Not Quite Right (A Lowcountry Mystery) (Lowcountry Mysteries Book 6) Read Free Page A

not mine to call anymore. I just want to get home, and through sweat and pure determination, my Honda and I are on our way after more than an hour’s delay.
    Heron Creek, the sleepy little town that felt like home before it officially became that, greets me with weary eyes and wet streets, water sluicing in raging rivulets through the gutters. The houses and streetlights are dark, likely the effect of the now-calming storm on my quiet hamlet.
    Hamlet. What a funny word, lost to the association with Shakespeare’s well-known emo whiner of a main character. I’ve always loved the writer, and a good sad story, but cannot bear that particular tragedy.
    My headlights bounce off the front porch as I swing into the driveway, taking care not to hit Amelia’s new sedan where it’s parked. The car in the street makes me wary—I’m pretty sure it belongs to Dylan Travis, the last person I feel like confronting at the moment.
    I just betrayed a good man, my integrity, and possibly the ghost of a little Drayton boy in the process. I’m cold, wet, covered in muddy slop and heaven knows what else. Beau and I are teetering on the edge of being over, if we haven’t already slipped down the other side. It’s not as though that damned email from Travis’s adoptive parents is the last thing on my mind, but at the moment, it’s nowhere near the top. I need to check on Millie, take a hot shower, throw back something that can warm up my insides, and pass out.
    The look on Travis’s face when I find him on the front porch suggests what I want and what he wants are incompatible. He steps forward, his too-strong jaw set with determination and the rest of him looking as haggard as I’ve ever seen him. He runs a hand through his hair. The question in his eyes is clear: he wants to know if I know who he might be to me. I wonder if he’ll tell me what he should have told me himself months ago, when he first arrived in Heron Creek.
    I hold his gaze, letting him see the truth in my eyes.
    His face droops, and he folds in on himself, crestfallen. He opens his mouth, then closes it again as we both hear a bump from inside the house.  
    The glance he casts toward the windows is wary, then he looks back at me with a glint of manic desperation. “Graciela, I have to talk to you.”
    All of the events of not only this evening but the past few days pile up on my back like a legion of monkeys grown fat over the holidays. They weigh me down with fatigue, with an exhaustion that won’t allow for sympathy, regardless of the obvious distress that’s taken hold of the town’s new detective. There is only space for anger, in the hopes that it will push away anything and everyone trying to bar me from my room .
    “It seems to me that the time for talking was weeks ago. I’m not sure what it’s time for now, but at the moment, I’d love some silence.” I hold up my hand when he starts to protest, sure I’m going to relent if he starts to cry—which honest to Cheez-Its looks like it’s imminent. A twinge in my chest softens my voice. “Travis, I’m not saying I hate your guts, for heaven’s sake. We can talk. Just not now.”
    He swallows once, then again, seeming to struggle with getting himself under control. As hard as I silently will him to step around me and off the porch, to sense that nothing good can come out of us discussing anything right now—never mind the mind-boggling revelation that he thinks we’re siblings—he doesn’t move.  
    “What are you even doing out on the porch, anyway?” I ask, exasperated by how close my sanctuary is without my being able to access it. A sudden, unexpected fear turns my tongue to ash. “Is Amelia home?”
    What if she isn’t? What if something happened, and because my phone didn’t have service, she couldn’t get me? I reach into the pocket of my windbreaker, fingers scrabbling for the outdated phone. I turn it on, seeing that the service has been restored and I’ve missed a dozen calls