Page 24 of The Long Haul

“Please do,” Mom encourages her. It’s not judgmental, which I’m thankful for, though it is more an order than a request.

My angel’s, for she’s clearly not Aubrey, face crumbles, letting me know she caught it, too. What she doesn’t know is that tone? It’s her mom voice. She uses it on those she loves, and that includes Angel. Even if this new evidence is saying it shouldn’t.

“Perhaps I should introduce myself first. I’m Audrey Wilcox.” The similarities to the name of who was supposed to be here are a bit uncanny. “I was at the airport when I overheard Aubrey Simcox," she stresses the b in the first name and the Sim in the last. Highlighting the differences on purpose, “on the phone with a friend. In a nutshell, it seems she had the choice to come here, which someone had signed her up for,” I have to chuckle at that considering what Bowers did to Boone, “or go away with a man she’d recently met.”

“It’s obvious which she chose, but how’d you get here instead?” Mom inquires. Audrey – that’s going to take some getting used to, while listening to mom, is focused solely on me.

“When she said her name,” Audrey shrugs, “I got the idea to become her.”

“Why?”

“I was running away from home,” Audrey admits. “I didn’t realize that at the time, but I was.” A bitter laugh. “I didn’t want to spend another holiday alone.”

“What really happened to your parents?” I silently curse at the implied accusation, knowing when Audrey flinches that she heard it. I want to apologize for it, assure her this changes nothing between us, but I’m also processing what’s happening. The two sides are in conflict and, unfortunately, Audrey is caught in the middle.

“I lied about my name and the reason for being here. That’s it,” she states, face now hard. Any softness, and regret, gone thanks to my question. “They died when I was nine.”

“Aubrey,” Vincent hollers from the living room, “uhhh…your parents are here.”

**Audrey**

Seriously? Now they claim to be my parents? Did I break a mirror this morning and not remember it? Walk under a ladder? Open an umbrella in the house?

“Those people are not my parents,” I seethe.

“Always were an ungrateful little chit,” Karen announces as she prances into the kitchen. I hate that she’s tainting this lovely home and the family that resides in with her presence. “Us Trudeaus took you in when no one else wanted you, and this is how you repay us? By denying who we are to you.”

“You started it,” I remind her, forgetting we have an audience as fifteen years of neglect and being an outcast in what was supposed to be home roar to the surface.

I’m so riled up that I hear, yet don’t understand what, Vincent is saying when he exclaims, “This is who put that shit in her head?” If I had, I’d realize he’s upset for me and that Diana doesn’t scold him for swearing.

“Get your things. We’re going. You’ve bothered them enough.”

“I’m not going,” I tell her, though I doubt I can stay either. “Why aren’t all of you on the beach?”

“Your location says you weren’t there. How can you do the items we left you on the list if you aren’t there?” I’m ignoring the second question because it answers itself. The first, however?

“You’re tracking me?” Taking my phone out of my back pocket, I swipe up from the bottom left corner to see all the apps installed on my phone. I’m on the second page, I really need to organize them into folders, when I see it. Instantly, I press on it and keep my fingertip there until a menu pops up. With satisfaction, I tap Uninstall and go through it again just in case there are more. There aren’t.

“Why wasn’t Audrey with you?” That’s from Carson, and while I’m glad he’s speaking, I wish it wasn’t with inquiries that have the power to hurt me.

“It was a family vacation.” Karen sees nothing wrong with that response when everything is.

“Bitch,” Catherine mutters from beside me. I didn’t even know she’d joined this catastrophe. Is she talking about me or…? I get my answer when I feel her hand grab mine. “Breathe, Aud,” she encourages me. Okay. Just how much did she hear?

“And yet,” that’s David and he sounds pissed, “Audrey wasn’t with you.”

“As I said—”

“We got it. Family vacation.”

“Bitch sundae with a sour cherry on top,” Catherine corrects her earlier label and I snort at the addition.

“Be that as it may,” Diana interrupts, not refuting Catherine’s name calling, “you’re interruptingourfamily time.”

Haughty now, so sure she’s won, as am I, she turns on the charm. “Our apologies. We’ll just take Audrey with us and get out of your hair.”

“No. Why, when I just told you that you’re interrupting our family time, would you apologize, then negate it by trying totakepart of our family?”

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