“You hate to fly.” But Ruthie was already off the couch and walking to her bedroom. “It terrifies you.”
“Yes, I know it does. If I drive it’ll take me nearly two days, nonstop, and that’s brutal. If I don’t leave tonight, I might chicken out and not go at all. Please?”
She nodded. “Okay, okay. Let me get my stuff.”
“Thank you!” Gwen closed her eyes and said a silent prayer of thanks to the Universe. She did trust Ruthie with Liam. Might not trust her with a baby or small child with all the drugs she took for her condition, or even a large dog or a goldfish, but Liam could hold his own with her.
Her mother would have a flipping cow if she found out. Gwen would rather face down her fears of flying than the crushing disappointment in Liam’s face at having to take him back less than twenty-four hours after he got there, and she wasn’t above guilt-tripping Ruthie to Liam-sit. Hopefully she could fly out, find her sister, find out what the fuck, and be home before her mother knew she’d left.
“Hopefully” being the key word in that plan. Cops were useless, because they wouldn’t take a report over the phone when she called. To them, Amy wasn’t “missing,” even though this was totally abnormal behavior for her.
Ruthie packed quickly then frowned as she surveyed her meds on the kitchen counter. “Jesus, I take a lot of crap.”
Gwen laughed. “You’re just now realizing that?”
She shook her head. “Yeah, but packing it up, it really seems like a lot versus holding one bottle at a time. I never thought about it before.” She found a plastic grocery bag and swept the dozen or so bottles into it, clearing the counter. Gwen helped her pack her laptop and mp3 player, and found her cell charger. A few minutes later, after triple-checking the house to make sure the locks were secure and everything turned off in the kitchen, they were on the road back to Gwen’s house.
Before rushing off to Ruthie’s, Gwen had grabbed handfuls of clothes and her toiletries and a suitcase and dumped them on her sofa. Liam volunteered to pack it for her while she convinced Ruthie to stay with him. By the time they returned, she had ninety minutes to make it to the airport and a taxi pulled into the drive behind her.
Liam opened the front door. Bless his heart, he’d even packed her laptop for her. “Cell charger?” she asked.
He nodded. “It’s in there. Hi, Ruthie. Ready to make s’mores and tell ghost stories? Maybe we can TP the neighbors later, or egg their mailboxes.”
She smiled. “Brat.” Ruthie, two years older than Liam, had been a good friend of his, too, when they were kids.
Maybe the two of them will be good for each other for a couple of days, Gwen thought.
In five minutes, Gwen was ready to go. She handed her keys to Liam. “You’ll need these. You or Ruthie, move the car around in the driveway tomorrow. Mom will wonder why it’s in the same place. You know she’ll cruise by.”
He smiled. “You’re trusting me with your keys?”
She kissed him on the cheek. “Yeah, I’m desperate. Have fun.”
On the way to the airport, she studied Amy’s text message again. It made no sense. What the hell had happened to make her want to stay out there without any explanation?
Liam had printed out the hotel information from Amy’s Gmail account. He’d logged into it with her password, the same one she used for nearly everything, apparently. While it held no clues as to the other person’s identity, it was a reservation for two.
Gwen bolted out of the cab and raced to the ticket counter. This late in the evening there was no line and she ran for security and the gates ten minutes later, with thirty minutes before her flight boarded. After a quick stop in the bathroom to throw up in terror, she dialed Liam.
“You all right?” he asked.
“No.”
“Did you throw up?”
“Yes.” Fear-induced nausea was nothing new to her, and usually Liam was the only one who could settle her nerves.
“I’m sorry, sis. I shouldn’t have made you do this, but I’m really worried.”
“Done is done. See if you can find anything else in her e-mail we might be able to use to track her.”
“Oh! Her credit card statements. I’ll look at those, I saw the info in her e-mail. Check your e-mail when you get off the plane, babe. Your rental car info will be in there, too. I got you a midsized.”
“I wubs you, bro.”
“Wubs you, too. Don’t drink on the plane, you’ll be wasted when you get to Rapid City. Remember, I can’t come bail you out for drunk driving.”
She queued to board and sat in her seat with a death grip on the armrests. Fortunately, the plane wasn’t completely filled and she had no seatmate.
After a horrible, turbulent flight that bounced her around from Ohio to Florida one spring break in college over ten years prior, she’d swore she’d never fly again. Which proved problematic when Liam had to drive down and pick her up when she refused to accompany her friends on the flight home, and her parents wondered why she was in Florida in the first place after Liam accidentally let it slip.
She made it a point never to fly again.
But this was her sister, and Liam had asked her to do it. Liam didn’t needlessly worry about things. The fact that he felt concerned worried Gwen.
I survive this, maybe I’ll go visit Tim in Laguna Beach after all, she thought as the engines revved in preparation for takeoff. As the plane trundled down the runway, Gwen squeezed her eyes closed, fought another bout of fear-induced nausea, and muttered flyflyflyflyfly under her breath until she felt the landing gear lift off the tarmac and eventually fold into the plane’s belly with a soft thump.
After a sigh of relief, she slowly released her grip on the seats and fought the urge to mug the stewardesses for the entire alcoholic content of their beverage cart.
It was after midnight when the plane made its final approach into the Rapid City Regional Airport following a brief stopover in Chicago. She found the rental car counter, got instructions to the hotel where Amy made her reservations, and wearily rolled into their parking lot a little after one in the morning local time.
The desk clerk wasn’t helpful, it was late, and Gwen felt too exhausted and stressed to argue further. She checked into her room and collapsed on the bed. Liam had e-mailed her everything he could find, which wasn’t much, and she needed to view the pdf files on her laptop anyway.
She sent him a text.
Made it alive & sober @ hotel. Wubs u.
Before she could carry her phone to the bedside table, plug it into the charger, and lay it down, it vibrated. He must have been waiting up and holding his phone to reply that fast.
Wubs u 2 sis. Call me in morn. Sleep tight.
Gwen crawled into bed and crashed into sleep.
Tim’s mind wandered as he aimlessly flipped through channels on the TV until Jack took the remote control away from him.
“What’s wrong with you tonight?” Jack asked, setting the controller safely on the end table out of Tim’s reach. “You’ve been weird all night.”
Fortunately, Jack’s mom had been having a good day and knew both of them when they dropped by to visit. Tim’s relief over that had been dampened when they returned home and he checked his e-mail. “I haven’t heard back yet from Gwen about my review.” He chewed on his lower lip. “I hope she liked it.”
“Why wouldn’t she? It was a good review, right?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. I know it’s stupid, but usually she e-mails me right back. It’s not like her to not respond.” In his gut he couldn’t get over the feeling that something was off. In the nearly three years he’d been corresponding with Gwen, she never failed to return an e-mail, even if it was just a quick note from her phone that she was out and would get back to him.