Sovereign Hope Read Free Page B

hand, studying the pictures from our
annual summer trips up the coast, to Disneyland, New York, Knott’s
Berry Farm, elementary and high school, realizing that in every
single picture my mom bore some degree of that same expression,
mixed with a quiet pride.
    At that moment my fragile grasp on my emotions began to
waver. Even on a good day, the panic constantly roiling away just
below the surface was difficult to contain. On bad days, it broke
through in bursts that threatened to smash my resolve into dust.
Today was a bad day. My mother was  gone . Not just disappeared on an
unplanned vacation kind of gone, or  Off to the store, be back in five  kind of gone. She had just left work one day in the middle of
the afternoon and had never come back. No note. No phone call. Not
even an email.
      The worry was exhausting. And after the
events of today, looking at those photos was enough to tip the
scales between coping and crashing. All my fears came rushing down
in an unexpected wave of alarm that made my head spin.
    Where was my
mom?
    Was she
safe?
    Was she
hurt?
    Had someone
taken her?
    But the most
terrifying of all, the one question I was usually too scared to
even form in my mind:
    Was she
dead?
    The sound of the back door snick ing closed brought the hallway
back into focus, a little too sharp and too bright. I clenched my
jaw and dug deep into my reserves, putting my I’m okay  face back on like a
tired, worn coat.
    Back in the
kitchen, Tess had returned to her chair and was beaming from ear to
ear. She took the glass out of my hand and drained it in one.
    “ Whew! Thanks. How did you know I needed that?”
    “ Just considerate, I guess. What’s up with your face? It’s
doing something weird.”
    Tess shot me a
look that would curdle milk and poked her tongue out. “I’m just
happy, that’s all.”
    “ You’re happy?” That meant trouble. That meant a guy. It
always did. I gave her The Look. “Who is he?”
    “ His name’s Oliver. We’ve been on four dates. He’s perfect.” A
dreamy look settled on her face, and she stared off into the
distance as though imagining the rest of her life arranged around
the perfection that was this new Oliver. I elbowed
her. 
    “ Four dates and you haven’t mentioned him once?”
    “ I just wanted to make sure he was really interested. He’s
from Whiteacre.”
    “ Oh.” That explained a lot. Guys from Whiteacre were always
‘slumming it’ with girls from St. Jude’s on the school breaks. They
thought they were so much better than everyone else just because
their annual fees alone were enough to purchase an above average
home in Monterey Hills. Usually they got bored of their holiday
conquests just before school picked up again. You didn’t see them
for dust once the primped and preened girls at their own school
returned from seasoning in Europe or wherever else Daddy’s yacht
was anchored that year.
    “ Are you sure—”
    The sentence
remained unfinished. The phone on the kitchen counter began to
trill. Tess picked up the handset and thrust it at me before I
could object. “Tell the truth.”
    “ Okay, fine,” I hissed. The phone reached its eighth ring
before I answered it, holding it gingerly to the side of my head
like it might explode. “Hello?”
    “ Farley.” Any hope that the person on the other end of
the line might be a telemarketer disappeared at the sound of that
voice—sandpaper on rough stone. “You haven’t returned my
calls.”
    “ I’m sorry, Detective Miller, I just got home.”
    “ That’s not what officers Mayhew and Angelis tell me. They
tell me you’ve been home for a while now, and you’ve got Miss
Kennedy with you.”
    “ You’ve got cops watching the house?” Why the hell hadn’t I
seen them? If they were out there, then who knew who else was too.
I screwed my face up at the phone. “Yeah, okay. I just got home.
I’ve been sitting here trying to calm down. I think I might be in
shock.”
    It was worth a
shot.