Leaving Yesterday Read Online Free PDF Page A

did.”
    A woman could still dream. Couldn’t she?

Five
    Rick and Caroline made their usual entrance into my kitchen. Caroline gave me a big hug and sloppy kiss.
    “Hi, sweetie. How was softball practice?”
    “Good.” She looked around the room. “Where’s Boots?”
    “Asleep on my bed, last time I saw him.”
    “Great.” She dashed from the room, calling, “Kitty, kitty, kitty.”
    Rick folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the counter, a scowl deepening across his face. He waited until the sound of Caroline’s footsteps disappeared up the stairs. “A detective stopped by to see me at the jobsite today.” He stared at me so hard, I’m sure he didn’t even blink.
    I, on the other hand, looked down and began to work the stir-fry in the wok as if it might burn at any moment. So much for planning the right time to break that news. Still, I decided to play dumb and find out what he knew. “Really? What did he want?”
    “What do you think he wanted, Alisa?”
    The onions and red pepper created a steam that burned my eyes and made me cough. I choked for a good twenty seconds before I looked up at him. “Judging from your tone of voice, I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”
    “That’s right, I am.” He came to stand so close beside me that I believed the anger burning in him might singe my skin. “He wanted to talk to me about that Prince boy’s murder last weekend. But then, you already knew that, didn’t you? He told me he stopped by and talked to you on Monday.”
    I looked full into his face. “You need to back up. You’re in my way.”
    “I really don’t care.”
    “You’ll care when the stir-fry chicken burns and we call to order pizza.”
    He looked at the sizzling wok, then went to lean on the counter, arms folded in front of him. “When were you planning to tell me?”
    I turned off the stove top but continued to stir. “Tonight, actually. I didn’t see any reason to call you before now. He said all he wanted to do was to talk to Kurt, and it’s not like you have known his whereabouts any more than I have for the last year or so. Besides, I knew you would get all upset—kind of like you are now. I just didn’t see any reason to go there.”
    “You didn’t see any reason to go there?” He stared at me drop-jawed. “No reason to go there? He’s my son, too, isn’t he? You didn’t think I had the right to know that my own son killed someone?”
    “See, there’s the problem right there. I knew you’d expect the worst of him. You didn’t say ‘suspected of killing someone,’ you didn’t say ‘wanted for questioning,’ you said he killed someone. Well, I happen to know that he didn’t do anything. I believed that even before I found out some really good news today that proves it.” I stared at him in angry triumph. I would win the argument because of the facts I possessed, but this was not how it was supposed to go. Why couldn’t we just celebrate rather than try to win these battles? It wasn’t healthy, I knew that, but there was nothing healthy left about the way we interacted.
    “Oh yeah? Like what?”
    “Our son’s not even in Santa Barbara right now. He’s in Orange County at a rehab facility, turning his life around even as we speak.”
    He stared at me for the span of a full minute, letting the words work their way through the rapidly dissipating cloud of anger. “Are you sure?” The childlike desperation in his voice made me want to put my arms around him. I didn’t.
    “He called me this morning. He told me that he was all right, and asked us to forgive him.” Okay, I sort of twisted the pronoun from me to us, but I supposed that’s what Kurt really meant to say. No harm done.
    Rick pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and sank into it. “Rehab? Really?” He scrubbed his hands across his face, and for just a fleeting second, I saw the high school quarterback my husband once was, the one so full of optimism and ambition, before time