Cutting the Ties Page 7
Jake, normally bubbly and loud, went silent, watching both parents carefully, like a scientist in the field. He didn’t miss a single pained look. While he didn’t understand what it all meant, he could feel the weight of unspoken emotion between the two people he loved most in the world.
Jessica looked away first, and then the spell was broken. Todd ruffled his son’s floppy hair and turned away, walking to his Jeep without another backward glance.
Jake watched him go, his floppy hair falling into his face, as his bottom lip started to quiver.
Jessica knew that look. Todd climbed in his Jeep and started the engine. He hadn’t even backed down out of the driveway before Jake started to cry.
Jessica felt a catch in her own throat. For the last several times after Todd left, Jake cried. She gently scooped her son into her arms and carried him inside. She felt like crying herself, but she had to put on a brave face for Jake.
“I want Daddy!” Jake wailed, now safely inside.
“I know you do. You’ll see him soon.” Jessica rubbed Jake’s back, but the little boy was nearly inconsolable as big, wet tears splashed down his smooth cheeks.
“But I want him! I miss Daddy!” And then he burst into another wail. Each one cut straight through Jessica, like an ice-cold wind. She felt like crying, too. The tears burned the back of her throat.
“It’s not fair! Not fair!” he wailed, and Jessica couldn’t agree more.
Nothing about her life right now was fair. Todd was the man she truly loved—maybe the only man she’d ever truly loved. Why wasn’t she with him?
Because of Sarah. Because of Liam. Because of all kinds of other complications.
On the coffee table, Jessica’s phone dinged and the face lit up. Another text from Liam.
Jessica rocked Jake in her lap, and he began to calm down a little, even as Jessica thought how unfair it all was. She and Todd had caused pain to poor Elizabeth three years ago because they couldn’t help it—they’d fallen in love. Neither one had wanted it, but it had happened anyway; the magnetic force pulling them together was not to be denied. They’d gotten married, had a son, and now they were getting a divorce just like that. Not because they didn’t love each other, not because the attraction wasn’t as strong as ever, but because of lifestyles, philosophies, careers, complications that now seemed hard to even quantify. And without foolish pride, even solvable, when she thought about it.
How could Jessica sit here and let Liam or Sarah come in the way of her and Todd?
Three years ago, she hadn’t let Elizabeth get in the way, she realized. This was her best friend, her twin sister, her life, the person she least wanted to hurt in the world. And the only way she could ever have justified doing it was for a love so strong, so compelling, so irresistible, she couldn’t help herself.
And yet, now, she was letting something as small as Liam and Sarah stand in the way?
For the briefest of moments, Jessica wondered if she was sabotaging herself. Did she feel guilty for taking Todd from Elizabeth? Was this somehow a self-punishment for the pain she’d caused Elizabeth?
And maybe she deserved it.
But Elizabeth had forgiven her. She’d said so. Jessica should forgive herself, too. Now, there was more than just her involved: there was Jake to think about. She grabbed a tissue from the box on the coffee table and dabbed at his eyes. Jake took deep, shaky breaths as he calmed down from his cry and looked up at her with pain and heartbreak in his blue eyes. He wanted her to fix this.
And she would.
And the first step was breaking things off with Liam. It wouldn’t guarantee that Todd would come back to her. It might already be too late. But Jessica had to try.
Her phone began to ring on the coffee table. Now Liam was calling. He couldn’t leave well enough alone. She felt a prickle of anger and annoyance. Could he really care for her so much if he didn’t respect her wishes? It was always what he wanted on his terms.
She realized in that moment what she had to do. She needed to stop pretending that Liam was any kind of substitute for Todd.
And the first step would be ending her relationship with Liam.
For good this time. And right now.
She had to try again with Todd. She owed it to Jake and herself.
Chapter Twelve
The next morning, Aaron was sitting in a business meeting in San Diego, listening to a new client discuss the pros and cons of installing geothermal heating in a new office building they wanted him to design, but his mind was a few blocks away.
He was thinking about Robin Platt, and about Elizabeth’s plea for him to keep looking for any connection between her and Rick Warner. He’d been to Warner Natural Gas headquarters half a dozen times so far, posing as an architecture graduate student wanting to know more about Warner and his impressive skyscraper that had altered the city’s skyline.
He’d pored through employee records while there, doing his own undercover spy mission, but the best he came up with was a woman who matched Robin’s description—a Rose Pally—but it turned out they weren’t the same person at all.
While coming and going from Warner Natural Gas, he’d managed to compile a list of all Warner female employees in their twenties. The list contained more than thirty names, and slowly but surely Aaron had Googled all of them. Through Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, he’d been able to confirm that all but one of them were definitely not Robin Platt.
