After She's Gone (West Coast #3)

After She's Gone (West Coast #3) Page 42

She hefted the only photograph of Trent she’d kept and considered throwing it away. Permanently. But she didn’t. Couldn’t. She wasn’t as rash as she once had been, at least she hoped that was the case. She set the picture face down on the table. He was just another bastard who’d crossed her path. One of a handful. Her taste in men had always been less than stellar, probably due to “daddy issues.” After all, Robert was always leaving his current wife for the next best thing. Not exactly a candidate for Father of the Year.

“Get over it,” she told herself.

Allie, as it turned out, had been right: Cassie was a screw up and a mental case.

Still, she wasn’t going to let paranoia stop her. Nor would she allow Allie’s questionable morals where Trent was concerned veer Cassie from her course.

Maybe she should start looking now. She wasn’t tired. In fact she was antsy, needed to do something to calm herself down and think clearly. Maybe she needed a drink? Or a walk? Even a drive? Risky, but then what in life wasn’t?

She dropped her towel.

Somehow, some way, she was going to find Allie.

Then the little princess could eat her words.

CHAPTER 10

Jenna felt a sudden chill, as if a ghost had just walked over her soul.

It was silly really, but as she stepped into the attic and snapped on the light, she went cold inside. It was night, Shane was working in the den downstairs and she needed time alone. To think. To consider her life. To silently pray that her daughters were safe. She’d used the excuse of looking for her grandmother’s recipe box, lost when it had been packed away during the kitchen remodel.

The attic was cold, its sloped ceiling uninsulated, the sharp tips of roofing nails visible between the rafters. One of the light bulbs had burned out, leaving just one small bulb to illuminate the vast space with its dormers and peek-a-boo windows. She pulled her sweater around her body a little more tightly. Here, she thought, was the detritus of her life, the pieces and things that no longer fit into her daily routine.

Boxes, broken tables, a broken lamp, pictures and frames stacked in a corner. The wind was blowing hard outside, whistling through the rafters in this section of the rambling old house, one of the few places she hadn’t renovated over the years. She ran a finger across the edge of a box, felt the dust collect on her skin and saw a bookcase filled with old electronic equipment and wires connected to nothing. Here were stashed the remnants of her life, boxes of possessions from her school days, college, and her marriage to Robert, things she’d never had the heart nor time to dispose of. Each of her children, too, had a collection of papers, trophies, clothes, books, and toys that had settled in the attic for years.

The scratch of tiny claws suggested she wasn’t alone and she scanned the ceiling for bats, then avoided the darkest corners that could be home for mice or rats or squirrels, even raccoons.

Not exactly the most peaceful or comfortable place to think. She dusted off an old rocker wedged between two stacks of plastic cartons and sat, letting the chair sway of its own accord. She’d rocked her babies in this very rocker, now forgotten and stained. She thought of her children and worried about them. Tears burned the back of her eyes as she saw a picture of Allie, distorted slightly in the dim light, her image just visible through the side of the plastic bin. She’d been around eight, her adult front teeth just showing through her gums, her smile wide and still innocent. Jenna moved some of the boxes, then opened the tub to extract Allie’s second grade school picture. Allie had been such an awkward girl at the time, an innocent if introverted kid who had no idea the beauty she’d become.

“Oh, baby,” Jenna whispered, her throat thick, the frigid air in the room burrowing deep into her bones. “Where are you?” Sniffling, she looked up to this attic where Allie had played as a child, where she’d hidden or built a fort or spent hours reading. Alone.

What had happened to change things so?

A divorce, yes, to Allie’s ultimate bewilderment.

A move that she didn’t comprehend. Both she and Cassie had loved LA and hadn’t understood Jenna’s reasons for taking her children to a place she thought safer, a ranch in Oregon out of the fast-paced life, the glitter of Hollywood.