“I got a text too,” she said.
“What did it say?”
“Adam?”
“What?”
“I don’t want to get in the middle of this. You get that, right? You two have been having issues. I get that.”
“We haven’t been having issues.”
“But you just said—”
“We have an issue, one, and, well, it just came up.”
“When?”
“When did the issue come up?”
“Yes.”
“The day before yesterday.”
“Oh,” Kristin said.
“What do you mean, ‘Oh’?”
“It’s just that . . . I mean, Corinne has been acting strangely for the past month or so.”
Adam tried to keep a straight face. “Strange how?”
“Just, I don’t know, different. Distracted. She missed a class or two and asked me to cover for her. She missed a few workouts and said . . .”
Kristin stopped.
“Said what?” Adam prodded.
“Said if anybody asked where she was, to just say that she was there with me.”
Silence.
“Did she mean me, Kristin?”
“She never said that, no. Look, I better get back. I have class—”
Adam stepped in her path. “What did her text say?”
“What?”
“You said she sent you a text yesterday. What did it say?”
“Look, she’s my friend. You get that, right?”
“I’m not asking you to betray confidences.”
“Yeah, Adam, you kinda are.”
“I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
“Why wouldn’t she be?”
“Because this isn’t like her.”
“Maybe it’s just what she said to you. She needs time.”
“Is that what she texted you?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“When?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“Wait, when? After school?”
“No,” Kristin said too slowly. “During.”
“During school?”
“Yes.”
“What time?”
“I don’t know. Around two o’clock.”
“Wasn’t she at school?”
“No.”
“She missed school yesterday too?”
“No,” Kristin said. “I saw Corinne in the morning. She was acting a little shaky. I guess that’s because you guys were fighting.”
Adam said nothing.
“She was supposed to oversee study hall during lunch break, but she asked me to cover for her. I did. I saw her run out to her car.”
“Where was she going?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
Silence.
“Did she come back to school?”
Kristin shook her head. “No, Adam, she never came back.”
Chapter 14
The stranger had given Heidi the link to FindYourSugarBaby.com as well as her daughter’s user ID and password. With a heavy heart, Heidi signed in as Kimberly and found out all she needed to confirm that everything the stranger had told her was true.
The stranger had not just told her out of the kindness (or emptiness) of his heart. He made money demands, of course. Ten grand was the amount. If she didn’t pay it in three days, the news of Kimberly’s “hobby” would go viral.
Heidi signed out and sat on the couch. She debated pouring herself a glass of wine and decided against it. Then Heidi had a good, long cry. When she finished, she headed to the bathroom, washed her face, and sat back on the couch.
Okay, she thought, what do I do about this?
Heidi’s first decision was almost the simplest: Don’t tell Marty. She didn’t like to keep secrets from her husband, but then again, she didn’t hate it either. It was part of life, wasn’t it? Marty would absolutely lose it if he found out what his little girl was up to while she was supposedly studying at NYU. Marty was prone to overreaction, and Heidi could see him hopping in his car, driving to Manhattan, and dragging his daughter back by the hair.
Marty didn’t need to know the truth. Come to think of it, neither did Heidi.
Damn those two strangers.
When Kimberly was in high school, she had gotten drunk at a party at a classmate’s house. Intoxication led, as it often does, to going a little too far with a boy. Not all the way. But too far. Another mother in town, a busybody who meant well, had overheard her daughter talking about the incident. She had called Heidi and said, “I hate to tell you this, but if our roles were reversed, I would want to know.”
So she told Heidi about the incident. Heidi had told Marty, who had completely overreacted. The relationship between father and daughter had never really been the same. What, Heidi wondered, would have been the outcome if that busybody had never called? In the end, what good had it done? It embarrassed her daughter. It strained the relationship between father and daughter. It had, Heidi believed, been a huge part of Kimberly’s decision to go to college so far away. And maybe that stupid phone call from that stupid busybody had even led Kimberly and ultimately Heidi to this terrible website and the horrific nature of her daughter’s relationship with three different men.