The last one—Mona Thomas—he couldn’t find anywhere. It was like she was a ghost. No Facebook page. No LinkedIn. No blog. Nothing. He had nothing to prove she was Robin Platt, but he had nothing to prove she wasn’t, either
He needed to get back to Warner Gas.
“What do you think, Aaron?” asked his client at the end of the long conference room table.
I think I need to get there before lunch hour is over, Aaron thought, glancing up at the clock. Lunchtime on Thursdays was the perfect time to do research, he’d found. Nola, the receptionist who’d taken a liking to him over the last few weeks, was on desk duty, so she was there to answer questions, and few other people were around to ask why he was spending so much time in the office.
Aaron arrived at Warner Gas a little after noon. Nola’s face lit up when she saw him.
“Back again?” she sang, happy to have a little diversion from her front desk duties. “You must be the hardest working graduate student in your class.”
“I try.” Aaron smiled. “By the way, I didn’t know if you brought your lunch, but I’ve got an extra panini if you want one.”
“You’re a lifesaver!” Nola declared, snatching up the little white bag Aaron offered. “All I’ve got in the kitchen is a Lean Cuisine I do not want to eat.”
Aaron smiled. He knew the way to Nola’s heart. Croissants and panini. “Mind if I use my usual cube?”
“Go on,” Nola said, and smiled. Since Aaron made regular trips back to Warner Gas and had become quick friends with Nola, she’d not only let him use an empty cube, but had given him her password to use to log in to the computer, where many of the blueprints of the building were kept in large PDFs.
Of course, Aaron wasn’t looking for blueprints. He was looking for anything he could find on Mona Thomas.
He glanced quickly around to see if anyone was watching him. As usual, most Warner employees had gone to lunch already, and Nola was busy with a phone call.
He searched quickly through the HR database and pulled up Mona Thomas’s file.
He scanned it quickly. There was no picture, just her birthday (making her twenty-three). She had been let go after only just a year. The official reason? “Undependable.”
In the document, it looked like large segments were deleted, including her address and phone number, and a separate file, one that was only marked Mona Thomas was locked, requiring a special password he didn’t have. Interesting.
Aaron did another Google search, just to see if anything new popped up, but couldn’t find a single entry that s
eemed to match the Mona Thomas he was looking for.
This girl was a ghost online and appeared to be a ghost at Warner Gas, too. He glanced up and saw Nola getting off the phone. Maybe she knew something about Mona Thomas. Nola knew a little bit about everyone at Warner Gas.
Chapter Thirteen
As Elizabeth checked out of her motel room and packed up her rental car, she couldn’t help but feel like she was wasting her time in Kentucky. She hadn’t found anything that contradicted what Robin had told her. Everything so far checked out.
The only thing slightly different was the ex-boyfriend who claimed Robin was a lesbian. But, then again, he could’ve just been bitter or lying. And that new information wasn’t even really relevant to Bruce’s case. She had nothing left to do but head to the airport, even though her flight wasn’t until much later that afternoon, and it wasn’t yet lunchtime.
On the road out to the airport, on the forty-minute drive to Lexington, she passed by the Lexington Center for Recovery.
It was a drug and alcohol rehab center. She hadn’t seen the sign on the way the drive to Richmond, but it had been nighttime then and she’d been in a hurry.
Elizabeth slowed down as she glanced at the rehab center in her rearview mirror. No one had hinted that Robin had ever gone to rehab. There’d been nothing to suggest there was a link at all. Yet it was the one place Elizabeth hadn’t been to. And if being a journalist had taught Elizabeth anything, it was that everybody had dirty little secrets. This could’ve been Robin’s. If she was a lesbian, growing up gay in a small town like Richmond couldn’t have been easy Maybe she had turned to drugs or alcohol as an escape. It wouldn’t be the first time a troubled teen found solace in self-medication.
And she had hours until her flight. What was she going to do, just sit at the airport?
On a whim, she pulled over off the next exit ramp and made a U-turn, crossing under the freeway and headed back the way she came. Might as well check it out, she thought.
Chapter Fourteen
Aaron sat for a second in his cube, trying to think of a good reason to ask Nola about Mona Thomas. He knew he had to find a way to get the information without it seeming too weird or suspicious. He thought—not for the first time—he’d make a lousy Tom Cruise. This whole spy business wasn’t for him. He was an architect, not an undercover agent!
He pulled up the picture Elizabeth had sent him of Robin Platt on his phone. He gazed at the blond twenty-something, as if the mute picture could offer him a good plan.
He had to come up with something. Why would he be asking around about a twenty-three-year-old former employee?
