“And I’m pretty sure that, once again, you didn’t even listen to me,” she said. “I told you. I don’t know anything.”
“Well, you knew enough to make contact with Garret’s team, and, once you set that into motion, there is no going back.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “It’s got nothing to do with him.”
“Says you,” Astra said, with a sigh. “Now, are you coming down, dressed, or shall I just call them back up?”
“Fine,” her sister said, throwing back her sleeping bag and scrambling out. She wore just a T-shirt and panties. She quickly dressed and walked downstairs, ahead of her sister. “I don’t need you guys here,” she said. “You’re just ruining everything.”
“Well, I guess it depends what you mean by ruining everything,” Astra answered, “because that’s just crazy.”
“No, it isn’t,” Amy said. “And again you don’t listen.”
“Says you,” Astra groaned.
As the two sisters walked into the living room, still wrangling, Garret stood, looked at Amy, and said, “Now tell me the truth. Where’s my brother?”
Instantly Amy burst into tears.
*
Garret remembered the tears. How was it that he couldn’t forget the tears? He just glared at Amy and said, “Stop it.”
But Amy wasn’t listening, she was too far gone.
“You won’t get answers out of her that way,” Astra said, as she walked over and motioned for her sister to sit down. She walked into the kitchen, checked out the meager food supplies in the cupboard and the fridge, and said, “Looks like the only thing you can eat here is peanut butter and jam or ham and cheese.”
“Well, she’s not staying obviously,” Garret said. “So it doesn’t matter.”
“I am too staying,” Amy said, through her tears. She got up and, walking into the kitchen, she pulled out a loaf of bread, plopped down two slices, cut some cheese, and put it all together into a sandwich. She leaned against the counter, glaring at Garret, as she made her way through the sandwich.
Once again, she had him wondering what he’d ever seen in her.
“I don’t know what happened to Gregg,” she announced out of the blue.
“You said he disappeared,” Garret said. “You knew that I would come. Obviously you had some reason for thinking that.”
“Yes, he’s not answering my calls or anything.”
“Did he break up with you?”
“Of course not,” she snapped. “That’s not something he would do.” He just raised an eyebrow at her. “Well, it isn’t,” she said.
“Does he know about the baby?” Garret asked Amy.
She gasped in horror. “What do you know about the baby?” she cried out. One hand went to her belly, as she spun to look at her sister.
Astra stared back. “Do you think people won’t know?” she asked in surprise. “And, yes, I told him about the baby. For all I know, that’s why Gregg disappeared.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” she said. “He’s a good man.” Then she shot another sideways look at Garret, as if to suggest that he wasn’t.
He rolled his eyes at that. “Yes, my brother’s a good man. Especially when he’s not screwing around with someone else’s fiancée.”
At that, her face turned beet red, and she said, “See? No point in having him here.”
“Maybe not,” Astra said, “but we’re here because of Gregg, to find out what’s going on with him. I came because you disappeared. He’s here because his brother is gone.”
“Well,” Amy said, “Garret has all kinds of connections, so he can find Gregg on his own.”
“Which is exactly why you contacted me,” Garret said. “But I need more than he’s just not answering your calls.”
She munched away furiously, filling her cheeks like a chipmunk as she chewed, and she said, “It was two days ago.”
“What was two days ago?”
“I told him that I was pregnant. He was shocked, but I don’t think he was terribly upset. I just think he didn’t have time to sort his way through it all. He asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I didn’t know. He got a phone call and told me that he had to leave for a meeting, but we would discuss it when he got back.”
“But he didn’t come back?”
“No,” she said. “He didn’t come back.” And, once again, the tears welled up in her eyes. “I don’t know what happened.”
“What time of day was it?” Kano asked.
“Dinnertime,” she said. “I held off telling Gregg until then.”
“Why is that?” Kano said.
“Because I worried about it all day, wondering if I should even tell him or if I should just walk away.”
“Why would you do that?” Garret said. “It’s his child, after all.” Then he stopped and said, “It is his child, isn’t it?”
She shot him a baleful look. “Yes, it’s his child, which makes you an uncle.”
“What makes you think that he didn’t just take off?” Kano asked, trying to insert a voice of reason.
“Because he’s not that kind of a guy,” she snapped. “He wouldn’t leave me like this.”
Kano looked at Garret, who shrugged, conceding the point. It wasn’t what he would have expected of his brother, but that didn’t mean that Gregg didn’t need some time to clear his head and had walked away for a few days. “How does he typically contact you?”
“On my phone, or he could come home of course. We’ve been living together for the last year.” She shot Garret a hard look. “Like you don’t already know that.”
“I don’t know anything about you guys,” he said. “I haven’t had any contact with my brother since we broke up.”
Her gaze widened. “Wow, what a surprise. And you being all about family.”
“Until I found out you had changed the family roles behind my back,” he said. “Instead of dealing with it head-on and telling me—preferably before you started sleeping with my brother.”
She glared at him. “You can insult me all you want,” she said, “but, Garret, you don’t understand.”
“Probably not,” he said, tired of the whole mess. “The bottom line is that he’s my brother, and he’s missing. I’ll do my best to find him, if I can.”
A little bit of hope clung to her gaze, and she asked, “Do you know how?”
“Well, if you can’t give me any more than what you’ve given me so far,” he said, “it’ll be damn hard.”
She just frowned at him again.
He groaned. “You’ve got to tell me a little more about that phone call. Was a name mentioned? Did it seem like it was somebody he knew? Did it sound like a work call or what?”
She frowned. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I mean that for real because he never talked about work.”
“Where were you living?”
“Belgium,” she said. “I wanted to move back to England, but he didn’t want to.”