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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

Had anyone called Scott yet? I had no idea what his schedule was like today because we hadn’t talked about it before he left for work this morning. All we’d done was get in that stupid fight. He was already mad at me and was only going to be more upset when he found out what I’d done. Hopefully he would answer their call, but he had a horrible habit of ignoring numbers he didn’t recognize. What if he didn’t listen to his voice mail until later this afternoon? I needed him to pick up Abbi from preschool. There was no way I was going to be done with this on time. How was any of this going to work? The magnitude of what I’d done engulfed me.

I needed to get a grip. They’d done this before. We weren’t the only family with a complicated situation. I didn’t need to figure everything out. Ray was always telling me that I had to release my control and allow life to naturally unfold in front of me. I forced myself to lie back on the blankets and focus on my breathing. I couldn’t do any of this if I wasn’t centered.

Listening to the thrum of the road calmed me, and it wasn’t long before it lulled me to sleep. I drifted in and out, jostled awake by the bumps and turns before falling back to sleep. We drove for what felt like days, but it was probably only hours. Everything just seemed longer stuck back in the dark. Finally the van stopped. My eyes snapped open. Feet shuffled to the side of the van. The lock clicked, and Ray opened the door. Blinding light shone into my eyes, making me squint. He stuck out his hand, and I stepped outside into the sun. It took my eyes a while to adjust from being in the dark for so long.

We were parked in front of an old farmhouse. Large evergreen trees surrounded it on all sides. The roof sagged to the left, and faded yellow paint peeled off in chunks. Two of the stairs leading up to the porch were rotten. One of the windows was boarded up. The grass around it was long and unkept. The weeds had won the battle in the yard long ago. Ray walked around the house to the back, and I hurried along after him.

“Where’s Margo?” I asked, struggling to keep up, still weak and disoriented from the long car ride.

“She stayed behind to take care of things,” he said.