Deep Freeze (West Coast 1)

“Enough!” Jenna said, in no mood for the girls’ petty bickering. “What went on tonight?”

“Nothing,” Cassie said. “As usual.”

“That’s a lie.” Allie lifted the lid to the pizza box and flipped it open to display a gooey mess. All the cheese and pepperoni had run off the crust to pool along one side of the box, and the pizza itself was a bare crust with streaks of red marinara sauce running off it. “Yuk, what happened?”

“I had to brake hard and the box slid off the seat.”

Allie wrinkled her nose. “It looks gross.”

“Yeah, it does, but it tastes the same.” Jenna didn’t need this argument. Not tonight.

Cassie dropped her magazine and walked to the table where the pizza was congealing. “Mom’s right,” she said, and Jenna nearly fell through the floor. She couldn’t remember the last time her older daughter agreed with her on anything. Cassie pulled a gooey slice from the box, plopped the cheese and a couple of slices of meat onto it, and took a bite. “It’s great.”

Allie was still guarded, but emulated her older sister and grabbed a naked slice.

“Okay, so tell me what’s happened since I left. Hans is gone?”

“Yeah, he fed and watered the horses, then took off. He let me help.” Allie was winding strings of mozzarella around the bare crust of her piece of the pizza.

“Good. Anything else? Anyone phone?”

“Travis Settler called and he said he’d call back,” Cassie said. “And there were a couple of hangups. No caller ID—private calls. I tried dialing star sixty-nine, but that didn’t help. I figure it was probably a bad cell phone connection.”

“Probably,” Jenna said, though it worried her. She was still jittery from the drive home. “Let me answer the phone if we get any more calls.”

Cassie sighed loudly and, carrying her slice of pizza on a napkin, returned to her chair and magazine.

Allie had already zoned out of the conversation and between bites was decorating the remaining pizza with bits of pepperoni.

“What about your dad?”

“What about him?” Cassie asked.

“He didn’t call?”

She shook her head, took her seat in the chair, and began thumbing through the magazine again. “Wait a minute. There was one call that Allie took.”

“Allie?” Jenna said.

“What?” Her daughter looked up from her masterpiece of food art.

“Did Dad call?”

“Tonight? No.”

“Another night?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

“I guess I forgot.”

“When was it?”

A lift of a small shoulder. “I don’t know…yesterday, I think. Maybe the other day.”

“Did he want to talk to me?”