Return (Coming Home #1) (6 page)

We get in line, but Mikey waves us over to the counter where people pick up drinks. I hesitate. Amy doesn’t, striding to him with purpose.

My God, is she wearing heels? And a pencil
skirt? Who has my best friend become? She went from being an emo-Goth girl to Sex in the City in three years.

A plume of something too close to jealousy fills me. I want to be more like her. We used to be equals and now...I feel lesser.

This isn’t going as planned.

Amy returns to me, two white paper cups in hand. Mine has “Carrie mocha triple cin” on it, and I take a sip.

Perfect.

Catching
Mikey’s eye, I hold up the cup in a toast. He winks,
then
works on the next order.

“How did he know?” I gasp as Amy and I sink into huge, overstuffed burgundy leather chairs. The springs in mine are shot, so I go back further than expected. The coffee nearly sloshe
s
out, but I hold it high.

Amy giggles. Her chair, of course, is perfect. She takes a sip of her drink and I can’t help it.

“Nails?
You got your nails done?”
I gasp.
My turn to squeak. The Amy I grew up with would never in a million years do a manicure.

A two-toned, sleek manicure with perfectly filed nails.

Her lipsticked mouth spreads in a knowing smile. “Corporate life changes you.” She touches the hole where her lip piercing used to be. “It’s nearly closed up now.”

I can’t tell from her voice whether that makes her
happy or sad.

I’m not sure she knows, either.

In May, she graduated. I was supposed to
graduate with her
.
I
n July, she was offered a great position as an account executive for a huge financial services group forty minutes away. We had texted and talked until she was numb.
H
er mind and heart
were
torn between working odd jobs
but
having her freedom and being a corporate slave.
She’ll pay
off
her student loans in five years.

The corporate handcuffs
won
.

Her
chocolate
eyes are warm and curious when she asks, “
Y
ou ran into Mark yesterday?”

“How did you...” I look pointedly at Mikey. “Oh.” I take another sip. “And how did Mikey know my drink?”

She laughs, a mature sound of sophistication that makes me feel like a giggly tomboy. “I remembered. You don’t change, Carrie,” she declares.
It’s not a question.

Indignation flares up in me. Now I have reason to feel smaller.
It feels like
my best friend is trying to make me feel that way.

“Just because I’m the same on the outside,” I say quietly, “doesn’t mean I haven’t changed on the inside.”

Amy looks stricken.
S
he reaches for my hand. Her skin is warm from holding her coffee cup. I see genuine emotion in her perfectly made
up eyes. It helps my shoulders to release.

It helps me
to
breathe.

“Carrie,” she murmurs. “I am not like one of
them
.” The emphasis on the last word is close to the sound of someone spitting. Her anger bubbles up fast, and now she looks like the old Amy.

Minus the silver ball on her lip and hair like a
parrot’s
feathers.

“I might look like a pod person on the outside,” she adds, laughing softly
to herself, her lip in a sneer. “But don’t ever lump me in with them. I’m not being passive aggressive, or negging you.”

“Guys do the negging. Not women,” I say, jumping in.

Amy makes a dismissive sound.
She
leans in, like she’s sharing a secret. “Women do it the most.
You know, t
hose backhanded comments that make you feel like shit inside, except you have to act like nothing’s wrong?
Women
are experts at that.
”

“At work? At your new job?”
I ask, worried about
my
own new job.
 

“Catty bitches are the worst,” she says, turning those nails into claws. “Meow.”

“You’re not like that!” I hiss.

“I know. And I’m making sure you know. I’m being open and honest with you, Carrie,”
she explains.
 

That makes my eyes fill with tears and I squeeze her hand. “I know,” I
murmur
.

“No, you
d
on’t.” She says this with a sad smile. “I know you think you trust me, but after what you’ve been through I couldn’t blame you if you never let anyone in at all.”

My throat ma
kes
a strange choking noise after she sa
ys
that. I wash away the gagging with some coffee. Almost too hot to swallow, it ma
kes
a different
k
ind of eye watering happen. I
am
grateful.

Pain can distr
a
ct me so easily from confusion
and overwhelm.

But pain can’t last forever. Just like love.

A television, attached to the wall above a corner near the front window, flickers with a bunch of changing images. It catches my eye as Amy pops the top off her to-go cup and blows on her hot drink.

“Another missing woman,” I say under my breath. There have been a rash of missing woman cases
for a while
. I’m reading the words beneath
the images. This is the third one. The missing woman is named Dina. Twenty-three. About my height. The woman has brown eyes and black hair.

She looks kind of like Amy looks now, with her hair this dark color and the same style. I shiver at the thought and open my mouth to say so, but Amy speaks first.

“How’s camping?” she asks with a big grin. She knows I’m
living in
Elaine and Brian’s trailer.
I shake off the crazy feeling from the news report and give her a wry smile.
 

“It’s more fun than I thought, and no roommates,” I confess. “Those assholes back in
Oklahoma
did give me a gift, though.”

“A gift?” Amy makes an inelegant snort. It turns a few male heads, all curious. “What’d they do, pass on an infectious disease? Get herpes from the toilet seat?”

Now onlookers were openly gaping.

I burst out laughing, and then say, “You can take the girl out of the hair dye and piercings, but...”

Amy’s giggle joins mine and the air feels a thousand times lighter, just long enough for me to take a big sip of coffee.

Ding! Ding!
The jingle of the front door interrupts our laughter. Amy’s face goes from full-on happy to a bitchy glare in two seconds. My skin grows cold.

Without turning,
I ask her through gritted teeth. “Who
just walked in
?”

“It’s the dean’s daughter,”
Amy
says, looking away from the door and playing with the edge of a napkin. Her skirt is a lovely heathered grey and her shirt is a nice lilac that works with her
brown
eyes and
black
hair. She looks like she got an Oprah makeover.

