The rawness from the night before had scabbed over by morning, and I managed to send John off for work with just a minimal conversation about him having talked to Dani—she hadn’t heard from Keisha—and my finding out Keisha had been fired. We had a lot to talk about now that I’d run out of reasons not to tell him everything, but he had a big day and I didn’t want him distracted from his work. When we talked, we needed to really talk, and that wasn’t going to happen amid a rushed morning of getting lunches packed and shoes found and tools loaded into his truck.
When I called Keisha’s phone on my lunch break, it went straight to voice mail, which I took to mean that the battery was dead. I called the cell phone company to see about tracking the phone, but the GPS app we’d put on her phone when we bought it had been disabled. I called her school and learned she’d attended the first four days, then never came back. The receptionist thought Keisha had sold the $1,500 supply kit I’d ordered to another student. I requested a refund of Keisha’s tuition, minus the twenty percent nonrefundable portion. They said the check had to be in Keisha’s name, but it would be waiting for her to pick up Monday morning.
I texted her again, asking her to please just let me know she was okay.
No response.
Aunt Ruby called and left a message about the next book for book group. It was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the book Gabriel had given her. I wondered what was happening between her and this man. I’d only talked to her that one time since the morning at her house when we talked about Uncle Phillip. Did she think she’d run me off by confiding about Uncle Phillip’s philandering? I felt horrible and hollow when I thought of her and the good she’d done for me all my life. How could I tell her that Keisha had robbed her? And yet, that feeling was tempered with the thought of how desperate Keisha must have been to steal from Aunt Ruby in the first place. My poor girl was so broken. Did she even know what she was doing when she’d done these things to us? Did she have the ability to comprehend the choices she made?
I got through my shift, but just barely. I was exhausted. In the parking lot I started the car and took a breath. I needed to tell John everything before he found out for himself, but the idea made me cold. He would be so angry with me. And yet I still blamed him for parts of this mess. If he was more approachable . . .
I parked in the garage and took longer than usual to gather my things. Before walking inside the house, I said a prayer in my head and just asked that we could get through this.
“Hey,” I called out, after letting myself in from the garage. I put my purse on the counter and hung up my keys on the rack where Aunt Ruby’s key no longer hung. I heard John come into the kitchen and turned to him with a careful smile that quickly fell when I saw the look on his face. “What’s wrong?” I asked, a hundred scenarios rushing through my head, all of them centered on his daughter. “Keisha?” Had he heard from her? Had she called him and not me? Was she okay?
His eyes narrowed ever so slightly at the mention of her name, and it made me pull back. Not Keisha. In fact, the sound of her name made him angry. No, the sound of her name made him angrier. He raised his hand, holding a piece of paper I recognized as the pawn shop receipt I’d found two nights ago and dropped on Keisha’s bedroom floor. My eyes moved from his hand to his eyes, hard, cold, and very angry.
“I was going to tell you,” I said.
“What is going on, Shannon? And don’t you dare leave anything out.”