in his gut. His gaze lifts to Shandra’s. “I’ll go to school.”
2
Veronica
The sound of the front door closing shakes Veronica out of her game of catch against her bedroom wall. She shoots up in her bed, ears twitching like a dog who’s just heard the rabbit it’s been stalking.
She tiptoes to her door, which is cracked slightly, and turns every ounce of her attention to her dad’s voice.
“That kid just keeps surprising us,” he says to someone on his cell phone. “Parents mysteriously die in a warehouse they had no business being in. And now he’s fully emancipated and living on his own in a house the librarian left him in his will, after yet another mysterious death? I call bullshit.”
Veronica knows who her dad’s talking about. The boy he’s been following for years.
Tristan Ayers.
Her dad is silent for a while as he rummages through papers in his office. How she wishes she could hear what the person on the other line is saying! Keeping Jack Cadbury quiet for any length of time in a discussion is quite the feat.
But the second she asks about his work, nothing but silence.
It’s his own doing that she’s had to stoop to sneaking around, picking the lock of his private office in their New York City apartment, going through his files, listening in on his phone calls. He’s forced her hand. If she wants to prove to the world that he’s not just some quack hell-bent on proving aliens exist, she has no other choice but to go behind his back and be his secret wingman. Wingwoman?
“Really? Another one? Are you sure?” The pitch of her dad’s voice spikes, making Veronica press her jaw flat against the corner of her bedroom door.
There’s another long silence, and Veronica hardly breathes as she waits for her father to speak again.
“Alright, I got it,” he finally says. “Make sure we get a detail on her right away. I want to know everything about her.”
Her. Who is this her?
The subtle ding lets her know he’s hung up the phone, and not long after his footsteps carry down the hallway toward her. As swiftly as she can, she places herself back on her bed and throws her aged tennis ball at the wall, catching it just as her father sticks his head into the gap in her doorway.
“How you doin’, Kitkat?” he asks, his five o’clock shadow matching the shadows under his eyes—another sign that he hasn’t been sleeping. Again.
“Just the same old, same old,” she replies with her characteristic bored tone. “Although school wasn’t as monotonous today. Billy Crenshaw crashed into someone in the cafeteria, which naturally inspired a massive food fight.”
Her father enters the room and sits on the edge of her bed. “And you managed to come out of it unscathed?”
“Yeah, I keep to myself,” she says with a shrug. “I guess I’m like my dad that way.” She throws him a playful smirk.
He shakes his head and sighs with a wearied smile. “Not the best way to be, Kitkat. I wish you took more from your mother than just the dark hair.”
Veronica giggles and sits up with her legs pretzeled beneath her. It’s not often that he talks about her mom, so she needs to take advantage of it. “Tell me again why you call me Kitkat.” To further persuade him, she flashes him her puppy-dog eyes, which isn’t hard seeing as her eyes naturally take up most of her face, the way she sees it.
He chuckles and looks at the ball-beaten wall. “When we first started dating, she used to call me Egghead. Mostly because my last name Cadbury, but also because,” he hisses between his teeth, “your dad used to be somewhat of a nerd.”
No surprise there, Dad. She bites back a laugh.
“So when you came along, she kept the chocolate themed nicknames alive and you became Veronica ‘Kitkat’ Cadbury.”
She smiles, wishing she could remember more of her mother than just her kind smile. “And why doesn’t Logan have a chocolate themed nickname?”
He leans back on the pillow beside her and puts his arm over her shoulder. “You already know that. Your mom had Logan before she met me.”
“Well yeah, but he should have been given a family nickname like us,” she says. “I think we should give him one. How about…” she cups her chin and purses her lips. “Snickers.”
Her dad chuckles. “I don’t think your brother has snickered since he was ten.”