BooksBarbecue
Back When She Returned Save as PDF
Chapters (48)
  1. TITLE PAGE
  2. COPYRIGHT
  3. CONTENTS
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. ONE
  6. TWO
  7. THREE
  8. FOUR
  9. FIVE
  10. SIX
  11. SEVEN
  12. EIGHT
  13. NINE
  14. TEN
  15. ELEVEN
  16. TWELVE
  17. THIRTEEN
  18. FOURTEEN
  19. FIFTEEN
  20. SIXTEEN
  21. SEVENTEEN
  22. EIGHTEEN
  23. NINETEEN
  24. TWENTY
  25. TWENTY-ONE
  26. TWENTY-TWO
  27. TWENTY-THREE
  28. TWENTY-FOUR
  29. TWENTY-FIVE
  30. TWENTY-SIX
  31. TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. TWENTY-EIGHT
  33. TWENTY-NINE
  34. THIRTY
  35. THIRTY-ONE
  36. THIRTY-TWO
  37. THIRTY-THREE
  38. THIRTY-FOUR
  39. THIRTY-FIVE
  40. THIRTY-SIX
  41. THIRTY-SEVEN
  42. THIRTY-EIGHT
  43. THIRTY-NINE
  44. FORTY
  45. FORTY-ONE
  46. FORTY-TWO
  47. FORTY-THREE
  48. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“Why aren’t you?” His naivete about her was maddening. “What if she’s talking to someone from Love International?”

He shook his head.

“What if she’s still in contact with them?” I refused to let it go, especially if there was any potential that any of us were in danger.

“She’s not,” he said with conviction.

“How can you just blindly trust someone who left you for eleven years?” He recoiled like I’d slapped him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Move,” he said.

It slowly dawned on me that he thought I was blocking the door, because I was standing in front of it. “Where are you going?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

“I’m going to see if she’s okay.”

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-ONE

ABBI

NOW

I pulled the pillow over my head. I would be so glad when I got to sleep like a regular person again. It was almost five, and I hoped I’d be able to fall back to sleep. Something next door had woken me, and then I’d heard Dad and Meredith’s whispered yelling. I didn’t even want to know what had happened.

I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and opened Vanished. I’d been obsessively refreshing it since Gloria’s threatening post about Mom two nights ago. Who was she? I’d spent hours staring at the line, unable to move, just reading it over and over again. Of course Dad hadn’t taken it seriously. He never did. This wouldn’t be the first time someone had hijacked her thread with nonsense. Once someone had pretended to be her. A couple of other times someone had written something similar about her being alive.

Except Mom was alive for real, and the post just happened to have been made within weeks of her coming home. And I was supposed to believe that was all coincidence? If no one was going to take it seriously, then I would. Besides, Dean had said that he was going to be closely monitoring the forums, so what did I really have to worry about?

I looked around like Dad could see through the walls and into my bedroom and would come barreling in to stop me at any second. I created an account as fast as I could and registered to use the discussion boards. My heart thumped in my chest with each tap on the keypad. I was a registered user within seconds.

Why do you want her dead?

I quickly hit “Submit” before I changed my mind.

KATE

THEN