What She Forgot (What She 2)

“Thank you,” I said.

Shelly disappeared down the hallway, where MeeMaw still waited, probably scared out of her mind.

“Did your MeeMaw set off the alarm again?” Jack asked.

Back when MeeMaw first came to live with me, she’d trigger the alarms accidentally all the time. But she hadn’t done it in a really long time. I didn’t even turn the door alarms on most of the time, unless we were sleeping, because she tripped them so often. Instead, I relied on the cameras and motion detector alerts, which went straight to my phone. In this case, though, they’d gone to Shelly’s phone, too, or else she had just been checking on MeeMaw like she did sometimes. “No, this wasn’t MeeMaw. Somebody was in my house.”

He walked to the back door, which was still open, and looked out. “Could have been the wind,” he said. “It’s blustery today.”

“It wasn’t the fucking wind,” Shelly snapped as she walked back into the room. She went to the alarm settings on her phone and rewound the recording so the officers could see.

“Somebody was in your house, Clark,” Jack said, as he stared at Shelly’s phone.

“I told you it wasn’t the fucking wind,” Shelly snarled. She shoved her phone back into her pocket. Then he noticed the firearm she still held in her hand.

“Is that yours?” he asked.

She looked down at it. “Who else could it belong to?”

He took a step back, his hand landing on his own gun. “I’ll have to ask you to put that down, miss.”

“I don’t think so,” Shelly said as she held it near her thigh.

“She’s licensed to carry,” I said.

Jack nodded warily.

“She’s safe.”

“If you say so. I’d still feel better if she set it to the side.”

“I wouldn’t,” Shelly said.

I scrubbed a hand across my forehead. “Shelly, would you go check on MeeMaw?”

She rolled her eyes, but she left to do it.

“Who was that?” Jack whispered fiercely at me.

“That’s my girlfriend,” I replied.

“Holy fuck,” he replied with a whistle. “Where can I get one of those?”

Chapter 28

Shelly

It felt strange with MeeMaw gone. As soon as Clark had finished with the officers, who filed the breaking and entering report, MeeMaw had fed them all, because apparently she fed them every time they came over due to an alarm, and then Clark had announced that MeeMaw was going to have to go stay with his Aunt Edna until this was all over.

“She was in my house,” Clark said to me as we watched the taillights of the car MeeMaw was in heading away from the house.

“I know,” I replied.

“She was with my MeeMaw while she slept.”

“I know.”

“She could have hurt her.”