Chapter 12

“She went to the grocery store for something. She’ll be back in a minute.”

Arthur asked me if I wanted anything to drink before dinner and I declined. Even though he’d been perfectly nice and polite to me since I’d walked in the house, I was still a little too nervous to start drinking.

While Arthur took the bottle of wine to the kitchen and Darren went with him to get a glass of wine for himself, I checked out the Nichols’s living room. It was nicely decorated in soothing shades of beige with comfortable furniture and earth-toned walls. There were pictures of Darren, Deena, Ashley, and, I assumed, extended family members on the mantle above the fireplace and African-themed art lined the walls. It looked like a very nice home to have grown up in.

I heard the telephone ring as Darren returned to the living room with a glass of wine in each hand.

“You look like you could use this,” he said, handing me one of the glasses.

“Is it that obvious?”

He laughed a little. “To me it is.”