Page 97 of Truth or Dare

“Mornin’ girls,” he said and she paled and froze in her tracks. This was the first time she’d seen him since the day after our wedding when we saw them off.

“Mornin’ Tommy.” Sarah passed him a cup of coffee.

“Hi,” Lisa said, not looking at him, awkwardly looking anywhere else but at him.

I gave Tommy a shrug as he kissed me.

“What’s up, Leese?” Tommy asked.

She shook her head, looking at her nails. “Nothing. Sleep okay? Uh, welcome back.”

He eyed her warily. “Fine, yeah. Thanks.” He took his coffee to the table and grabbed the newspaper.

We had a pretty quiet and uneventful breakfast. Tommy kissed me goodbye as he was heading to Dare’s for a meeting and then that afternoon, he’d be picking me up to take me to Rose and Cal’s for dinner.

After he left, I got a moment alone with Lisa. “Everything okay?” I asked.

“Sure, Tia. Yeah.” She was tidying up the table.

“You sure?”

She nodded quickly, not looking at me, and left the room mumbling that she had to get ready for an appointment.

Alone, as Tess had taken the boys to the library for story time and Sarah was gone to clean Luc’s house, I picked up the phone and dialed Rose and Cal’s number.

Ruby answered.

“Hello?”

“Ruby?”

“Yeah?”

“Hi.”

“Who’s this?”

“It’s Tia.”

Silence. She totally knew it was me.

“Rubes?”

“Yeah?” She didn’t sound good.

“I, uh, I just wanted to confirm it’s still okay to come over today. We’re back. I assume you know all about my conversation with Mia and everything.”

“Yeah, I know, Tia. Ma’s expecting you so, yeah, see you at six.”

“Okay. Um, see you then. Can you tell Mia I checked in?”

“Uh huh,” she replied, her voice sounding hollow, “Bye.”

The line went dead and I was left sitting there holding the phone and feeling sick at heart.

I really should’ve tried to do things differently here. This was my fault.

When Tommy and I approached the house, Cal came out and greeted us. He gave me a hug and shook Tommy’s hand and waved us in. Everyone was already at the table.

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