Blackout Read Online Free PDF Page A

and the waves roll onto shore.
    When we merge onto Highway Twelve that runs the length of the beaches and drive north, Kami steps on the gas and flies right by a young cop sitting in a cruiser. She waves at him.
    “What was that about?” I swivel around and gawk. From a quick glimpse, he’s cute in his Ray Bans and with his black hair curling on his forehead, and more importantly, he isn’t chasing us down.
    She laughs. It’s light and airy. “My mom’s going through her second childhood. He’s the latest cradle boy. I might as well get something out of it. The creep had the gall to ask me out. Like I’d take Mom’s leftovers. Disgusting.”
    Her mom’s been married a few times. I lost count after the third one. Her first husband, Kami’s daddy, died from a heart attack and left them a fortune, but Mrs. Whalen dabbles in real estate and made her own.
    I laugh with Kami, choking on my own spit.
    “It’s not funny,” she says.
    I laugh harder, and she joins me.
    “Dillon asked the cop if he was going to be our next daddy.” As she pulls into her driveway, which is right next door to mine, she lets out a raucous laugh and slaps the steering wheel. “You had to be there.”
    “What did the cop say?”
    “He turned several shades of a turnip.” She glances behind me. “Where’s your luggage?”
    “Most of it was shipped home, but my carryon is in the Range Rover at the bottom of the swamp.”
    I get out of the Benz and talk over the convertible. “I need to check on Lulu, and if I have clothes, I’ll meet you out back in a few.” The beach is just over the dunes behind our houses.
    “Sounds good.” Kami rests her chin and her arms on the Benz’s windshield. “I missed you, Teal.”
    I smile, regret eating away at me. “Me too. I’ll see you in a bit, and I am sorry.”
    She winks at me. “I know. It’s going to be okay this time.”
    “You think so?” After crashing in the swamp, I have serious doubts.
    She gives me a sympathetic smile. “It couldn’t get any worse. Something’s changed in you, Teal, and it’s not just your Parisian fashion.”
    My Louboutin sandals are destroyed, and the skirt and top I bought at Beau Travail are a horrid shade of mold. “Thanks. I hope you’re right.” So far, it doesn’t feel that way.
    I should start with helping Dare, right after Lulu, and then work on me with yet another new therapist, except I’ll screen each one myself.
    I plod up the steps and take out the key for the two-story, wood-sided house. A wide porch wraps around the house, and it sits up on stilts with an enclosed garage below. Mom picked out the chocolate brown painted on the outside of our home. It’s a weird thing for me to remember about her when every other memory of her is buried.
    I open the door and call out, “Lulu, I’m in.” I step into the foyer then down the hall past the formal living room that holds the pool table—my dad’s passion besides being a lawyer. He taught me a lot about the game, and it brings a smile to my face. He spent hours teaching me combo shots and how to break.
    “Lulu?” When she doesn’t answer, dread shoots up my limbs. Could she have fallen? I rush into the great room and the adjoining kitchen overlooking the pool and the ocean. The waves curl and crash onto the sand then recede in a foamy wash.
    In my hurry, I almost knock over one of Mom’s vases. I right the vase on its stand. When she’d studied in Paris, she’d blown and colored the glass with splashes of orange, reds, and gold to resemble the sun setting on and rising off the Outer Banks where she’d grown up.
    Her glass vases, abstract paintings, and drawings consume the walls and bureaus in our house, except my room. That’s off limits. I never understood or appreciated the landscapes comprised of geometric shapes. I loathe them.
    Lulu sits in front of the flat screen where a couple goes at it, not hard-core porn style, but more like daytime soap, which is pretty dang