“I’m on my way home, Susan. Just please stay in the house ‘til I get there. As long as she is safe in her room, leave her be.”
“Will do, sir. I’m terribly sorry about this. I don’t know what happened.”
It wasn’t her fault. It was the dementia. I had only witnessed her sudden confusion a couple of times, but I understood what Susan was going through. “No need to be sorry, Susan. Just please stay there. I should be to you guys in three hours.” I disconnected the call and shoved my phone in my pocket.
“Where’s the fire?” Roc asked. He made his way to me, and his face fell the instant his eyes connected with mine. “What’s wrong?”
No one knew exactly what was wrong with my mother, but Roc knew that something wasn’t right. “I need to get home right now. Can you just let the crew know they did amazing this weekend?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sure. Of course. Is there anything else I can do?”
He was giving me the opportunity to let him in on whatever was going on, but I didn’t have time to explain everything to him. “Just some things I need to take care of. I hate to leave you guys, but I don’t have any other choice.” I wished I did have someone else to help me, but I didn’t. With my father deciding to be a selfish prick, I was left to carry the burden of taking care of my mom. “Just get everything packed up, and I’ll see you back at the shop tomorrow.” I clapped him on the shoulder and didn’t wait for his reply. The longer I took to get to my mom, the longer she was locked away in her room.
I grabbed my keys from the trailer, beeped open the locks on my Mustang, and slipped into the driver seat.
It was amazing how quickly things changed.
Not even ten minutes ago, I was celebrating winning the Sundown Nationals, and now my whole world was crashing down around me.
I needed to get home.
*
Frankie
“All right. Let’s get this shit all loaded up and then we can go celebrate a little bit.”
I slipped the cover onto my toolbox and motioned to Remy to help me roll it onto the hauler. “You see Brooks lately?”
I shook my head and positioned myself at the back of the toolbox to roll it forward. “Last I heard, he was doing a buttload of interviews.” That was one thing I did not envy Brooks having to do. Being on that side of the camera was not something I was interested in.
“He left.”
I looked over at Jay. “Huh?”
“Say what?” Remy replied at the same time.
“Yeah. I was pulling the trailer over by the gate that we had loaded already and saw him takeoff. I waved at him, but it was like he didn’t even see me.” Jay shrugged. “It was weird.”
“What? That you were ignored or that Brooks left?” Remy laughed.
Jay shrugged. “A little bit of both.”
“You know where he went?” Remy asked me.
I scowled and shook my head. “Not sure why you would think I would know where he went.” I was walking a thin line of being too bitchy. If I got too upset about Remy assuming I knew where Brooks went, it was going to throw up a red flag to him. “Last I saw him was when he was walking to the press tent.”
“But you saw him.”
I quirked my eyebrow and put a hand on my hip. “Uh, yeah. So did about five hundred other people. You might want to go ask all of them if they know where Brooks went if you think that’s why I would know where he went.” I put my hands on the back of the tool box. “You wanna give me a hand with this, Nancy Drew, or are you too busy trying to figure out the mystery of where Brooks went?”
Remy moved next to me. “I would be a Hardy Boy, thank you very much,” he mumbled.
“You’re odd. You know that, right?”
He glanced at me with a smirk on his lips. “Have you met my mother?”
I had. “She’s more eccentric than odd.”
“What a polite way to call my mother weird.”
I laughed and pushed on the toolbox. Remy and I loaded it into the hauler, then spent the next two hours packing everything up to drive it back to Leeds Square where we were just going to unpack it all again.
“You wanna grab a beer?” Jay asked.
I really didn’t want to, but it was too early to head to bed. Besides, if I did try to go to sleep, I’m sure I would just lay there wondering about Brooks and where he went. “Yeah. Just let me change real quick, and I’ll meet you by your car.”
“Screw that. We’re Ubering.”
I waved my hand at Jay and walked to the hauler where I kept my bag. I pulled out a pair of clean jeans, and the email Harlyn had sent me with my flight info and Brooks’ phone number fell out. “I really need to clean this damn bag out,” I mumbled.
After a new shirt and clean pants, I picked up the email and looked at Brooks’ number.
Something bad must have happened for him to take off so quickly. Before he had been whisked away for interviews, I had heard him tell Ronald he would be back to celebrate with us.
I punched his number into my phone and sent him a text, even though I knew shouldn’t. Hey. Awesome job today. I hope everything is okay. I added my name to the end of it and hit send.
I didn’t want to seem like I was prying or overly concerned, but I wanted him to know I was thinking about him. Whatever the hell that meant.
Every weird feeling I had toward Brooks was new as hell to me, and I had no idea what to do with them. I shouldn’t care that he left early. It was his life, and it really didn’t have anything to do with me. I just needed his ass in the car for every race, and other than that, I shouldn’t care what the guy was doing.
But I did.
I cared way more than any car chief should.
*
Chapter Twenty-One
Brooks
She was fine.
By the time I had gotten to the house it was half-past nine, and I walked into the living room to see my mother and Susan watching TV.
“Mom?” I called.
She looked over at me and smiled. “Brooks? What are you doing home already? Susan said you weren’t going to be home until the morning.”
I looked over at Susan, and she smiled, but I could tell she had so much to say.
“Uh, I missed you and the track was only three hours away so I figured I would just make the drive home tonight.”
She clapped her hands together and stood up. “Well, that’s wonderful of you. We get to celebrate your win with you then. I think we should have ice cream.” She gave me a tight hug and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “I’m so proud of you.” She moved into the kitchen, and I looked at Susan.
This was not what I was expecting to walk into. In my head, I had spun this horrible scenario where I was going to beg Mother to come out of her room and have to fire Susan. “Am I in the right house?”
Susan stood up and clenched her hands together. “I don’t know what to say, Mr. Cummings. When I called you, she had been locked in her room for over an hour and I wasn’t sure of what else to do. I figured having you here would help to calm her down. After I hung the phone up with you, she came out about forty-five minutes later and acted like nothing had happened.”