He could say they dated, although he was happily married to a man. Not that Nola knew that.
In fact, Nola assumed Aaron had a girlfriend and he’d let her believe it. It seemed easiest. But how do I ask about Mona Thomas?
Aaron watched as a couple of clerks filed past him, gossiping about someone who worked at Warner Gas. He didn’t hear the particulars, but given that he already knew Nola loved gossip, maybe he should just pretend he overheard them talking about Mona Thomas. She’d been fired and her file was heavily edited. There had to be a story there. And Nola would probably be happy to tell him if she knew it.
Aaron glanced at the picture of Robin Platt once more and then dropped his phone into his shirt pocket. As he approached Nola’s cube, she smiled.
“Find everything you need?”
“On the thesis front, yes,” Aaron said. “But I’ve got a different question for you. I heard someone back there talk about something that sounded like good gossip. You’ve been holding out on me!”
“What gossip?” Nola perked up instantly. The forty-something receptionist loved office scandal almost as much as she loved a free panini.
“You have to tell me: who is Mona Thomas anyway?” Aaron asked.
“Mona Thomas! They were talking about her?” Nola glanced around to see if anyone was looking. Then she motioned him back around the side of the desk, which he did.
“Mona is nothing but trouble. She was hired as an accountant’s assistant, but I hardly ever saw her when she did work here. Rumor has it she was sleeping with somebody in upper management. But she was fired for embezzlement. Apparently, she diverted some company funds straight into her own account.”
“Seriously?”
“Oh, and it gets worse. She was also a drug addict, apparently. That’s why she stole money—to support her habit. She was fired at least six months or so ago, I think.”
“Wow. Any charges filed against her?”
“No, that’s the strange thing. But I guess the company just didn’t want to pursue it. I think Warner was just glad to be rid of her!” Nola shifted her elbow on her desk and accidentally knocked a pen to the ground.
Ever the gentleman, Aaron bent down to get it, but as he did so, the cell phone he carried in his shirt pocket clattered to the carpet. It fell right at Nola’s feet and the screen lit up, with a brilliant picture of Robin Platt—the last thing he’d been looking at on his phone before he’d sauntered over to Nola’s desk.
Shit, Aaron thought. This is why I don’t work for the CIA!
“Hey…that’s her!” Nola exclaimed, glancing at the phone. “Who?”
“Mona Thomas!”
Aaron couldn’t believe his luck. He’d just found the link he’d been looking for. He needed to tell Elizabeth!
But suddenly, Nola’s expression changed, and the naïve, trusting, easily flattered, maybe even foolish woman turned hard and cold with suspicion. “Hold on. Why do you have a picture of Mona Thomas on your phone? Just what’s this all about?”
Also by Francine Pascal
Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later
SERIES
Sweet Valley High
Sweet Valley Twins
Sweet Valley Kids
Sweet Valley University
Fearless
YOUNG ADULT NOVELS
Hangin’ Out with Cici (My Mother Was Never a Kid)
My First Love and Other Disasters
Love and Betrayal
Hand-Me-Down Kid
The Ruling Class
ADULT NOVELS
Save Johanna
If Wishes Were Horses…(La Villa)
Little Crew of Butchers
NONFICTION
The Strange Case of Patty Hearst (with John Pascal)
THEATER
George M! (with Michael Stewart and John Pascal)
About the Author
© Ben Asen Photography, 2010
Francine Pascal is the creator of Sweet Valley and is one of the most popular fiction writers of all time. As a theater lover and Tony voter, Ms. Pascal is on the Advisory Board of the American Theatre Wing. Her favorite sport is a monthly poker game. She lives in New York City and France.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE SWEET LIFE #5: CUTTING THE TIES. Copyright © 2012 by Francine Pascal. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Sweet Valley® is a registered trademark of Francine Pascal.
www.stmartins.com
Cover photographs: woman © Kiuik Shutterstock.com; man © Vladimir Shutterstock.com
e-ISBN 9781429958387
First Edition: August 2012
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New this summer from FRANCINE PASCAL, get ready for the exciting SIX-PART e-serial, THE SWEET LIFE, publishing every week!
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Three years after the events of the New York Times bestseller SWEET VALLEY CONFIDENTIAL families have been made, hearts have been broken, and a scandal of epic proportions will rock Jessica and Elizabeth’s perfect wo
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Three years after the events of the New York Times bestseller SWEET VALLEY CONFIDENTIAL, families have been made, hearts have been broken, and a scandal of epic proportions will rock Jessica and Elizabeth’s perfect world. Don’t miss a moment of this brand new chapter of Sweet Valley!
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