I trailed off when she continued to sit behind her tidy, pretty, delicate, white desk with its squat bunch of pale pink roses shoved tight with green hydrangea in a round vase at the corner, staring up at me emotionlessly.
I’d seen her once for maybe a second and that one time I’d seen her, there was so much emotion pouring off her, I could swear I could taste it.
Right now, void.
Nothing.
“We’re here to help,” Elvira chimed in.
Slowly, Millie Cross’s eyes moved to Elvira, and even Elvira, who feared nothing and no one, not even any of the badass commandos she worked with or the badass bikers she hung with, I could see shiver when the frost of Millie’s gaze touched her.
“You’re here to help,” Millie repeated.
“With High,” Elvira went on.
That was when I saw it. I heard the noise Lanie made behind me and I knew she saw it too.
But I was too busy flinching at pain that wasn’t mine but was visible to extremes. Pain that slashed through Millie’s face before she hid it.
Oh yeah.
There was something going on and as awkward as this was, we were right to come. I knew it. I sensed it with the surety of a woman, the certainty of a mother, the definitiveness of a sister.
“You’re here to help with...” she paused strangely, then emphasized the word, “High.”
“Boy’s in a foul mood,” Elvira shared, either powering through the chill Millie was emanating or she’d put up her shields and was impervious to it. “Spreadin’ that wide through Chaos. Somethin’s gotta be done.”
Again with the strange emphasis. “High is in a foul mood.”
“That’s what I said,” Elvira replied.
“You,” Millie started, then looked to me, “and you,” her gaze went beyond me to Lanie, “and you all came to my place of business, which is also my home, to inform me that High is in a foul mood and you’re here to help.”
“Listen.” I took a step forward. “I know this may seem strange. And we’ve obviously taken you off guard. But I saw High after whatever went down and the boys aren’t really sharing much about your history but you should know that he—”
Millie interrupted me.
“Get out.”
I saw Elvira straighten with a jerk in her seat even as I felt my own body jerk, not to mention the surprise coming from Lanie, who was now standing beside me.
“I think you may mistake me,” I tried again. “We’re sisters. We’re—”
She interrupted me again.
“Get out.”
“Girl, you don’t get us. We’re here ’cause—” Elvira tried.
Millie interrupted her too.
Except this time, she did it by straightening out of her chair and screeching, “Get out!”
We all went completely still.
There was no other reaction to have.
The mask had slipped.
The anguish had been bared.
And it was so immense, so impossible to process, witnessing it was paralyzing.
“My apologies,” she said, her voice shaking, as was her body.
Visibly.
“I was wrong,” she went on. “You can help. Please follow me.”
And then she started walking stiffly, rounding her desk, passing Lanie and me, and moving right out the door.
We looked at each other and then followed.
All our heels sounded against the pavers as we made our way across the courtyard to the steps that led up to a split farm door that had a window at the top. The steps were brick and formed a half circle into the pavers.
Definitely a cute house.
Millie went in the door.
We followed her into a kitchen that I would kill for just so I could look at it (since my husband did most of the cooking).
It wasn’t cute.
It was fabulous.
“If you’d stay there,” she requested, and we stopped.
She disappeared into a hall off the equally fabulous living room.
Honestly, it was amazing. Like out of a magazine.
“Bitch can decorate,” Elvira muttered.
I gave her a look.
She raised her brows. “Do I lie?”
She didn’t.
“Just shush,” I hissed.
“Not me who blew our plan,” she returned.
“It wasn’t our plan,” I shot back in an irate whisper. “It was yours and I think we all get it wasn’t a good one.”
“Okay, girls,” Lanie cut in. “Before, we had to tread cautiously. Now we know we have a minefield to navigate. Look alive and don’t do it bickering.”
She had a good point, so I shut up.
It was a good call because Millie appeared carrying one of those large, lidded plastic crates, blue with an opaque white top.
It looked heavy.
Even so, she gave it a heave. It flew several inches through the air and was clearly weighted wrong because one side dipped, so when it hit her wood floor, it did it on an edge. The latch on the lid popped, the lid opened, and it landed on its side, its contents spilling and sliding across the floors right to our feet.
Photographs.
Hundreds of them.
And at a glance, they were all of a younger Millie Cross... with High.
All of them.
“Twenty years and I can’t bring myself to get rid of that. So,” Millie stated, “if you’re here to help, if you’d be so kind as to take that away, that would be appreciated. Dump it. Burn it. Whatever. Just get it gone.”