She didn't know why she didn't trust Arthur. He'd always been perfectly polite, although a little too hands-on at times, but then he was an affectionate man. He liked to hug people, men as well as women. And he couldn't stop touching her mother. He was always holding her hand or putting his arm around her. Her mom had loved that.
Callie had never been a hugger or a toucher. She liked her personal space. She'd never dated anyone who had to hold her hand while she was eating dinner, and that was just fine with her. But she and her mother were very different people.
Her mom had an innocence, a naivete, a cluelessness about her that made her vulnerable to charmers and smooth-talkers. Callie, on the other hand, was skeptical about everyone, always looking for what was wrong with them, instead of what was right with them. She couldn't help herself. After her father had died, she'd grown up in an unstable, unpredictable home, with lots of tears and raging emotions. Dealing with her mom's moods had made it almost impossible for her to have any of her own.
She felt a little like that now. With her mom falling apart, she had to be the one to hold it together. Which meant she really couldn't hide out in the kitchen any longer. She had to face Flynn. She had to tell him something that would make him look away from her, from her mom. But what on earth would that be?
She didn’t want to lie. She didn’t want to obstruct the investigation. But first she needed to talk to her mother when she was in more of her right mind. She had to make sure that her mom couldn't be hurt in any way by whatever was about to come. She'd been protecting her since she was ten years old; she wasn't going to stop now.
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