Elusive (On The Run Book #1) Read Free Page A

existence and silence. No television, no
music, no phones, no computer.”
    “Your mom is going a week without
TV? Without E! News? How will she survive? And why would she do that to
herself? Won’t she go through withdrawal?”
    Zoe shrugged. Her mom lived in
continual hope of a new reality show contract and followed celebrity news like
some people followed politics. “I think it has something to do with a certain
producer’s wife being at the spa during the same time mom is there.”
    Helen said, “It all makes sense
now. And I bet she expects you to be in it, too.”
    “Which I never will. If only I’d
known what
emancipated minor
meant ten years ago.” Zoe said it flippantly, but she was only half-joking.
    The floorboards at the top of the
stairs groaned. Helen looked at Zoe. “Is that Jack?” Zoe nodded and Helen
asked, “What’s he doing here?”
    “He lives here, Helen. He always
stops here after his run to shower and change before he goes back to the
office,” Zoe said, listening for his tread on the stairs.
    “I don’t think it’s good for you,
living this way,” Helen said with a glance at the ceiling. “Still together.”
    “What is this? Pick on Zoe day?
Well, I can play the same game. When will you have a baby?”
    Helen held up her hands. “Okay, I
get it.” Her tone softened. “I worry about you, that’s all.”
    “I know you’re concerned, but it’s
not like Jack and I are living together. We live in the same house. It’s really
no different than living in an apartment building or duplex. We hardly see each
other.”
    “But you’re still...connected to
him,” she said, her tone gentle. “You’ve got his drawings on the refrigerator,
for God’s sake,” Helen said, swinging a hand to the fridge. Jack had a tendency
to draw when he was bored. Not crosshatches and squares that Zoe made while she
waited on the phone, which turned into splotches of ink that only resembled a
blob of Play-Doh. Jack’s impromptu sketches were more art than doodles. Zoe
looked at the fridge where she’d used poetry magnets to attach Jack’s sketches.
There was the Dallas skyline drawn in the margin of the phone bill, a sketch of
a book splayed open in the corner of a sticky note, and her favorite, ivy
leaves climbing into the text of a magazine article like the words were bricks
in a wall. “They’re just little sketches,” Zoe said. “It doesn’t mean
anything.”
    Helen didn’t reply, only dropped
her chin and looked at Zoe with a sorrowful look.
    “You’ve still got that
Pirates of the Caribbean
poster with Johnny Depp—the one you got when you were fifteen. I know it’s on
the inside closet door in your guestroom. You haven’t thrown it away.”
    Helen shifted on her barstool.
“That’s for my nieces. They stay in there when they come to visit. Besides, a
movie poster is different from personal mementos. And if I had any personal
mementos from Johnny Depp, they wouldn’t be tucked away in a closet, let me
tell you,” Helen said with a grin and they both laughed, breaking the slight
tension between them. They might argue, but they were good enough friends that
they
could
argue.
    Another noise from upstairs caught
their attention. “Will he come in here?” Helen asked.
    “No. He never does.” She paused,
listening for his rapid descent and the solid thump of the front door as it
closed—Jack always came down the stairs fast, but it was absolutely quiet.
    Helen raised her eyebrows at Zoe.
“Is he gone?”
    Zoe walked over to the kitchen
doorway. Unlike the popular open floor plan of Helen’s newly constructed house,
Zoe’s house was designed in an earlier era when each room was self-contained.
Nothing flowed, and there were few open spaces, which suited Zoe and Jack just
fine. The choppy design was exactly what they wanted, but it meant that Zoe
couldn’t see the stairs or the hallway that ran along the stairs to the front
door. She leaned around the doorframe then peered up