Page 104 of Our Little Secret

“Brooke?” Leah called again.

Frantically, Brooke tugged on the handle just in case she’d been mistaken.

Nothing.

She heard Leah in the living room, closer now.

No time.

Swiftly, she rounded the desk, slipped out of the room, and pushed open the powder room door. She flushed the toilet and noisily turned on the taps, water rushing into the sink.

Calm down. Just calm the hell down!

But her stomach had twisted into knots and her lungs were tight. She made noise, turning off the taps and yanking the towel from its metal ring, then glanced into the oval mirror mounted over the cabinet.

Dear God.

She blinked at her reflection.

She looked like death warmed over, as Nana used to say, as if she hadn’t slept in days. Her hair was mussed, her eyes haunted, her skin pale. The cut on her chin was a thin reminder of her fight with Gideon, how physical it had gotten.

Pull yourself together!

Find the dog.

And find out if you’re effing pregnant.

Stepping into the hallway, she nearly ran into her sister.

“There you are!” Leah said, little lines puckering her eyebrows together.

“Yeah, here I am.” She was heading for the kitchen. “But I’m going out. We need a few things for breakfast—I guess we could call it brunch soon—and I want to search for Shep now that it’s light.”

“If you call this light,” Leah said, looking through the windows to the gray day beyond.

“Says the woman from Arizona. I’ll be back within an hour or so. Tell Neal I’ll text all the people we called earlier about Marilee being missing. No doubt gossip is running like wildfire through the kids at school, freaking out their parents.”

“Yep.” Leah was nodding. “All over the Internet.”

“You know this?” Brooke asked as they walked into the kitchen. She grabbed her purse. “How?”

“I told you, I’m friends with Marilee. She already posted and her friends commented, so I’m pretty sure everyone at her school—what’s the name of it? Ainswell?”

“Allsworth.”

“Oh, right. Right. I remember now.”

“You remember?” Brooke was skeptical. “How?”

“From all the posts!” Leah said, rolling her eyes. “I just told you.”

“I’m not into it.”

“For the love of God, weren’t you, like, in sales? Of a tech company or something? You should be all over it.”

“LinkedIn.”

“And that’s it?”