Page 91 of Hiss and Make Up
Marc wanted to ask where they were going, but something about the determined set of her jaw told him to sit down, shut up, and snap the seat belt in place. She drove the short distance to her mother’s driveway and left the car running.
“I’ll be just a second.” Her face softened a bit as she turned to Marc. “Then we’ll look for Sierra. I promise.”
Marc didn’t know what was going on, but he nodded in obedience. The moving truck had loaded and left, so Marc could see through the garage to where Chloe waited at the front door. She knocked a second time, then pulled a key chain from her tiny yellow purse and let herself in. A minute later, she returned.
“Not home?”
“No. Dark, quiet, and empty inside.” Her distraught expression returned.
“I was hoping you might know where I could find her. I…uh…had a question for her.”
A thousand questions.
Chloe threw the car in reverse and sped out of the driveway. Then she slammed to a halt at the end of the road and screeched out of the neighborhood.
He forced a laugh. “In a hurry?”
Chloe’s eyes were glued to the road ahead. She’d never gone even five minutes without smiling. He’d never seen her like this.
Actually, he had. Once.
Marc's mom had brought him and a pecan pie to Chloe’s house after her dad's funeral. Marc had slipped through the grown-ups to find Chloe sitting on the swing set left behind by the previous homeowners. She’d sat eerily still and quiet in that red vinyl seat, staring ahead at nothing.
He’d expected her to be upset. They’d just buried her father. Well, not her actual father, but the idea of him. They’d put an empty coffin in the ground with a picture of him inside it. Mrs. Guidry had told her kids and anyone who would listen that the farce had been necessary. Even though there had never been any evidence that the man had died. Even though Mrs. Guidry had told everyone that she believed he’d up and left them. She’d still insisted on a funeral. Her husband wasn’t coming back, she’d said, and burying his memory would give them all closure.
Chloe had that same look now that she’d had on that swing set so many years ago. She focused on the road and barely registered that Marc was in the car with her.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Try Sierra again.”
Not a bad idea. “Nothing.”
“Where was she headed?” Chloe turned onto the interstate, heading toward Lafayette.
“She said something about not being able to find her boss. I don’t know what was going on, but I guess she went to check on him.”
“Where does she work?”
“The Nature Station. It’s on the north end of—”
“I know where it is,” Chloe said, her voice cold and sharp.
Marc had forgotten how her dad had spent every Saturday morning walking the trails and chatting with someone over there. That someone must have been Dale.
It took a lot of convincing to get the security guard at the campground gate to let them through. The guy knew Sierra, and he said her red Forerunner had torn out of there only a few minutes earlier. He wasn’t happy about it, but he let Marc and Chloe in to check the station.
Chloe parked close to the stairs and left the engine running. “Go up and check. I’ll wait here.”
Marc took the stairs two at a time until he reached the deck, only to find it locked. He knocked anyway. No answer.
He walked around the side and pressed his head against the glass window. He could only see what the dim outside floodlights illuminated. It was empty, but he spotted something on a cluttered desk: a phone with a bright orange case lying face down on a pile of papers. Sierra’s phone. That explained why she wasn’t answering.
On his way down the stairs, Chloe called out, “Found anything?”
“Just Sierra’s phone locked inside.”
Chloe frowned. “That’s not good. She had to be in a hurry to leave her phone like that.”
