The Missing

like a fool, and she shifted her gaze back out to the beach. “So where is home?”

    “Georgia. Small town about an hour north of Atlanta, close to the Tennessee state line.” From the corner of her eye, she could see that he was staring out at the Gulf, smiling faintly. “Going to miss the beach. Easy to get used to it.”

    Taige had to agree. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

    “My dad bought one of the condos, so we’ll be back. Not sure when.” He paused for a minute, and Taige glanced over at him to realize that now he was the one staring. At her. “Maybe I’ll see you when we come back.”

    Her heart skipped a beat. She almost blurted out something totally lame, like Oh, I’d love that. But she managed, just barely, to keep her voice even and her comment to a simple, “I’m pretty much always around.”

    An awkward silence fell. He cleared his throat, and Taige busied her hands by combing through her mass of hair and separating it into sections so she could braid it. From the corner of her eye, she could see him watching her, and she fumbled a little and had to start over. “Can I ask you something?” Cullen asked softly.

    She tensed. She had a feeling she knew what he was going to ask—or at least some variation of it. “What?” she asked warily. She didn’t really consider herself touchy when people asked her, but it did make her a little uncomfortable and irritated her that people could be so damn nosy. She hadn’t thought that Cullen would be the kind to meddle like that.

    But to her surprise, he didn’t ask her if she was black, or mixed, or any other polite variation of a rather nosy question. What he did ask, though, wasn’t any easier.

    “I was just wondering what happened to your parents.”

    Her gut reflex was, I killed them. She’d said it before. It wasn’t a new thought. She’d woken up late that last night—the night they’d died—and she’d been screaming for Mama and Daddy, but they were gone. They’d gone out to get some dinner, see a movie, and they’d left her with the teenager who lived across the street from them in the small Mobile suburb. Taige couldn’t even remember the girl’s name now—just the look on her face as she stared down at Taige, screaming in the bed and calling for help.

    The girl had freaked out and called her own mother. Taige didn’t remember that woman’s name, either, though she remembered how she’d smelled. Like lotion and Ici. To this day, anything that even resembled the way that discount perfume had smelled was enough to make Taige sick. The woman had held her and tried to calm her down, murmuring some nonsense about nightmares and bad dreams.

    All the way up until the knock on the door, nearly three hours later. Taige could remember the cops standing in the door, and the grim look on their faces. They’d made her leave the room, but she didn’t need to hear to know what happened. Her mama and daddy were dead.

    Her voice was hoarse and rough as she answered, “They were killed by a drunk driver when I was little.” She swallowed, cleared her throat to try to ease the pressure there. “We lived in Mobile. They’d gone out. Date night, Mama called it. Somebody hit them on their way to the movies, killed them instantly.”

    She kept her face averted as she wiped the tears away. It still hurt. Eight years later, it still hurt. “Mama grew up here. They found my mama’s older brother, Leon, and sent me to live with him. They never could find any of my dad’s folks.” Taige had long since stopped hoping for that to happen, although there had been years when she had been convinced that if she prayed hard enough, if she was good enough, somebody would come and get her. Somebody who loved her.

    “That’s got to suck,” he said. “Mom and Dad drive me nuts, but I can’t imagine losing them like that. Being sent off to live with somebody else. Even family. They might love you, but it can’t be the same.”

    “He doesn’t love me.” The words slipped out of her before she even realized it. She hadn’t meant to say that, not in front of him, but there was no taking the words back, and she didn’t want to, either. She hated pretending that her life with Leon Carson was fine, that he took care of her, that he even gave a damn about her. “He hates me. Hates having me there.”

    Then she shoved to her feet, grabbed her stuff, grabbed the tote lying on its side in the sand. She shoved everything