Page 5 of Touch the Stars
“Oof.”Found the curb.
The car rattled to a stop, fully on the shoulder.Well, sort of on the shoulder, but mostly over the curb and in the oleanders, but who was counting?
She moved her gaze ahead.The fucking truck driver continued barreling down the freeway as if nothing had happened.As if he hadn’t almost killed her.
“Dickhead.God.I.Hate.Los Angeles.”
Actually, it was cities in general that were shitty.Cities meant lots of people.Lots of people meant lots of traffic.And lots of traffic meant lots of dumb asshat drivers, like the one who’d just run her off the freeway.
People couldn’t be trusted, especially with her life.She hadn’t survived twenty-seven years to cash it in now.How her sister stood living in this sort of insanity was a mystery.
An invisible band squeezed her heart with the same white-knuckled intensity as her hands gripped the steering wheel.It’d been a whole month since Kristyn disappeared somewhere between her condo in L.A.and Kait’s, in Azura Palms.Vanished, without a trace.A fun sisters’ weekend had turned into a nightmare, full of flashbacks of the day their parents had died.
Until a random hiker found Kris’s car, two hell-filled weeks later.Five miles off the highway, in the middle of the desert.No tire tracks, no footprints.No luggage.No Kris.It was like the car had been picked up by a giant and set down again somewhere else.Who was to say that Kris wasn’t living her own nightmare?
She rested her forehead against the top curve of the steering wheel.Her sisterwassomewhere.They were identical twins, for Christ’s sake.If Kris had died, she would’ve felt something, right?
I can’t give up hope.
Even though Kris would’ve packed only a few days’ worth of insulin.That would’ve run out by now.How did one identical twin get a rare medical condition, but not the other?
“Stopthinkingabout that.”
She raised her head, blew out a gusty sigh, then forced her fingers to uncurl from their death-grip.The truth was, being alone—the last surviving member of her family—was terrifying.It’d been her and Kris since Mom and Dad’s accident.The two of them against the world, surviving a parade of shitty foster homes, their wild teenage years, and a round of rehab.
Through all of it, they’d had each other to lean on.Graduating college and landing their first real jobs had been major victories, as if they’d arrived and everything would be okay.Now, the possibility she was really alone… Her seven years of sobriety were in serious danger.
“Don’t be a fuck-head, Bergh.Just get your ass home.The meat loaf in the fridge ain’t gonna last another day, you know.”
She scrubbed her hands over her face.What she needed was to talk to Kris, and there was only one place she could do that.She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“You got this, girl.”
Get through L.A., stop in the middle of nowhere to talk to Kris, then go home and eat.No sweat.She flipped on her turn signal, checked over her shoulder, then eased back into L.A.rush-hour traffic.
Three congestion-filled hours later, the exit sign to the Azura Palms cutoff loomed out of the darkness.Her belly grumbled as she guided her little car along the offramp, the headlights cutting through the clear desert night.
Should’ve stopped for dinner.
That meat loaf at home hadn’t been that great to begin with, anyway.And the stale granola bar from the glove compartment hadn’t helped her hunger pangs much either.
She guided the car onto the little two-lane road toward Azura Palms, the red-headed stepsister of Palm Springs.Okay, it wasn’tthatbad.The people were nice, her job paid well, and there was next to no traffic.Plus, the perks of working for the little county airport just outside of town, like getting her pilot’s license.
Boy, Kris sure had freaked out about that one.A grin tugged at the corners of her mouth.Her sister always had been the responsible twin.The caretaker.The “mother” to her “obstinate child.”
She moved her foot from the gas pedal to the brake, slowing the car as she angled it toward the shoulder.Gravel and sand crunching under tires made the loneliness of the desert at night more pronounced.This was it, the place where Kristyn had disappeared.
There was no proof it was theexactspot, but her heart felt it.Some people called that a “twin thing.”A huff escaped.More like a sixth sense of the person she’d been closest to since conception.
Her stomach gave another gurgling complaint, like a whining two-year-old.
“Fine.Just a short visit, okay?”
She killed the engine, wrapped her fingers around the metal door-lever, then gave the door a shoulder-shove.It opened with a cringe-worthy creak of protesting metal.One of these days she’d get the hinges fixed, or oiled.Whatever.
The velvet warmth of the desert night caressed her skin, and the scents of sage and dust rose around her, soothing her jangled nerves.The sound of the car door closing seemed muted and small in the vast, open space.
She climbed onto the warm car hood, drew her knees to her chest, and stared up at the glorious expanse of the Milky Way.Sometimes the view made her feel inconsequential in the grand scheme of the universe.But if the whole “butterfly fluttering its wings in Timbuktu affecting the weather over the Atlantic” saying was true, then maybe each and every human being on Earth could affect what happened in other places in the universe.
