“ What? Do you know where they are?” My hand flew to my mouth. Crap. This was just a random stranger. I was lying, spilling lemonade, and now crying in front of a total stranger.
“ I don’t have any idea. They didn’t tell anyone. I was just a neighbor of theirs. We moved into this place so we could have more space for our family.” Her family that did not include Colby. What the hell.
The front door opened. “Alright, Abby, the tow truck driver is on his way, but I think I figured out our problem. It looks like the alternator was short circuiting with the cable that leads to the ignition. I just swapped it out with…a spare we had in the back,” Beck rambled awkwardly. He really was a terrible actor. I don’t think any of those sentences actually made sense.
“ Colby’s family doesn’t live here. This isn’t his mom,” I muttered, feeling the tears starting to build behind my eyes. I could hardly look up toward him. Beck grimaced, eyeing the woman apologetically before walking over to me. He wrapped me in his arms and I stuffed my face in the crook of his arm.
“ I’m so sorry, Abby,” he whispered into my ear.
“ It doesn’t matter,” I tried to cover up my sadness, but it felt like the treasure at the end of my hunt had been stolen by thieves without me even realizing. I’d needed this light at the end of the tunnel. I’d dragged Beck across the state for absolutely no reason. What a colossal waste of time.
Then I thought of something. “So you didn’t really know Colby?” I asked the woman, pulling away from Beck. I needed to know if her story about him having a big heart was true or if it was just hearsay.
The woman frowned and shook her head, unable to meet my eyes.
I nodded and then reached down to wipe the lemonade off the table with the towel. It was the least I could do after barging into her house and feeding her lies.
“ Oh, you know what! We have a neighborhood newsletter that comes out every few months. I keep them all in a little folder so I can stay up to date with community stuff,” she shook her head clear of her tangent, “Colby was in a few of them. Let me grab them for you.”
She hustled into the kitchen and I could hear her shuffling through papers. I studied the towel that had soaked up all of the excess lemonade before looking back toward Beck. He was watching me with worried eyes and I gave him a crooked smile to let him know I wasn’t going to breakdown on the spot. I’d wait until we were alone.
“ Did you really call a tow truck?” I asked.
He wiped a hand down his face. “No, and I felt terrible lying about it.”
“ Here you go!” the woman sang as she reentered the room with a folder held safely in both hands. “These are the ones I think you should have,” she said, offering them to me. I didn’t even hesitate; I took them from her and lunged forward to give her a massive hug. I felt guilty for lying to her, but now she’d given me another chance at completing my goal. I needed to know about Colby. About the boy who gave me his big heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“ She said he had ‘the biggest heart’?” Beck asked with a raised brows.
“ Technically she said ‘everyone said he had the biggest heart’, so it almost doesn’t count,” I clarified, wiping my hands with the napkin. We were tucked away in a booth at a random dive bar in Odessa.
The folder’s contents were lying out before us, beckoning me to start investigating. I hadn’t wanted to read them until the food was cleared from the table for fear that we’d spill something on the last connection I had with Colby.
There were three newsletters in total. The first two had front pages that were centered on community festivals or school sports, but the last one had a large black and white photo of a boy on the front cover: Colby. It was clearly his school picture. It had that cloudy staged backdrop and he didn’t have a real smile, just a cheesy fake one. Underneath, in large title casing it read: “A Neighborhood Loses One of Its Greatest.” I tried not to dwell on the headline.