The Phoenix Girls, Book 3

Chapter 2-5

“Hi, Penny!”

Katie’s mom and dad answered her knock at the door and greeted her with a bit more cheer than was really necessary. Only a few months previously, Katie’s father had banned her from so much as speaking to Penny in the hallways at school, and often referred to her, according to Katie, simply as that… girl!

Marcus West had held a long grudge against Penny’s family, mostly her Aunt Nancy, and that dislike had carried over to Penny when she’d come back in Dogwood. Nancy Sinclair and his sister, Katie’s long-lost Aunt Tracy, had been best friends as younger girls, and possibly something more as adults, and he blamed Nancy for taking Tracy away from him and Dogwood. He’d since undergone a change of heart and seemed determined to make up for his rudeness.

Penny didn’t know if her and Katie’s aunts had been more than friends as he suspected, but she had her own suspicions, and if she was right, then wherever Tracy West had gone, it wasn’t with her Aunt Nancy.

Over the past several months, Penny had found clues and hints that had almost convinced her that it was her Aunt Nancy, her mother’s identical twin, who had taken her out of Dogwood to San Francisco, raised her, and then died when her airplane crashed into the Pacific Ocean—not an accident as everyone had believed, but a sabotage orchestrated by the men who had destroyed half of downtown Dogwood the previous spring and almost burnt down her home as well.

If Penny’s suspicions were correct, then her mother was still out there somewhere. Penny was determined to find out where she was, but so far hadn’t managed to track her whereabouts beyond the night of her own birth. The very night Penny was born was the night her real mother seemed to have vanished.

“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. West.” She stepped inside and passed between them, bracing herself for Mrs. West’s obligatory hug and Mr. West’s standard hair ruffle.

“Can I get you anything?”

“She’s fine, Dad,” Katie shouted from her open bedroom door down the hallway. “Just let her come in!”

Ellen giggled, Katie shouted for her to hurry, and Mr. West sent her on her way with a final ruffle of her already mussed hair. By the time she reached Katie’s room, Penny’s fire-hued hair seemed to be dancing around her head like real flames.

Penny reached the open door, and a pair of hands, one belonging to Katie, the other to Ellen, shot out into the hallway and yanked her inside. The door slammed behind her.

“What?” Penny staggered inside, and Ellen steadied her before she could fall.

Smiling, Katie shoved the screen of her phone at her, and Penny saw a picture of a door. It was a plain looking door, off white framed in a weathered brick wall. Letters stenciled on the door read Laundry.

Midnight was typed below the picture of the door.

Penny smiled. They were going to see Zoe tonight.