That’s all I can think as I round the corner to the kitchen. I’ve only been here to Emmy’s house twice, but I know the help’s kitchen is through one of these two doors. I’m right on the first guess and there’s Caroline, hovering over the large pot with a skinny bottle above it. Clear liquid is being poured into the steaming pot of soup.
Although I’d planned to offer to help, just so I can gauge how much time we have, my words are stolen.
The glass bottle she’s holding doesn’t look like it belongs in a kitchen. I feel a deep crease form between my furrowed brows and I stare for far too long as she pours more and more into the pot. She’s humming as she does. A sweet tune I’m sure would lull babies to their dreams.
Emmy has soup every night. Every night the caretaker makes her soup. And Emmy stays sick, every day.
“What did you put in there?” My question comes out hard and when Miss Caroline jumps, the liquid spills over the oven and the bottle crashes onto the floor with her startled cry.
I debate on grabbing the notebook from the kitchen counter where I left it. Just so I can add to the collection of underlined sentences. I’m reading without really paying attention, just letting the time go by.
My gaze skims the page, finding four sentences underlined this time and none of the four hold any new meaning. One is the same as it’s been for a while now. I’m invincible.
If it weren’t for the distraction of this story, the suspense and the emotion, I’d feel hopeless. I’m hopeless when it comes to Jase.
If hope is a long way of saying goodbye, hopeless can only mean one of two things. As the thought plays in my mind, my thumb brushes along my bottom lip and I stare at the page.
And that’s when I see it. What I’ve been waiting for. What I was so sure was here.
A chill spreads across my skin as the mug slips from my hand, dropping to the floor, crashing into pieces. If the letters weren’t staring right at me, I never would have seen them.
It’s not the underlined sentences. It’s the lines below them. The first letters of the sentences beneath the pen marks. C. R. O. S. S. She buried the message so deep, I didn’t see it before.
At first it hits me she left me a message, and there’s hope. And then I read the word again.
C. R. O. S. S.
“No.” The word is whispered from me, but not with conscious consent. My head shakes and my fingers tremble as I stare at the evidence.
C. R. O. S. S.
She did leave a note. My blood turns to ice at the thought. Jenny left me a message in this book, and it has to do with the Cross brothers.
“No.” I repeat the word as I lay the book down, although not gently, but forcefully, as if it will bite me if I hold it any longer. I nearly trip over the throw blanket in my rush to get off the sofa.
Thump, thump, thump. Ever present and ever painful, my bastard heart races inside of me.
My limbs are wobbly as I rush to the kitchen, searching for the notebook. I need to write it down. “Write it all down,” I speak in hushed and rushed words as I pull open one drawer in the kitchen, jostling the pens, a pair of scissors, and papers and everything else in the junk drawer. It slams shut as I bring the notebook to my chest, ready to face the book. To face the message Jenny left me.
Knowing she wrote something about the Cross brothers.
Knowing Jase Cross lied to me.
They had something to do with her murder. Maybe even him.
Tears leak from my eyes as I stumble in the kitchen.
“No,” I whisper, and force myself to stand. It will say something else. I tell myself it will, and the sinful whisper in my head reminds me, Hope is a long way of saying goodbye.
Swallowing down my heart and nerves, I push myself to stand, only to hear a creak.
Thump, goes my heart, and this time the beat comes with fear.
I couldn’t have heard that right. No one is coming. No one is here, I tell myself, even though my blood still rushes inside of me, begging me to run, warning me that something’s wrong, that someone’s here who isn’t supposed to be.