Page 124 of Sing with Me

Romina! “Your nanny?”

“You know she and Romina are closer. She cried a lot after you fired Romina.”

Okay. We’re getting somewhere.

Diehl tried not to freak out. He had no idea her daughter felt that strongly about her nanny. Perhaps Romina had become more of a surrogate mother than he had thought. “And?”

“Elisa wanted to know how to find a Greyhound. Is she getting a dog, Dad? I want a dog too.”

Greyhound? As in Greyhound bus? That was news to Diehl.

“When Detective Jeong asked you this morning—I mean Saturday morning—whether you heard anything, why didn’t you tell him this?” Diehl hoped he hadn’t lost the tenuous connection he had with his son this moment by bringing up the interview on Saturday that hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped.

“Elisa will be mad at me for listening at her door,” Ethan mumbled.

She wouldn’t be mad if she were dead.

Diehl swallowed.

“I don’t want to get Elisa in trouble, Dad.”

“She’s already in trouble.” Big trouble.

Chapter Thirty-Four

We need to talk.

While getting ready for church on Sunday morning, Skye wondered what Diehl had in mind when he whispered those words in her ear at Brooks Cottage the afternoon before.

She prayed that it wasn’t bad news.

Without reading too much into it, Skye reminded herself that their more-than-friendship had been on the fast track. While they had known of each other for years, they wouldn’t have interacted with each other had it not been for Diehl’s sister.

As far as Brinley was concerned, Diehl hadn’t shown Christian fruit.

No doubt he was an upright citizen and a moral man. In spite of his wife’s infidelity, Diehl had not cheated on her, according to Brinley.

Skye could see why Diehl had driven himself drunk. The news must’ve been awful the first time he had heard it. She could not imagine how Isobel had hidden the secret from him for thirteen years, and died without personally explaining her side of the story—although she had left clues of it with her children, which Ethan had expressed in his skit in the garden on Saturday.

Bizarre.

Skye picked a simple pastel summer dress from her wardrobe and paired it with a pair of light teal sandals. She hadn’t worn that dress since the year before, but she had pressed it before storing it away.

It wasn’t her turn to bring breakfast to Sunday School, so she decided to eat oatmeal instead. Usually, she would cook steel cut oats on the stovetop, but today, she felt lazy. Instant oatmeal to the rescue!

She scolded herself for dressing up first before she ate because she spilled a blob of oatmeal—with cinnamon and apple bits—on the front of her dress. Because it was plain pastel, she could clearly see the stain.

Sigh.

As she ran upstairs to change, her phone rang. It was Diehl. He wanted to FaceTime.

“Not while I’m changing, buddy.” Skye chuckled.

She almost didn’t take the call. “Could I call you back in a couple of minutes?”

“Sure.”

Skye took more than a couple of minutes to select another dress because she wanted to look halfway decent on FaceTime.

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