,” I say, thinking through the logistics. “I need you to offer to pay for her flight—”

“I don’t have the money!”

I take a deep, calming breath. “I know, but I do.” The money I set aside every time Georgia helps at the store. “I’ll pay you back. Just don’t tell her it was from me, okay?”

“Fine,” she says sulkily. “But maybe you could come with her? I need my girls by my side.”

“You know I can’t, I have a store to run.”

“It’s obvious whereyourpriorities lie,” she mutters.

Her words are a stab to the heart. I haven’t told my mom what’s going on at work—and this is why. She wouldn’t even try to understand.

“Mom. That’s not—” I take another calming breath. “Let me help you get home. I’ll go online and book your flight. Okay?”

“No!” The word is a horrified screech. “I need to find Darrell.”

“Find him? He left you!”

“Because he’s scared! Things are moving quickly with us, and he got scared, that’s all—”

“Would you ever leavehimalone in a foreign country with no explanation?”

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