The Secrets Between You and Me

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

My mother was imagining things again.

“I swear, Hannah, this vacation will be just the thing we both need,” her voice trilled through the sleek black phone resting in its cradle on my dashboard. “A summer away from everything. Two months of relaxation and freedom!”

The sound of a car horn blared through the speakerphone. Knowing my mother, she was likely paying more attention to the radio or her makeup, anything other than the highway on which she was driving. I gritted my teeth as I glanced in the side mirror and then over my shoulder, searching for an opening in the lane next to me. Still no luck.

“I can’t wait to stretch out and do nothing this summer,” Mom went on.

I bit my tongue to keep from asking how that would be any different than our normal lives back in Willowbrook. Mom was on her way to the airport, where she would fly to New York and from there take a second flight across the Atlantic to Paris, where she would spend the summer away from home, away from me, away from . . . well, everything.

The original plan called for me to join my mom in France. She had made all the arrangements without even asking my opinion. But Mom and I could not exist within the same continent for an entire summer without one of us going insane.

Most likely, me.

So now Mom was going with her current best friend, a woman she knew from tennis lessons at the country club. Her name was Tandy or Missy or maybe something else entirely. I hadn’t really paid much attention.

I, on the other hand, was stuck on Interstate 40 West in the North Carolina mountains behind a big, rumbling truck. Which happened to be full of hogs.

Hogs that stunk. The smell had filled my car, making my eyes water. With my windows up, I turned the air conditioner off to keep from sucking in more of the stench from outside, but since it was late June in North Carolina, the sun shining through my windshield made the car feel like a roasting pan. Rolling down the windows only made the hog smell worse. Lush green mountains stretched out on each side of the road all around me, but the idyllic countryside did nothing to relax me, not with the smell hanging in the air and my mom’s piercing laughter crackling through the phone.

I searched for exit 53B, trying not to breathe too deeply, sweating in my own sauna on wheels while my mother prattled on.

“Tess and I are planning to gorge ourselves on crepes and pastries. Isn’t that right, Tess?”

Tess, right, that was her friend’s name. At least I was close.

“Oui!” I heard a shrill voice in the background proclaim. My mother’s overdone laughter filled my car.

Ahead of me, a hog stuck its nose through one of the little holes cut into the back of the trailer.

“Are you sure it’s exit 53B?” I asked, yelling to be heard over Mom’s laughter.

“Of course, dear,” Mom sighed. It was probably a huge inconvenience for her to make sure her only daughter actually made it to her sister’s house and not some random stranger’s front door. My friend Natalie Spinelli had told me before I left that she’d heard mountain people were always high on meth and drunk on moonshine. I glanced out the driver’s side window just in time to see a carload of men who looked like extras from the cast of Duck Dynasty speed by.

“I wrote all the directions down that Lydia gave me,” Mom said. “I remember precisely. Exit 53B onto I-240 West . . . ”

I tried to focus on Mom’s directions, but my mind kept wandering. I hadn’t seen my aunt Lydia in four years, not since she moved away from Willowbrook to the outskirts of Asheville, North Carolina. Aunt Lydia had sent us invitations to visit her every now and then, but Mom had always had an excuse for not going.