Page 52 of All In Good Time

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October 1985 | After

The fact of the matter was that Derek couldn’t go home. But he wouldn’t stay at Becca’s either. The only other option was a reluctant offer from Marty, and when backed into a tough corner, Derek had no choice but to accept.

Becca tried her hardest to not be hurt by his choice. He and Marty hated each other, but now Derek would rather be stuck in the same home as his enemy than be with her.

What else could she do when he wouldn’t dare meet her eye. She hadn’t seen him for three days, not since he left in Marty’s car, leaving her behind.

Could she blame him? No.

Did it hurt? Like hell.

To watch someone who had naturally become your other half choose anyone other than you—who wouldn’t want to curl up and sob?

That wasn’t a choice though.

Derek might hate her now, but she wasn’t going to give up until he was safe.

As nice as Marty’s house was—the perfect place for a teenage boy to hide—her nerves would be on edge until something was done about Mark. It had already proven unsuccessful the first time, and things weren’t looking great the second.

When Becca wasn’t dazed in her classes, she was at home on the phone.

Marty answered when he wasn’t working at the shopping mall theater, and his response was the same every time. “He’s barely eating anything, He locks himself in the room all day, and my parents come home at the end of the week from the Bahamas.”

She could imagine a frustrated hand running over his face.

“I don’t know what I’m going to tell them.”

She nodded and bit her lip. There was nothing she could say to Derek that would help—if he would even hear her. There was little she could do to make any of this easier. The only win was that Derek hadn’t disappeared yet. She wondered why he hadn’t tried to run while Marty was gone, and the best explanation was that he was scared. Now that he was back, now that he knew his dad was looking for him, he might be nervous that, if he left the stronghold of the Parr household, he would be found.

“Thank you, Marty.” She sighed.

Winston was next, and the conversation was short.

Derek was in Highburg. No, he wasn’t home. Had anything useful been found about Mark Stokes? No. Nothing at all.

Once again, helpless disappointment.

Follow-up calls with the same CPS operator led to the same dead end. They’d found nothing suspicious, and therefore, were not considering it a high priority. In less than ninety days, the case would be closed, if they decided it wasn’t worth pursuing.

Of course, they hadn’t found anything suspicious when they visited. By the time they decided to show up, Derek was long gone, and any evidence of what Mark did gone with him.

Would it have been better to not tell Derek about it in the first place?

The entire situation did nothing for her grades, and that was something she found very difficult to care about. She looked down at the returned test from Wednesday, which she had not studied for: C–.

Three weeks ago, that would have made her cry. Now, she was numb, and crumbled the page into a ball before dropping it into the closest garbage bin.

A flash of braided black hair caught her attention, and her head shot up in time to catch sight of Mal walking on the other end of the hallway with a pair of headphones hanging around her neck.

Becca’s heart stilled the closer the girl got. Dark patches of tired bags polluted the unusually pale skin under her eyes, and a long-sleeved jacket was pulled down to her hands, which were stuffed into her pockets. To anyone who didn’t know the girl, she might have looked normal for a teenager. To Becca, who saw her as a sister, she was a mere shell of herself.

“Mal,” she called out.

Immediately, Mal’s lowered gaze rose to her, and her pace halted on the side of the hallway. The empty look in her eyes exploded with a scowl so hard that Becca could feel the heat from yards away.

Without greeting her back, the girl turned and walked quickly in the opposite direction.

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