“Yes, Liz. I am sure of that.” Of course she was sure. She did things with her too. Oh, God.
Liz breathed in a puff of her lifeline. “Manny, will you go to the store and pick up some fish? Shelby doesn’t really eat any meat but seafood. Why is that, Sarah?” she asked, turning back to her.
Seri shrugged her shoulders. “I guess that’s what she grew up on. It’s what she’s used to. I think you should try to accommodate that as much as possible. She has never really eaten processed foods. I also think you really need to call her Quill. I know you don’t like it, and I know that it bothers you to call her something that he named her. She doesn’t understand that. She needs to feel some sense of who she is.”
“You have no idea how hard this is. I guess I didn’t expect her to be so distant.”
“She’ll come around, Liz, give her time. Remember that as hard as this is for you, it’s ten times harder for her. I also think you should let Reese go to her friends. Quill isn’t going to warm up and be the big sister that you’re expecting overnight. This has got to be hard for Reese too.”
Liz took a deep breath. “Okay, maybe you’re right. You can drop her off at Lil’s, Manny.”
“Do you mind if I ride along, Emmanuel? I need to pick up a few things myself.”
“Sure, not at all, and you can call me Manny.”
“Great, let me run up and tell Quill.”
Quill quickly closed the stupid laptop that she couldn’t get anywhere on. She wasn’t sure why she closed it. Seri thought that it was her laptop, but still.
“Hey, I’m going to run into town with your dad. What can I pick up for you that you’ll eat without complaining?” Seri asked, teasing.
“I never complained, and maybe we should just make a run to Jamelia Lea and get some crab legs or lobster or something. I know this amazing little market that only sells the freshest, best seafood in the world.”
“Nice try, do you want some fruit?”
“Sure, bananas would be okay.”
“Anything else?”
“You can’t get me what I want in this stupid little town.”
“Julius?”
“No, I hate him.”
Seri snickered and tousled the top of her hair. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”
Aquilla checked her cellphone for messages from Julius or even Talin. Maybe she knew something. Maybe she should text her and see if Julius contacted her. Maybe she could find something out about his whereabouts from her father. Fuck, it didn’t work anymore. Her only communication to her prior life had been shut off. Did Julius do it? Did the feds do it? Shit, she needed on that laptop.
“Call me in the morning and I will pick you up,” Manny told Reese as she exited the car.
“I will, and thanks for talking my mom into letting me go, Sarah,” she added with a smile. She so didn’t want to stay home and deal with the drama unfolding between the walls of that house.
“You’re welcome.”
“How long are you staying?” Manny asked as they drove the short distance to town.
“How well can you drive?” she asked, evading the question as she watched the reporter through the passenger side mirror.
“What?” he asked, not understanding.
“We’re being followed. Have you ever ran from the cops, raced a car, or anything?”
“Um, no, and I don’t think it’s a good idea now. I don’t drive faster than my guardian angel can fly.”
“Push your seat back and let me drive. Just slide from under me when I move over, okay?”
“You’re serious?”
“Unless you want to be bombarded in the grocery store, than yes.”
“Have you ever run from the cops?”
“I am sort of the cops, I have had the training and I have led a few high-speed chases in my time.”
“Okay,” he reluctantly agreed, pushing the seat back.
Shit, maybe sliding across Manny’s crotch wasn’t such a good idea. He just had to go and hold her hips as he slid from beneath her.
“Hang on,” she warned as she hit the gas pedal.
Manny held onto the door like he was going to be ejected from the car at any second. Seri darted in and out of back roads, sliding the rear-end of the car sideways every time. Seri lost the van within five minutes.
“FUCK!” Manny exclaimed. “Sorry,” he said correcting his language.
Seri smiled over at him. “You okay?”
“I’m not sure, I may need to change my pants after that. You’re going to have to teach me how you made those turns like that.”
“It’s called drifting. You learn a lot with my profession.”
“How did you get into your profession?”
“Maybe I’ll tell you about it someday,” she replied. She wasn’t going there. She didn’t talk about her life or how she ended up working for the FBI. It wasn’t a pretty picture and she avoided the feelings that went along with the memories at all costs. “Tell me about Liz. She seems to be dealing with this a lot worse than you and Reese.”
“Liz had a misconception of all of this. I think she was expecting to get three year old Shelby back, not some grown girl with a different name. She’s so pretty, I can’t get over how much she looks like Liz when she was younger.”
“She is a very pretty girl. Am I safe to say that the two of you divorced, because of the strain that it put on your relationship?”
“I would say that is exactly what happened, although Liz doesn’t think so. She blames herself for taking her eyes off of her. It was like she literally disappeared into thin air. Nobody saw anything, nothing. I still don’t understand how he got her out of the country. I mean she was all over every television station across the country. Why didn’t someone see her at the airport?”
“I’m working on that. I’ve got someone going through flights from that time. It might take some time though, it was 14 years ago. And the chance of ever really finding out, are slim to none. When did Liz move to Connecticut?”
“Reese was only a year old when Shelby was taken. Liz’s parents came and stayed for two weeks and took care of her while Liz stayed locked in her room sleeping from the valium. I had to hire someone to come in and take care of Reese once they had to return to their lives. Liz wouldn’t bathe her, feed her, cook, clean, or go to work. Nothing, she just stopped existing. Three months later, I came home from work and she was waiting in our room with her bags packed. She informed me that she was going home to Connecticut. I thought it was a good idea and it might help until she told me that she wasn’t taking Reese and she wasn’t coming back.”
“Wow, I can’t imagine going through something like that,” Seri admitted. “When did she come and get Reese?”
“Reese was almost four.”
“Three years?” Really? How could you leave your child for three years?
“Yes, she stayed with her parents and did nothing. I mean nothing, she didn’t even get dressed. I brought Reese here on weekends and her parents kept her some, trying to get her to wake up and realize that she still had a responsibility to Reese. Nothing worked, she just couldn’t cope. It was really sort of crazy. I thought she was crazy. She showed up one evening in a new car, had a new job, and looked the best that I had seen her in three years. She took Reese that night and has been doing okay ever since.”
“And you didn’t try to work things out?”
“Not really, I had just gotten my business off the ground. I wasn’t moving back here. She had just gotten her teaching job, and it just didn’t work out. I tried to come here when I could. I was putting in a lot of hours, and that didn’t go over well with her. We fought, a lot, it got pretty nasty and we got a divorce that year.”