Page 24 of Trouble Comes in Threes

“I’d say that’s the best idea you’ve come up with today.”

Hours later, I woke up with a start, sitting upright in bed and gasping for breath. The room was pitch black, so I knew it was the middle of the night, but it took me a second to orient myself.

“Rose,” Joe said, sounding anxious as he sat up and wrapped an arm around me. “What’s wrong?”

I took a breath, trying to still my racing heart. “I don’t know.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” I said, groggy from sleep. “I think I had a bad dream.”

“You don’t remember it?”

I closed my eyes and tried to remember what I’d dreamed of but only recalled fragmented pieces that made no sense. A warehouse with shelves stocked with cardboard boxes. A scream. Gunshots. A woman lying on the ground…

I’d had plenty of nightmares related to my Hardshaw fears, but none of them had been like this. They usually included bits and pieces of the past, combined with imagined confrontations. But even though they terrified me, they always felt like dreams. This had felt real—even if I could only remember fragments of it.

Even stranger, it had felt an awful lot like a vision. But I’d never had a vision while I was asleep before, so I quickly dismissed it.

I shook my head. “No. Nothing really to tell.” I turned to face him. “Maybe I’m just anxious about Ashley.”

“Yeah,” he said absently. “That’s probably it. It’s about one-thirty. Do you want to try to go back to sleep?”

“Yeah.” I lay down, and he tucked me into his side, his fingertips stroking my bare arm. I closed my eyes and tried to settle down, but now my mind was fixated on Ashley. And Hope. “Joe?”

“Yeah, darlin’?” he whispered against my hair.

“I keep thinking about Ashley, but also about Hope.” I paused. “Joe, what if someone found out and…?”

His fingers stopped. “No one’s gonna figure anything out,” he said reassuringly as he cupped my arm and squeezed. “She looks plenty like you, and she’s got brown eyes like me. No one’s ever gonna question it.”

“But I keep thinking about what would happen if someone did, and I’m not belittling what’s happening to Ashley, but Hope…” My voice broke. “It would be so much worse, Joe.”

He lifted my chin, and I could see outlines of his face in the dark. “It won’t happen, Rose. I promise. But God forbid, if it did, we’d move somewhere far from here, where no one has ever heard the name Skeeter Malcolm, okay?”

“But your job and mine…”

“They’re just jobs. We protect our kids. At all costs.”

His voice was tight, and I, of all people, understood why.

His father, J.R. Simmons, had only cared about him in as much as he wanted his son to carry on the legacy of the Simmons name in both politics and business—and when Joe had balked, J.R. had schemed against him. He’d never once considered what his son wanted or needed.

The people who’d raised me hadn’t been much more considerate. My father had left my mother after Violet was born because he’d been carrying on an affair with a woman named Dora Middleton. When Dora got pregnant with me, he moved in with her. She’d been killed in a car accident before I was two months old. He’d been lost without her and had taken me to his childless sister and husband. But my mother had used his grief to get him to return to Henryetta and reunite their family. She’d vowed to love me as her own daughter.

She’d lied.

She’d spend her life resenting me, and when I’d started having visions, she’d used that as an excuse to abuse me more openly.

And my father had let her.

Joe knew about my childhood, and I knew about his, and we’d both vowed our children would never feel unloved and that we’d support them in all things.

Even if we had to leave everything and everyone we loved to do it.

His body tensed. “Ashley and Mikey might not have our last name, but they are our children.” He paused, his voice turning hard. “Which is why I plan on making my own visit to the school tomorrow.”

I almost felt sorry for Mr. Caldoni.

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