The Secret of Ella and Micha (The Secret 1)

I press my lips together at the sting in my heart. "I need to know. I'm worried about him."

He props his elbow on the edge of a shelf. "Well, now you know how he's felt for the last eight months."

The painful feeling of reality sinks in. "Please, please, will you just tell me where he is. It's killing me not knowing."

He eyes me over, like he's hunting for my sincerity. "He went to see his dad."

My jaw almost hits the floor. "When did he find out where his dad was?"

Ethan sighs and leans against the shelf. "He started calling the house a few weeks ago, asking to talk to Micha. Micha wouldn't talk to him, but then a few days ago, he finally decided it was time to go see him."

"Is he still with his dad?" I ask.

He hesitates. "No... Let's just say the visit didn't go very well."

I force the lump in my throat down. "Is he okay?"

"I'm not sure....He was staying with some of our old friends over at Farrows Park the last time I talked to him."

"Is he coming back?"

"Again, I'm not sure."

I sink to the cold concrete floor and let my head fall into my hands. "Why didn't he tell me?"

Ethan puffs out a loud breath and sits down beside me. "Because he didn't want you dealing with his problems on top of your own. He worries about you all the time. It's kind of annoying." I raise my head and scowl at him. He chuckles and nudges me with his elbow. "What? I'm the one who's had to listen to him talk about you for the last eight months. At one point, I almost stabbed my ears out just so I didn't have to hear it."

I give a gentle pat to his knee. "Pretend all you want. You're not as bad of a guy as you want people to think."

He comprehends the deeper meaning to my words. "Yeah, yeah, say what you want, but deep down, I'm just your average douche bag, like every other guy out there."

Laughing, we get up and go out to the lobby, where there's a guy waiting at the front counter. He walks me to the door and stares out at Lila sitting out on the hood of my car examining her watch.

"So what are you going to do?" he asks as I push open the door.

"I'm not sure yet," I say. "I doubt you're going to tell me where the house is that he's staying at."

"I don't think it'd be a good idea for you to go there. He needs to clear his head." He backs up toward the register with his hands stuffed into his pockets. "I got customers to take care of."

I meet Lila at the car and she slides off the hood. "Did he tell you anything?"

We climb in the car and I quickly explain to her the vague details of what happened.

"So where are we going?" she asks, buckling her seatbelt.

The sunlight sparkles through the windshield and into my eyes. "We're going home."

***

A couple more days drag by and I still don't hear anything from Micha. It baffles me how much I miss him, but I do my best to keep busy, not wanting to get sucked up in the loneliness and worry.

Dean and Caroline went home about a week ago. Caroline told me they'd come back to visit before the summer was over or she would at least see me again at the wedding, which is in October.

Lila is out for the day with Ethan, not on a date, something they both insisted when I brought it up. My dad is locked in his room. He had a rough night and got into a fight. I received a call from Denny at two o'clock in the morning telling me to come pick him up. Deciding I need a break from my house, I peek in on my dad who is fast asleep, and then drive over to Grady's house. Amy's car is parked in front of the trailer and the front door is wide open, swaying in the wind a little.

I hop out of the car as she walks outside with a bag over her shoulder and a box of Grady's stuff in her arms.

I fear the worst has happened. "Is everything okay?"

She sighs, transferring the box to the side of her hip to free her hand so she can get the car door open. "He caught a bad case of pneumonia and he's been taken to the hospital over in Monroe."

I brace my hand on the trunk of the car for support. "Is he okay?"

Shaking her head, she sets the box on the seat and slams the door shut with her hip. "His body's already fightin' cancer. This just makes things worse."

"I need to go see him," I mumble and turn for my car.

"He can't have visitors right now, Ella," she says empathetically. "His immune system's too low."

I frown. "Will you let me know when he can?"

She gives me a small smile, but there's something in her eyes I don't like. "Yeah, hun. I will."

As I back down the driveway, watching her lock up, I feel helpless and out-of-control. I want to run away, back to Vegas, or somewhere else equally as far away, so I won't have to feel it.

But I don't.

***

I try not to stress too much about Grady, but my thoughts keep drifting to him. Whether he's in a hospital bed with sterilized walls? Or did Amy take a box of his stuff to fix it up for him?

"What song is this?" Lila is lying on her stomach in my bed, flipping through the pages of a magazine.

"'Black Sun' by Jo Mango," I say, sharpening one of my charcoal pencils over the garbage in my bedroom.

"It's sad." She frowns, resting her chin in her hand. "It makes me want to cry."

"It's a good song to draw to." I return to my drawing on the floor. The dark lines of it form pieces of a shattered mirror and I start sketching a picture of a guitar inside one of them. When I'm done, each piece will hold something about my life, but it might take me a while to finish it.

Lila raises her head away from her hand and glances at the window. "Did you hear that?"

There's shouting coming from outside, loud enough to be heard over the music.

I shade one of the corners with my pinky. "It's probably just the neighbors."

The yelling gets louder and Lila sits up nervously and draws back the curtain. "Ella, there's a man and a woman fighting out in front of the driveway."

I set my pencil down on the floor and go over to the window. There's a short, fat man and a tall, slender woman yelling at each other just outside the boundaries of my front yard.

"That's the Anderson's," I explain. "They always do that."

"We should stop it," she says worriedly. "He might hurt her."

"I'll take care of it," I tell her. "You stay here."

I pad down the stairs, barefoot and in my boxer shorts and tank top, and poke my head out the door, but the Anderson's have vanished from the street.