Page 31 of Songbird
Drew’s return email pops up almost instantly.
Noted, but I’ve exhausted my network and need to do more research. Give me a couple more days?
A couple more days with Rosie living in my shirts and sleeping in my bed. Can I do it? I grimace at the charred toast and bitter coffee, then glance at where she’s curled around Dakota on the sofa, notebook and pencil in hand, soft blonde curls escaping the messy knot on her head and her forehead lined with concentration.
Take as long as you need.
“Hey, Rosie?”
She looks up from the notebook on her knees. “Yeah?”
I turn the laptop to face her, the screen opened to a new browser. “Did you want to use the computer today?”
She hasn’t touched the thing for days, not since the afternoon she fired most of her team, then jumped naked into the lake. I keep waiting for her to snap into business mode and get on with taking back her career from Chip McFuckface Daniels. Instead, she spends every hour with her head over that notebook or strolling with Dakota around the perimeter of the cabin humming to herself or trying to earn her keep as a cook.
My groceries ran out this morning. Thank God.
“No, thanks,” she says before returning to her writing.
Right.
I spin the computer back my way, open a new browser, and wade into the muck that is social media. Chip released a statement about the canceled wedding and there’s a lot of online conversation about Rosie now. Articles about the cheating rumors. Headlines labeling her a runaway bride. Media statements from her former publicist, talent agent, and legal team. Even her former security company. Anyone bumped from Rosalie’s books has made some kind of comment about cutting ties with the pop princess, and most of them have thrown shade. It pisses me off until the comment sections make me sick.
Forcing myself to read the online vitriol makes me want to follow Rosie’s lead and throw my computer in the lake. Why anyone would choose to put themselves in the public eye makes zero sense to me, but I grit my teeth and scroll through the results of my sixth keyword search, looking for suspicious patterns in the content and names on my watch list. For the first fifteen minutes it’s more of the same, so when something new does pop up, I almost miss it. I scroll back up the page andscreenshot the offensive comment wedged between a stream of opinions under an article about Rosie’s alleged admission to a celebrity rehabilitation center. It’s a statement from a user who in the last five days has more than earned his place as the reddest of red flags.
Mistr_ess_el.
Or as I read it: Mr. S. L. Stanley Lowe. Rosie’s stalker. The guy we can’t find. The loose cannon who adds creepy comments to posts about Rosie, and today there’s more of the same.
Mistr_ess_el: You’re so beautiful, Rosalie. So perfect. I love you and hate you at the same time. Why do you make it so hard for me to decide?
Mistr_ess_el: When will you be home, Rosalie? Where are you now?
Mistr_ess_el: I love you with those coral-colored lips, Rosalie. It’s so powerful. So sexy. I think about your lips all the time.
I do this at least three times a day and I hate it. I add his latest efforts to a folder on my desktop and snap the laptop closed with a shudder.
I’m starting to think of how best to tackle the no-more-groceries problem when there’s a tap on the cabin’s door. Rosie pins me with a look that’s more cautiously curious than panicked, and I like that the last few days of quiet and safety appear to have calmed her nerves a little. I set a finger to my lips to indicate she should be quiet, then cross the room and open the door.
“Good,” says the person on the other side. “You’re alive.”
My sister Charles—Charlotte by birth, Charlie to everyone, and Charles to me—stands on the porch with a mildly amused, mildly frustrated expression. She’s wearing blue jeans, tan boots, and a black collared shirt with the Silver Leaf Ranch & Vineyard logo embroidered on one side. It’s what she alwayswears. Wouldn’t be surprised if this one outfit was all the clothes in her closet.
“Yeah. Sorry. I’ve been… occupied.”
“You’ve bailed on work every day for nearly a week, but can’t give me a reason?”
“I texted you.”
“Twice.” She pulls her phone out of her back pocket and waves it in my face. “Two vague texts and no replies to mine. I had to hire help to cover your share of the farm labor.”
I grimace apologetically. Charles is CEO of the family business and runs its operations. I help with farm laboring, grape harvests, leading trail rides, general maintenance, and whatever needs doing. I love the place because it’s home. Charles loves it because it’s her life.
“You know this whole recluse-in-the-woods thing doesn’t bother me so much when you’re up at the main house every other day,” she adds.
“Doesn’t make me much of a recluse, then, does it?”
I step out onto the porch and close the door behind me, which makes Charles’s eyebrows climb to her dark hairline. After ten years of military service and intense high-risk ops training to beat the weakness out of me, there’s only one person who can read me these days, and that’s my big sister. She always could.
