LITMIR.BIZ

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quit the lawyer jargon.” Rosa would have grabbed his arm if he hadn’t been negotiating a narrow section of highway that pinched them against the dark cliff side. “You have to tell me.”

      “No, I don’t.”

      “Pike, I love Bitsy. I need to know.”

      “It’s for her to discuss with you, not me.”

      “How can you be such a...” Rosa heard herself emit a sort of choking sob. She swallowed it and stared stonily out the window.

      Pike shifted. “I’m sorry. I know she’s like a mother to you. All I can tell you is I’m going to make it all turn out for the best.”

      So condescending. As if she hadn’t experienced and survived plenty of challenges in her life already. “Yet you still refuse to tell me, even though you know what she means to me?”

      He kept his eyes on the road. “Not my place.”

      Who was Pike Matthews to withhold information about Bitsy? He was the owner of the luxury vehicle in which she was now being chauffeured, with butter-soft seats and a top-of-the-line sound system burbling a blues song that made her want to cry. He had a career, a living and a future that did not depend on winning some nutty contest. He was, in a word, a success.

      She thought about how ashamed she’d felt when she’d realized that Foster had been using her teacher’s assistant password to hack into the law school’s computer system and alter his grades. And again how she’d burned with fury when her professor believed it was her doing, a lovestruck girl risking her future for her boyfriend. Maybe if her father had been a benefactor at the school, as Foster’s had been, the administration might have believed her. As it was, Foster claimed he had no idea that poor, addle-headed Rosa was changing his grades. She was a crazy stalker. Obviously.

      She fixed her gaze on the horizon, watching the fog ease away from the ocean. Inside her, fear ebbed and flowed like the waves below. Could Bitsy be seriously ill? She forced her hands to unclench. The very first thing she would do after they dropped Manny at his trailer was to sit down with Aunt Bitsy and ask for the truth. They turned into the Seascape Trailer Park.

      “Dad, which one is yours?”

      Pike lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t know?”

      “I’ve been busy,” she sniped. “I haven’t seen the trailer.”

      Manny didn’t answer.

      “Dad? Wake up. Which one is your trailer?”

      Manny blinked and stared at Rosa. “What?”

      She forced out a breath and kept her voice in what she hoped was a pleasant range. “We’re here at your trailer park. Which unit is yours?”

      He sat up and peered out the window, scanning the neat rows of trailers, which were separated by low picket fences. Some were permanent residences and others more likely vacation rentals. Pike slowed the car to a crawl. The trailers perched on small plots of grass, with lush patches of hydrangea and bougainvillea adding a blaze of color. The nearest yard was crisscrossed by a clothesline with children’s garments flapping gaily in the breeze. Clearly that one wasn’t Manny’s.

      Rosa turned to Manny again with a stir of unease. “You can’t remember which one is yours?”

      “Yes, I can,” he grumbled, passing a hand over his eyes. “Just takes me a minute.”

      Pike watched in the rearview mirror and Rosa wondered what he was thinking. Probably that the Francos came from substandard mental material. With an alcoholic mom and a deadbeat dad who couldn’t find his way home, she could see where some might make the connection.

      At least my dad didn’t sink his own boat, she thought uncharitably. She pointed to a sign. “Sea Cliff Lane,” she read off. “Is that the one, Dad?”

      He smiled, relieved. “Yes, that’s the one. Turn there.”

      Pike slowed to let a couple of kids whip across the narrow graveled lane on their bikes and continued on at a snail’s pace, grimacing when a rock pinged against the side of his Mercedes.

      Rosa cringed, too. She didn’t want any more damage inflicted on Pike because of her family. The sooner they could deliver Manny back to his trailer, the better for Pike. And for Rosa.

      With everything else on her plate, her father’s presence might just push her over the edge of sanity.

      The Mercedes crept along at the specified five miles per hour.

      “It’s on the end, left side,” Manny said. “Number six ten.”

      Rosa rolled down the window and caught an odd scent, like the smell of an extinguished campfire. The grass that was doing its best to spring up along the side of the road was smashed and blackened.

      “Dad?” she said.

      “Yes, princess?”

      She ground her teeth. I’m not your princess. You don’t run out on princesses. “Why does it look like there’s been a fire around here?”

      “Because, there has,” Pike said, pointing to the charred remains of trailer number six ten, Sea Cliff Lane.

       CHAPTER SIX

      ROSA GOT OUT of the Mercedes and moved closer to the burned wreck, as if closing the distance would somehow correct her misbehaving eyeballs. The trailer remained stubbornly fixed in her line of sight, ugly and black. The door was wrenched off its hinges and the linoleum floor was brown and bubbled like a poorly cooked pizza. The stench of burned plastic stung her nostrils. “Dad,” she said, “your trailer is burned up.”

      Manny looked at the ground. “Yes.”

      Yes? Did he think that would be sufficient explanation? She rounded on him. “Well, what happened?”

      Manny spoke softly, perhaps so Pike would not hear. “There was a mishap.”

      “A mishap?” Rosa was beyond trying to conceal anything from Pike. “This thing is charcoal. We’re way beyond mishap here. What happened, exactly?”

      He screwed up his mouth, as if considering. “I put a pot of ramen noodles on the stove to boil, and then I had a craving for ice cream so I walked to town and went for some Rocky Road. When I came back, the fire department was here and...well...that’s that. My car burned up, too. I’ve been staying in an empty unit for a few weeks now, but they found somebody to rent it.”

      Rosa made a conscious effort to close her mouth. “Why would you leave your trailer with the stove on?”

      “Just slipped my mind.” His lips tightened. “It happens to people, doesn’t it?”

      Slipped his mind. She worked on breathing some more. “Not really, Dad. People do not generally leave their trailers to burn down while they go on an ice cream run.”

      “Actually, technically speaking, it isn’t my trailer. It was a rental. Stan owns the park and he said the insurance would cover it, no sweat, which is nice, isn’t it?”

      One small bit of good news. She’d take it.

      Her father continued. “But he wasn’t keen on renting me another.”

      “So, that’s the real reason you showed up at Bitsy’s place?” Pike interjected.

      “Yes.”

      “Lost your trailer so you’re expecting her to take you in like she did your kids?”

      “It’s not the time, Pike,” Rosa said, sweeping an arm to encompass the wreck. “Even you can see that, can’t you?”

      She watched the muscles in his jaw working, but he stayed quiet.

      “Dad, why didn’t you mention the fire

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