Page 64 of Stolen Goods
Addy started with the pie crust since it would have to chill. Normally, she preferred an all-butter crust, but without her beloved KitchenAid by her side, she decided to go the slightly easier route, grabbing both butter and shortening from the supplies. Jo slid the flour across the counter. Addy handed her eggs from the fridge. They continued like that for a little while, passing items back and forth in seamless silence. She pulsed her dry and wet ingredients with a hand-mixer, carefully adding ice water into the dough with a smile on her lips. The smell of sugar, the sound of whisking, just being in a kitchen was restorative. Addy could breathe again, think again. Her mind was clear, focused.
Maybe that was why she found the gusto to casually murmur, “So, how do you think things are going with Thad and his mom?”
Jo took the bait immediately. “Ugh, I don’t know but I wish I did.” She whipped her whisk through the brownie mix with a little more force than necessary. “He never talks about her, at least not with me. I think he was always determined not to care about her, because of what she did, cutting him out of her life like that, but I almost think the stubborn way he refused to talk about her just made her leaving hurt even more, you know?”
“Definitely,” Addy commented softly, to keep Jo talking.
“Did he tell you how she left?” Jo asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “Thad was eight and I was seven. Our dads were gone, doing what they did, and I was at Thad’s playing—well, more like tormenting him incessantly, but that’s a different story. She called us down from his room and said she was going food shopping. I shrugged it off, but Thad’s face fell, like somehow he knew. And when she walked out the door, he froze. I tried to pull him back upstairs, but he was already bigger and he wouldn’t budge. As soon as he heard the car start, he took off, yanking open the door and running down the driveway after her. I followed, yelling for him to stop, but he didn’t, not until he tripped in the gravel and fell, cutting his forehead on a rock. When I looked into his eyes, I finally understood. So, I sat down, and hugged him, and let his blood and his tears soak my shirt through. We were out there for hours until our dads found us, stiff and shivering. I’ll never forget that day. It was just, oh, it was the worst. I never experienced anything so awful until my mom passed away, but at least she was taken from me. She didn’t leave voluntarily, and she didn’t take my only sibling with her.”
“Emma,” Addy gasped.His sister. Emma is his sister.She immediately felt silly and guilty for all the time she’d spent wondering who this mysterious woman could be, dreaming up the most ridiculous scenarios, when the truth was so simple. A painful, personal secret he’d had no reason to disclose.
“Emma.” Jo nodded.
Addy wanted to tell her to stop, that she shouldn’t know any more, that Thad had never actually divulged this information. But for better or worse, her own curiosity was a beast she couldn’t tame. Her lips remained sealed as she gently kneaded the pie dough, preparing it for the fridge.
Jo buttered a baking dish and pushed on. “My heart broke for him. He’d been so excited, none of that first-child stuff. Maybe because we were already so old, maybe because Emma was a surprise, I don’t know. But as soon as he found out his mom was pregnant, he couldn’t wait to be an older brother. We were learning to read in school, so sometimes at night, he’d read to his mom’s stomach. And whenever we were out, he was so proud he’d tell everyone about his baby sister on the way. He drew pictures for her nursery. He picked the name Emma, actually. I don’t remember how or why, but I remember we were both shocked when we found out years later his mom had stuck with it.”
Addy put her dough in the fridge, carefully bundled in Saran wrap, and started pulling ingredients for the glaze—chocolate chips, butter, corn syrup, and a little bit of vanilla extract. “How did you find out?”
“We didn’t know anything for years and years. She was seven months along when she left, so what happened to the baby became a complete mystery. Thad’s dad might have known. I’m sure he probably knew a lot of things that would’ve helped Thad cope, but he was always more of a tough-love sort of guy.”
Jo shook her head derisively and slammed the oven shut.
Addy jolted at the sound.
“Sorry.” Jo sighed as her shoulders slumped. She leaned against the counter and crossed her arms, watching Addy, yet not. Her eyes were glazed over and vacant, as though seeing something else. “He was, well, a jerk, though he fooled a lot of people into thinking he was anything but, including Thad for a long time. He used to idolize his father, until, well— Anyway, we’re talking about Emma. I started getting into computers when I was a teenager, a little light hacking, nothing serious.”
