“No,” Mark said, shaking his head. “The box wasn’t filled with shit he could hock or sell.”
“Your friends had expensive taste,” Wilson added. “But nothing of any value was touched. Her engagement ring and earrings were still on.”
“Husband’s Rolex and cufflinks were, too,” Eli said.
“We’re real sorry about your friends,” Forrest said gently. “By the time we got there, they were gone.”
Raising my fingers to my forehead, I rubbed at the headache forming above my eyes. I didn’t want to think about it anymore. The memory of Liv’s scream replayed over and over.
“Has your pop called?” Mark asked, watching me closely.
“I don’t think so,” I replied, reaching down to check my phone. “Shit. It was still on silent and I missed it.”
“He’ll call again,” he said.
“Yeah.” Just as the silence grew long enough to be uncomfortable, my phone rang. “Speak of the devil,” I said.
I turned toward the living room as I answered.
“Hey, Dad.”
“You’re okay?” he asked.
“I’m okay. We’re at Woody’s house now.”
“Thank Christ.”
“How far away are you?” I asked, anxious for them to arrive.
“We won’t be there until early afternoon,” he replied. “But we’re making good time. Might be able to shave a little time off.”
“Be careful and don’t rush,” I said quickly.
“Don’t worry about us,” he murmured. He sounded tired. “We’ll be there as soon as we can, Bumblebee.”
“Okay,” I whispered, my throat tight. God, I just wanted them to get there. It had been years since I’d been so homesick for my parents.
“Your mom says she loves you,” he said. “I’d put her on the phone, but then we’d never get out of here.”
“It’s okay.”
“We’ll see you soon, baby.”
“Okay. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” he said before the line went dead.
I took a minute to compose myself before turning around to face the men again. Shaking my phone side to side, I attempted to smile, but I was pretty sure it was wobbly as hell. I walked back toward the kitchen, but when I met Mark’s eyes, my footsteps faltered.
I couldn’t interpret the look on his face.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve heard you call me Woody,” he said quietly. His lips tipped up at the corners, and suddenly, it was as if we were the only two people in the room. I knew that look. I’d seen it a million times. I used to crave it like a drug addict. A Mark Eastwood addict. My belly swooped, like I was on the downward slide of a roller coaster.
Oh, shit.
Chapter 4
Mark
“I’m uncomfortable with the amount of emotion in this room right now,” Wilson muttered seriously to Eli, making him laugh.
“We only have two diapers left,” Cecilia said suddenly, glancing at Wilson as she readjusted the baby in her arms. “And almost out of wipes.”
“Make a list, and one of the boys’ll go pick some up for you,” Forrest replied easily.
“Why us?” Eli asked.
“I have no fuckin’ clue what to buy a newborn. Send Lu,” Siah muttered, pointing at her as she came back into the room.
“Why would I know what to get?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “What? Because I’m a woman?”
“You have a niece,” Siah argued.
“That doesn’t mean I know what to get.”
“I’ll go,” I cut in before they really started arguing. The two of them could happily argue about the color of the sky for hours. They got off on that shit, but it irritated the hell out of the rest of us. “Uh, make a list like Forrest said. I’ll grab you some paper and a pen.”
“I can just go myself,” Cecilia argued, lifting her hand to wave me off. “Do you have a Target or something around here?”
“You gonna walk?” I asked, getting up from the table.
“Well, if it’s close enough, sure,” she said slowly.
“I was bein’ sarcastic,” I muttered as I searched through the junk drawer by the back door. “You’re not walking to the store in the middle of the night.”
“There a reason the two of you can’t go together?” Forrest asked dryly, amusement lacing his words.
I paused, bracing my hands on the countertop. Jesus, I needed to get my shit together. Never in a million years would I have thought that seeing Cecilia again would rattle me so badly. I knew it would hit me hard. The way things had happened, the way I’d loved her and the way the ties between us had been severed meant that it would never be easy to run into her. I hadn’t been concerned I’d see her in San Diego because I was barely ever there, but I’d braced for it every time I was in Oregon. I thought that I’d be able to handle it.
Maybe it was the situation we were in that was making things so difficult. The fear I’d felt. The fact that she was standing in the middle of my fucking kitchen holding a goddamn baby.
“That would work,” she said cautiously. “Is that okay with you?”
I turned to face her. Fuck, she looked tired. Tired and scared and sad, though I doubted any of the others noticed it. Cecilia had inherited most of her looks from her mother, but the calm, detached expression she wore was pure Casper.
“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “Go grab what you need and we’ll head out.”
After she left the room, Ephraim started chuckling and soon, everyone else was quietly laughing with him.
“Shut up,” I said with a sigh, leaning back against the counter.
“Who would’ve guessed that all we needed to rattle you was a little blonde woman holding a baby?” Lu asked.
“Not just any blonde woman,” Siah said.
“Cecilia,” he and Ephraim sang.
“It’s been a long fuckin’ night,” I replied.
“Gonna be even longer with a baby in the house,” Forrest said with a smile. “You see her? Cute little thing.”
“How could you tell?” Wilson asked. “She was holding that child so close I couldn’t even tell if it had all the requisite extremities.”
“It’s hers, I assume?” Eli asked me.
“Better be,” Josiah said. “Or it puts that nursing Madonna vision we found in the closet into a whole new freaky perspective.”
Eli grinned.
“Yeah, she’s hers,” I replied.
“What’s her name?” Lu asked Cecilia as she came back into the room.
“Oh.” She looked down at the baby. “She doesn’t have one yet.”
“You haven’t named your kid?” Ephraim said in surprise.
“I’m waiting to see what fits her personality,” she replied, the words sounding almost like a question.
“Good luck with that,” Eli said uncertainly.
“I think you should name her Cecilia,” Lu said, hopping onto the counter next to Wilson.