One Last Time (COMPLETED)

Puzzle Pieces

"What are you doing?"

The question sent my phone out of my hand and on to the floor a few feet from the bassinet beside me. Tanner stood in the doorway, reaching up to grasp the top of the door frame, head cocked to the side a fraction like a curious puppy. Lowering myself back to the ground slowly, I glanced toward the kids rocking the swings, relieved to find that both were still mesmerized by the monkey toys hanging from their mobiles over their heads.

"Was looking at text receipts from the night Maya died." I whispered, then added, "I wanted to check if there was anything from my father. I wish I had her phone too."

I was sure the detectives were having a field day with my sister's phone and social media accounts. Maya wasn't too popular after the stunts she pulled throughout most of high school, and I'd bared witness to her being threatened on various occasions, most by girls or women. Though a woman had most definitely not inflicted those marks on my sister, it wasn't completely out of my thoughts that someone had been asked or hired to do so.

"Mia, breathe." Tanner dropped his hands to his sides and shot the kids a crooked grin on his way passed them to me. "You've hardly slept in three days, and your paranoia is eating you alive."

"How would you feel?" I snapped defensively. "If your mother was lying to you about something serious. If there was even a slight possibility that your father killed your sister? I can't just walk into my house and point my fingers at my father, you know."

Tanner grasped my shoulders in his hands and shook me once. "Take a deep breath and sit down. You're driving yourself crazy."

"Whoever killed my sister is still out there and are clearly wanting to tie up loose ends with the twins and me."

He sighed, running a hand down his face, then turned his eyes on me. "I'm about to head home for the day. It's Kenna's birthday. Come with me. Bring the twins. It'll be good for you."

"Good for me?" I huffed angrily. "What would be good for me is to find whoever killed my sister before they find me."

"Mia." there was a warning tone in Tanner's voice I'd never heard before, and it was enough to shake me out of my own internal confliction. I glanced up, surprised, to find his usually kind eyes had darkened and lacked any sort of comfort. "Pack a bag for yourself and the kids and meet me in the living room in ten minutes."

*

Tanner remained as silent as expected, with the exception of occasionally talking or cooing to the twins. I wasn't sure if he was pissed at me or for me, but he didn't even look in my direction. Apart from his unusually cold behavior, his anxious tapping along the steering wheel and gipping and release of the steering wheel was a bit unnerving. I'd known Tanner since we were in elementary school, though we didn't really get too close until seventh grade due to my sister befriending him. I'd learned through the years that Tanner was a lot of things; arrogant, confident, flirtatious, a great football player, and recently learned there was a big heart under all of that after all. But what I'd never seen out of him was anxiousness, fear. He'd always faced everything head on; he was quite literally the idiot in every horror movie that walked right toward the murderer. Seeing him anxious wasn't a good sign, and it made my anxiety skyrocket, but I couldn't bring myself to open my mouth and ask exactly what it was that was making him so damn antsy and irritable.

"I lied." he eventually blurted a few blocks from his childhood home. I'd only been there a handful of times, but recognized the neighborhood. "About what happened after Parker grabbed your phone."

My lips parted, but when I tried to speak, nothing escaped me.

"We didn't go home." he breathed slowly, his words shaky as if he were terrified to speak them. "We followed dickhead back home after we saw Maya climb into a car with him."