“Will he talk to you now, do you think?”
The lines deepened on Richard’s face again. “He’d damn well better.”
Molly nodded, then kissed him. Only once, softly. “You really do need to go.”
His arms didn’t loosen. “Yeah, okay. We have plenty to talk about, but…later.” He bent his head enough to lean his forehead against hers. They stayed like that for a minute, breathing in reassurance from each other. Then he let out a long sigh, squeezed her shoulders and pushed himself to his feet. “Call me later?”
“If I can.”
“All right.”
She walked him to the door, where they held each other again for a moment, letting go only reluctantly.
“Good luck,” he said.
Her smile felt crooked. “Ditto.”
* * *
TREVOR SHOVED CLOTHES into his duffel bag, ready to go out the window if he heard the garage door open. He’d already searched for the key to the crap car that was supposed to be his, but he couldn’t find it. Dad must have stuck it on his own key chain. Trevor wished he knew how to hot-wire a car. If he had time, he could probably figure it out, but he didn’t. The last thing he wanted was to be trapped in the garage when Dad came home.
Shit. He so totally couldn’t believe this. Ms. Callahan. The vice principal who’d suspended him twice. Cait’s mother. And Dad was doing her? This had to be a nightmare.
Packed with as much as he could carry, he let himself out the back of the house and cut across old Mrs. Phipps’s yard to the next street over. Then he walked fast, head down, listening for the deep growl of Dad’s truck. He made it to the highway out of town without hearing it. Maybe Dad was still at the Callahans’. Would he have stayed to talk to Cait? Trevor felt a strange, hollow sensation beneath his breastbone at the thought of the three of them together. Dad would look for him eventually; he wouldn’t want to admit to Mom that he’d lost him. Trevor told himself he was glad that he wasn’t out scouring the streets now.
Headlights hit Trevor walking along the shoulder. He turned to see several cars accelerating toward him. The light must have changed back in town. Still walking, but now backward, he stuck out his thumb.
They all passed. He turned, only to see brake lights flare. The last car was slowing, pulling over onto the shoulder.
Trevor broke into a jog.
* * *
“HE’S GONE,” RICHARD SAID. The phone to his ear, he was pacing the downstairs, tension making it impossible for him to quit moving.
“What do you mean, gone?” Molly asked. “You mean he hasn’t made it home yet?”
“No, I mean he’s packed and taken off.” A sound tore its way from his throat. “He didn’t take everything, but he’s got his laptop. I had some money in the checkbook on my desk, too. He helped himself.”
“But…where would he go?”
“I don’t know.” Nothing new in that, he realized dismally. All the gains he and Trevor had made, erased.
“He must have called a friend.”
“I don’t know,” Richard repeated.
“Did he have enough money to buy a bus ticket to California?”
“I don’t know,” he said again. She was trying to help. Don’t yell at her. Closing his eyes, he tried to think. “He’d probably hitch, anyway. Goddamn it. But I don’t think he’d head for California. He’s not even speaking to his mother.”
“No, but he must have friends.”
“Yeah. He’s making some here, too.” He could start calling around…
“Who all live with parents.”
“You’ve tried his cell phone?”
“Turned off. I left a message.” A clumsy one. He should have rehearsed what he wanted to say, but hadn’t had the foresight to do that. He thought he’d said the right things, though.
Uh-huh. Saying the right things had gotten him so far with Trevor up until now.
“I’m so sorry, Richard. This is my fault,” Molly said unhappily.
That arrested his attention. “Your fault how?”
“I shouldn’t have invited you over.”
“I shouldn’t have made a move on you. If it’s anybody’s, it’s my fault.”
“We could argue about it all night, you know.”
He let loose a ragged laugh. “Yeah. How’d it go with Cait?”
“Not as terribly as I expected. I apologized for being dishonest with her, but not for dating you.”
Dating wasn’t exactly the word for what the kids had caught them—almost—doing, but he’d go along with it.
“Good for you.”
“I told her that we wanted to focus on her and Trevor, but…but we’d fallen in love without planning to.”