Page 40 of Wife Number One

KARA

“The GPS is saying it’s only five minutes until we get to your sister’s place.” Kyle peered through the windshield and grimaced. “Are you sure we’re in the right spot? This place is…”

“Bleak?” Alice filled in, a shudder running through her thin frame. She turned back to me. “Is this seriously where Rebel lives? It’s…”

“A shithole,” Kyle supplied unhelpfully. “I think those people over there are shooting up beneath that streetlamp.”

I took a steadying breath, not wanting to look out the windows for fear of seeing the house from my nightmares. The one I’d been held in against my will, on Caleb’s orders.

It had been where I’d met Hayden. And where I’d given birth to Hayley Jade.

I thought I’d put all those bad feelings behind me, but being back here now reminded me exactly of why I hadn’t been able to stay, even when my sister had offered to let me live with her.

I hated this town and everything in it. And Rebel’s place was too close to it.

I cleared my throat. “Rebel’s house is in the neighboring town. It’s not like this. You’ll see. Just keep driving.”

Kyle seemed skeptical, and I couldn’t blame him. It had always amazed me that two towns so unalike could share a border and there not be an out and out war between its residents.

The haves on one side. The have-nots on the other.

Maybe little battles were fought every day, and I just didn’t know about it.

I wanted to keep it that way. Saint View was not the place for me. But neither was my sister’s place in Providence. Caleb had been from Providence, proving that evil lurked everywhere, not just in towns with broken windows and abandoned cars. Sometimes the worst evil lurked behind the doors of million-dollar mansions with luxury cars parked in the driveways.

We rolled slowly through the streets, the houses gradually changing from run-down or abandoned shacks, to low-income government housing, to small suburban dwellings, and finally, as we crossed the border into Providence, to mansions that could be in Home Beautiful magazine.

“Wasn’t expecting that,” Kyle murmured, his hesitant staring becoming star-struck gawking. “These places are huge.”

“Take a left here,” I told him quietly. “This is Rebel’s street. At least, it was the last time I saw her. If she’s moved…”

If she’d moved I didn’t know where we’d go next. There was no backup plan.

“She hasn’t,” Alice said confidently. “I’ve seen the return address on her letters. It’s this address.”

I stared at my sister. “Rebel has been sending you letters?”

She glanced back at me with a frown of confusion. “Not us. You. Ever since our phones were taken away.”

I shook my head, hurt erupting behind my chest. “She never sent me one.”

“She did,” Alice insisted. “They were always sent to our place. Dad gave them to Josiah to give to you.” She shook her head, expression full of anger. “Josiah wasn’t passing them on, was he?”

Stupidly, tears welled in my eyes. My older sister had been a lifeline for me when I’d first returned to the commune with my tail between my legs, one that Josiah had quickly cut off once I was his wife. I might not have liked where she lived, but I had missed her every day.

For the first time since Alice had thrown those tiny pebbles at my window, I felt a tiny kernel of excitement.

“That’s her house, just there.” I pointed. “With the curved driveway.”

My sister was behind those doors. I didn’t know if she would even want to see me after not speaking for so long.

But something inside me ached to try.

Kyle was still muttering in shock and awe over Rebel’s house, and I couldn’t blame him. It was more beautiful than I remembered. The two-story home was nothing short of grand. There were floor-to-ceiling windows everywhere, and the flower beds were neatly arranged, a few new beds in place since the last time I’d been here, though they were bare of any flowers at this time of year. A swing set by the fence line caught my eye, and I couldn’t help but smile. Rebel’s babies would be four by now, not even a full year younger than Hayley Jade. Before we’d gotten cut off, Rebel had told me she was having a set of boy-girl twins, but I’d never even gotten to know their names.

“I wish you’d told me she was still trying to contact me,” I said to Alice. “Did you ever read any of her correspondence?” I wanted to know everything that had been in those letters. Wanted to read every word and know every detail of what had been going on in Rebel’s life.

But Josiah had kept it from me. Just like everything and everyone else. A constant punishment because I couldn’t do the one thing he’d married me for and he resented it every day.

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