Addy bit her lips to hide her smile. Their definitions ofseriouswere probably very different, but she didn’t say anything. She let Jo keep going, unfiltered.
“Thad, well, give the man a paintbrush and he can rival Picasso, but a tech genius he is not. Which was why he had me. When he turned fifteen, I completely failed at getting him a birthday present—I was dealing with a bit of a first-boyfriend situation at the time. Anyway, I digress. Thad didn’t care. He’s never been much about stuff, well, except for an illegal painting or two, but again, I digress.”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes, as though to say,What can you do?
Addy stifled a laugh and bit her lip instead.
“Anyway, he asked me to see if I could uncover any information about his sister for his birthday. He was very careful not to ask about his mom, I remember that, but well, we came up with a lot about her too. I found the divorce papers his father signed without telling him, and the marriage certificate that popped up with her maiden name a few years later. I found the house she lived in. I found photos posted by extended family members of the wedding. Emma was a flower girl—she was about five at the time. And then it became a tradition that continued for the next ten years. Every year on his birthday, instead of a gift, I’d give him a manila envelope with another round of updates about Emma. When she got old enough to have her own Facebook page, everything became a little easier. Oh, can you get the pie crust out of the fridge? I bought some premade, just in case I was too frazzled to wait. Patience isn’t exactly my strongest suit, and the first batch of brownies are half-baked, so…time for coopie assembly!”
It took a moment for Addy’s brain to register the conversation switch. “Oh! Sure.”
She pulled the dough from the fridge and gently unrolled it across the stone counter. Jo gave her a small bowl and Addy used it to cut circles from the crust. Jo took the pieces and started stuffing them with bits of gooey brownie mix, crimping the edges to form a tight seal. Addy added a little extra splash of butter to the discs—store-bought crust never tasted buttery enough, as if there was such a concept. Within a few minutes, the coopies were back in the oven to finish baking.
“We work well together,” Jo commented with a smile.
Addy met her gaze and smiled. They did. It was easy, simple in a way few things were.
“Anyway…” Jo half sighed the word as she jumped up onto the counter to wait, sending a little wave of flour into the air, completely unconcerned. “He was able to watch her grow up, in a way. I mean, not the way he wanted, but the only way he could, without completely derailing her life. And I was happy to give him that, even if it was a little, well, stalkerish.”
“Why didn’t he just go see her?”
Jo tapped her fingers on the counter, antsy. “It wasn’t that simple. After his mom left, Thad was a shadow of his former self. He didn’t smile so easily. His gaze turned haunted in a way it’d never been before. He was quiet with everyone but me, and when he did speak, it was only with the purpose of pushing the person away. I think he thought he wasn’t worthy of his sister—of her attention, of her love. Because if he was, why did his mother take her away? Or, more fittingly, why didn’t his mother take him too? When they vanished, his innocence went with them. Thad stopped thinking he deserved to be loved. He thought something was wrong about him, that he was broken. I don’t think he was, but it sort of became a self-fulfilling prophecy. He believed it so hard he broke himself.”
Jo jumped off the counter, shook her head, and dove back into her ganache, mixing it far more than it needed. But the food didn’t matter, not at that point. It was just something to do, a distraction. Addy leaned against the counter and crossed her arms, chest burning with this new information she didn’t have a right to know. But now she did know, and she wasn’t entirely sure what to do.
“Thad never said as much out loud, but I think he was worried that if he ever met Emma, he would ruin her somehow, in whatever way his mom always feared, like he’d be some kind of poison. He was content to watch from the sidelines—until now.”
Because it’s his last chance.Addy sighed and walked back to the fridge, then opened it with no direction in mind. She stared aimlessly at the food as the cold air chilled her face.Because he’s leaving and he’s never coming back.
“Because now they’re in danger, so he has to—” A knock at the door interrupted her. “That’s odd. Maybe Nate sent someone?”
