Focus, she told herself sharply.

“I don’t know if she’s actually guilty,” he started, and Molly rolled her eyes. Of course Jane was guilty of whatever bad thing she was accused of doing. Molly couldn’t remember one time that her mom had been falsely accused. “But she was arrested for burglary and theft.”

“Okay,” Molly said slowly, processing the information. All four of her sisters were watching her with a silent, steady intensity, as if they were trying to hear the other side of the call, but Molly wasn’t about to put the phone on speaker. That would pretty much guarantee embarrassment on her part, since she’d never had a conversation with John that didn’t involve him teasing her about something. Even though he was unusually serious at the moment, she knew it was just a matter of time before he said something to make her squirm. Her sisters did not need any more ammunition when it came to giving her a hard time about him.

She forced her brain to focus again, but it was difficult. The hellish day had taken all of her energy, plus whatever she had in reserve. Her thoughts were spinning around uselessly, replaying all the worst parts of the past twenty-four hours. Meanwhile, her stomach twisted with the knowledge that what Jane had done was really, really bad.

Although it was true that burglary was on the more serious end of her mom’s usual crimes, that didn’t seem to explain the search warrant. Jane had incredibly quick and sticky fingers, and she’d been charged with theft before…many times. The attitude of the cops who’d just finished searching their house had been unusually serious and intense, though, and Molly could feel the difference between all of Jane’s earlier criminal exploits and this one. Whatever their mom had done, it was big.

“What did she steal?”

“What was she accused of stealing, do you mean?” John asked.

Molly frowned, unable to read his tone. Was he scolding her for not believing in her mom or warning her to keep up the pretense that Jane was innocent? Either way, she didn’t have time to try to parse the undercurrents of every word. “Sure. Let’s go with that. What was she accused of stealing?”

There it was again, that strange pause. John Carmondy was not normally hesitant. In fact, he was usually as not-hesitant as a person could possibly be. It was bizarre.

“Jewelry,” he finally said, which told her almost nothing but raised another thousand questions in her mind.

“Why are you being weird?” she burst out, not wanting to hear one more cautious, carefully worded answer from him. Her world was already topsy-turvy, and she didn’t need John acting strangely on top of everything else. He was always so rocklike, so confident and steady. No matter that she often found it annoying—she needed that John now.

“I’m not being weird,” he huffed, amusement threaded beneath his outrage, and she relaxed. That was more like the John Carmondy she knew and…didn’t really love. She was reassured by this small return to normal, though.