Page 45 of The Woman in the Hollow
“Saw that, huh?”
“Sweetie, you forget that I’ve been in this Family longer than you,” she said, shrugging. “I can always tell when something is going on. Even if I know you can’t tell me about it.”
“It’s a precaution right now,” I assured her.
“I know. If there were an active threat, someone would be standing at my front door. And you boys would be hanging around a lot.”
“Can’t get anything past you.”
“So, whatever is going on, Hazel is somehow involved.”
“Sort of by proxy.”
“So something happened at the garden center.”
“Something like that.”
“Let me guess, this something required you needing to… lie to her.”
“Yeah, it did.”
“And now you feel bad about lying to her, so your feelings are, as you said, complicated.”
“That about sums it up, yeah.”
“I’m going to venture a guess that Hazel doesn’t know who you are. Who we are.”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“She hasn’t had questions about the guards at the garden center?”
“Not that Dom has mentioned.”
“She’s too fastidious not to have noticed.”
Therein lies the problem.
She knew they were there.
She knew they arrived right after she found the body that I told her wasn’t a body at all.
I didn’t know Hazel well, but she wasn’t dumb. She had to be having some reservations about believing me.
Honestly, for a moment or two when I showed up in the shop that night, I’d been wondering if she was staying behind late to try to snoop around in the work computer or our files.
Then, well, I’d gotten a little distracted.
I’d meant to poke around the day before, ask some questions, but when I’d caught her in the haunted house alone, well, it felt wrong to let a perfect opportunity go to waste.
Unfortunately, she rushed out afterward and made herself scarce, so I couldn’t ask her anything that might let me know where her head was at.
“Listen, your brothers and cousins have had some really complicated beginnings with their women. And look at them now. Happy. Married. Making babies.”
“Don’t get your hopes too high, Ma. It’s not like—excuse me,” I said when my phone rang in my pocket.
Dom.
“What’s up?”
