Page 142 of The Sweetest Obsession

I stiffen.

Anything I was about to say in defense of the chief and my own worries flies out of my brain. I stare at her.

“Your ma? The hell you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Ophelia whispers, laying her head on my shoulder with a fretful knit between her brows. “But she hinted Mom used to be pretty close to the Arrendells, way back before I was born. She didn’t have anything else to say, but that makes me wonder even more what Aleksander wants with Ros.”

“Me too,” I say too quickly.

I gather Ophelia close, wishing I could protect her from more worries and dark thoughts.

Maybe it’s nothing.

Though Janelle Bowden wouldn’t go stomping around spreading rumors lightly.

That gives me a sneaking suspicion it isn’t, and it hangs like an axe over my head as I hold Ophelia till sleep finds us.

* * *

I never sleep longthat night.

Eventually, my girl drifts off in a relaxed bundle against me, her soft breaths tickling my chest and shoulder.

But me?

My brain’s spinning too many circles to let me rest.

Mostly, I’m knee-deep in my memories.

Being older than Ophelia, I was around Angela Sanderson since I was in grade school, back when Ethan was her only kid.

That was how we met.

Some of the kids at recess were picking on him because he was moping around and didn’t want to talk to anybody, always curled up with his Tolkien books. I thought he was gonna get completely pounded, but he was a scrapper. Ethan threw himself into the fray like he didn’t care if he got murdered by a bunch of pipsqueaks.

I didn’t like it.

So I turned that fight into two on ten and somehow we came out of it alive—beat to hell and back butalive—and friends before we even knew each other’s last names.

That was how I found out his dad died of leukemia and it was just Ethan and his ma.

That he wasn’t moping ’cause he was a ‘big nerd’ like the kids called him, but ’cause he missed his old man like any normal boy would. Even when we were munchkins, I remember being so mad anyone could pick on him for that that I could spit nails.

The rest of it, that’s where I blank out.

I can’t remember seeing Angela Sanderson with the Arrendells one time.

Could just be holes in my memory. Muddled stuff from childhood that doesn’t like to stick, the same way your old life falls away like a dream as you grow up.

I dunno.

Something about this ain’t adding up, though.

Feels like it’s right in front of my face.

I just can’t fucking see it.

There’s some bigger picture coming together here and I’m too close to make out what it is. I can’t shake the weirdness.

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