I shrug. “Don’t know her.”

“Oh, you know her,
all right
.
Claudia
Landau.” Amy’s
eyes watch me, narrowed and focused. “
Speaking of claws...”
 

“
Claudia
—oh, God!” I drop my cup, which is only a few inches from the coffee table. Luckily, I’ve finished two thirds of the delicious
drink
, so nothing spills. Picking the cup back up,
I
take a long, slow drink and mouth the words,
Is she gone
?

Amy’s head shake is hard to see, but I see it. I know my best friend’s signals.

“How can
she be the dean’s daughter? She’s the chemistry chair’s daughter,” I whisper. The chemistry chair
man
at the college
i
s the man who set my father up.
Ignatio Landau, the famous almost-Nobel prize winner. He looks like that old dude from the Most Interesting Man in the World beer commercials. If only he acted that way in real life.
 

Coming back home to work in the dean’s office isn’t just a smart
move to get my student loans and debt under control.

I’m here to learn more about what happened at the university three years ago. The chemistry department wasn’t going to hire me, but the offer from the dean’s office meant I had an in.

An in that means I can investigate what
really
happened with my father’s arrest three years ago.

“Oh, Carrie,” Amy says quietly. And then she goes
silent
and
pulls on my arm. “Do not turn around.” Her voice has a catch in it, like she needs to tell me something. Urgently.

“Stand slowly but do not turn around. Let’s go to the bathroom,” she hisses.

“But I don’t need to,” I insist.

She rolls her eyes
upwards
so hard I think they’ll dock at the i
n
ternational space station. “Come!” she groans through her teeth.

Confused but obedient, I follow.

The
bathroom is a single-use, multi-sex
rest
room with a sign that insists everyone wash their hands after use. Amy opens the door and shoves me in.

I protest.
“Someone mig
h
t see us and then—”

She interrupts me. “It’s better to be thought lesbia
n
s than to have
Claudia
see you. Not yet,” Amy sa
ys
, shaking her head.

“What are you talking about?
No one will think we’re having sex in a coffee shop
bathroom!
” Amy was never a drama queen, but I’m starting to wonder.

“
It’s a college town, Carrie. People have sex in dumpsters. You think a coffee shop bathroom is exempt?”
 

Why are my best friend and I talking about lesbian sex in bathrooms during our first meeting in three years? Life is increasingly surreal.

A
bzzzz
from her pocket startles her. She pulls out her phone. “Damn. A client.
I have to go.”

“What about
Claudia
?” I ask as she opens the door and pulls me out, steering us to the exit. We’re both holding ou
r
coffees, still, but my stomach is so cl
e
nched I don’t want it anymore.

Bzzzz!
If cell phones could sound urgent, this one would win the prize.

Amy walks me to a car parked on the road, a new little Mini Cooper with a convertible top.

I gape as she beeps it open
and starts to get in. “What happened to your Astrovan?” Amy’s mom
gave
her the family
m
inivan our sophomore year, right after she
got
her license. The van
was
twelve years old then, and was missing fenders and rear-view mirrors, all taped on with purple duct tape the week before annual inspection.

“Gone. New job pays well enough for this,” she says, smiling wide. The grin fades fast as she opens
her window and looks up at me.

“Carrie, I’m guessing you don’t know.”
Her eyes darken with worry.
 

“Don’t know
what
?” Her cloak and dagg
e
r act is starting to wear on me. I finish my lukewarm coffee and pitch the cup in a green metal trash can next to the parking meter.

“The dean. The old one resig
n
ed to take a faculty job somewhere else. You have a new boss.”

My blood runs
like ice water
at
her expression. Light fills my eyes and my hands and feet go very, very cold suddenly.

“No,” I whisper.

“Yes,” she says as she starts her car. It purrs. The old van used to belch.

“Professor Landau is the new dean?
You’re serious?
” I can barely get the words out.

She reaches for my hand again. “You look white as a ghost.”

“I feel haunted,” I reply.
I can’t
keep the edge out of my voice.

Bzzzzz
. Amy ignore
s
her phone, but I see her fingers switch, eager to check.

“Just don’t get
hunted
,”
she warns.
 

She pul
l
s out
of her parking spot
and comes to an abrupt halt. “And pizza. To
morrow night
. Your place! I want to see the palace!”

And with that she t
akes
off into broad daylight, her little car fading into silence as I st
and
there, my heart taking over all the space for sound as
it slam
s
against the edge of the world.

My new boss
i
s the man who killed my father.

“
Daddy! Daddy, no!” I shout. I’m facing a long, dark tunnel. My eyes see no light. It’s pitch black and cold. I’m wearing my pajamas. I have no shoes. There is no breeze, but it’s damp. The chill feels like it’s licking my bones.
 

I don’t know where my dad is. I call out to him, over and over.
H
e never answers. I know he is here, though. Why won’t he answer?

“Carrie,” says a voice
I do not know. It comes from above me, and I look up. All my eyes see are blackness. There is no light now. Not behind me, not in front of me, not above. The only way I know I even exist is by touching my arms, my hands, my waist, myself.

“Who are you?” I can barely speak. A cold dread settles in my lips, my neck, along the outlines of my breasts. The fear is primal. I am about to fight for
my life. I do not know what I am fighting.

Or who.

“I’m Daddy,” says the voice. It feels like someone is sliding an icicle into my heart.

That’s not my dad.

“Where’s my
real
dad?” I cry out, my voice high with hysteria, my sense of self fading. I become the darkness, my arms and legs disappearing into it. I’m melting and freezing at the same time,
when suddenly my mouth is taken by the cold
kiss of a violent being who traps me in something close to strong arms, but they feel like ribbons of death.