“It could be late,” she told her son. “I thought you had basketball practice tonight and you weren’t going to be home, honey. If I’d known you and Cami were going to be home early, I wouldn’t have planned this, but now I’m kind of stuck.”
“Yeah, well, Dad wanted me to meet him after school, so I told the coach I had a family emergency. I picked Cami up from the library when I was done.”
“Adam!” Megan was pissed. “Tell your dad he can’t do that. It’s interfering with your responsibilities. If he wants to meet with you—”
“It’s not like he wants to do it that often, Mom.” Adam’s voice was dull and cynical, nothing like the lively mischief-maker he’d been when he was younger. “He just wanted to get coffee. I figured I could skip practice for once.”
“Do you want me to come home?”
“No, it’s cool. Cami already called Trina, and she’s bringing burritos home. We’re gonna watch a movie.”
“Are you sure? I planned this dinner, but there are other people here. I can skip it if you’d rather have me home.”
“It’s fine, okay?”
His voice tore at her heart. Part of it was just being seventeen, but what else was going on? She knew something else was up with her boy. He’d put a wall around himself, and she didn’t know how to scale it.
“Adam.” She lowered her voice. “I’m trusting that you are being honest with me and you’re fine. But you better know—in the bottom of your soul—that if you call me, if you need me, I will drop whatever nonsense I’m doing and be with you in two shakes of a baby lamb’s tail. Do you understand that?”
Adam cleared his throat, and she could hear a little bit of a smile in his voice. “It’s just a lamb. Baby lamb is redundant.”
“I know you’ve been hanging out with Katherine and Baxter now.” She smiled. “Okay, y’all have fun with your burritos and movie. Nothing that’s gonna give Cami nightmares, you hear me?”
“I promise.”
“I probably won’t see you until the morning,” she said. “This is likely to go pretty late.”
“Have fun with your friends, Mom.”
“Love you, buddy.”
At Megan’s suggestion, Toni had invited Drew Bisset and his wife to her house for dinner that night. Drew’s wife couldn’t come because she was coaching their girls’ softball practice, but Drew said he’d stop by for a while.
Megan had always found that prying happened more easily when food and wine were applied.
Ostensibly, the party was simply to introduce Val and Sully to their friends in Moonstone Cove. Really, they were hoping to get Drew on board with Val examining the truck where they’d found all the blood.
Sully was being… well, sullen. “I am not making up a crime.”
“What if it wasn’t a murder?” Megan wandered back down the hall and into the tiny sitting room just as Katherine and Baxter arrived. “Say you’re investigating a theft using a truck with similar features.” Megan walked over and gave Katherine a hug.
“Are you all right?” Katherine asked softly.
“Teenagers being teenagers,” Megan said. “I’ll tell you later.”
“Okay.” Katherine rubbed her back. “Why are we talking about pickup trucks?”
Toni said, “We’re trying to think of a similar crime that Sully can say that he’s investigating so Val can look at the truck Drew found.”
Baxter frowned. “That seems ethically dubious.”
“And not all that effective,” Sully added. “Didn’t you say the vehicle was a white half-ton pickup with four-wheel drive and a toolbox in the back?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s pretty much every other pickup truck in our neck of the woods,” Sully said. “It’s a very thin connection.”
Megan threw up her hands. “Why are the men in California so damn unimaginative? They all have the same truck.”
“Why don’t you simply tell Drew about your abilities?” Baxter asked. “If I can be convinced, I believe he would be as well. Then it would be a moot point and you could simply all work together.”
Sully pointed at Baxter. “I like that guy. I agree with him.”
Katherine squeezed Baxter’s hand. “I also think that Drew would be understanding. He’s a very logical person, and we could simply explain the parapsychological basis for our various abilities.”
“I could float a pistachio in front of his nose like I did with Baxter,” Megan offered.
Nico turned to her. “I got thrown against a wall and he got a pistachio floated in front of his face?”
“We were in a life-threatening situation when you found out, so I didn’t really think about it. Sorry.”
Nico frowned. “Just saying I think a pistachio would have been less jarring.”
“We already think Drew suspects we have… intuition,” Toni said. “Val, what do you think?”
“I think if you believe he’ll be understanding and not brush you off, you should just tell him. I wish I could say that weird shit is going to stop happening to you three, but it hasn’t stopped in Glimmer Lake. For some reason, that lake is a magnet for paranormal activity now.”
“Really?” Katherine said. “We really need to go visit.”
Sully was looking at Toni. “I could really use someone with your gift around sometimes. Questioning suspects would go a lot faster.”
“Well, I’m a little busy right now.” Toni patted her belly. “but in the future, you can feel free to give me a call.”
Henry’s large mutt, Earl, started barking on the porch, so Megan knew their time was running out and Drew was likely arriving.
“Okay,” she said. “To tell or not to tell, that is the question. All in favor of telling Drew about our weird magic stuff?”
Toni, Val, Katherine, and Baxter all raised their hands.
“And all opposed?”
Henry and Nico raised their hands.
Megan looked at Sully. “You didn’t vote.”
“Neither did you.”
“’Cause I honestly can’t decide,” Megan said. “If we tell Drew, then I’m going to feel weird not telling my kids, and I don’t really want to tell my kids because that’s a whole massive can of worms, because then do I need to tell my parents? If I tell my kids, are they going to tell anyone else? What if my ex-husband—”
“Knock, knock!” Drew was on the porch, showering love and head scratches on Earl. “We eating outside or in? Jordyn is sorry she couldn’t make it, but she sent brownies.”
“Congratulations,” Sully muttered. “You have decided nothing.”
“You’re not helpful right now!” Megan whispered as Drew opened the door.
“Guys?” He poked his head in. “Hey? Was there a meeting no one told me about?” He looked a little confused but mostly amused. “How you doing?” He spotted Sully and Val. “I’m Drew Bisset.”
“Sully,” the sheriff said. “And this is my girlfriend, Val.”