Switched At Birth

“Let me send a driver, at least,” Rudy pleaded.

“No. It’s a dinky town. I’ll find a way to get around.”

“But you don’t have a valid—”

“Rudy. I’ll figure something out.”

“I don’t know why you won’t let me send Ada. You’re going to need someone to keep the fridge stocked and make the bed.”

“I’m managing all that on my own.”

“I really think you need to—”

“Rudy. Seriously, if I need help, you’re a phone call away.”

He argued some more. He was a sweetheart and very protective of her. She loved him for that.

But she also stuck by her decision to go it alone for a while.

At two that afternoon, Dirk got in the rented Hummer they’d been using since their arrival and drove away. Once he was gone, Madison tried again to work up the nerve to call someone in the Bravo family. She’d put all their numbers in her phone, but she’d yet to make use of them.

She dialed Percy’s number twice. Both times, she hung up before it could ring. Then she tried texting her switched sister, Aislinn.

Same result. She began and then erased four texts without sending them.

For a couple of hours after that, she alternately tried to concentrate on reading a book, searched the Netflix menu for something to watch and paced the floor in exasperation at her own inability to complete a damn phone call or hit Send on a text.

At five, frustrated and fed up with herself, she did a very bad thing. It wasn’t premediated—at least, not exactly.

She entered the powder room off the kitchen innocently enough, used the toilet, flushed it and washed her hands. And it wasn’t until then, as she rinsed and dried and glared at herself in the mirror over the pedestal sink, that it occurred to her that Sten Larson’s phone number was right there on a little card by the landline in the living area.

In case she had a problem and needed him to fix it.

Carefully, she folded the towel and hung it back on the rack.

Then she took the lid off the toilet and set it on the seat. The mechanism within was simple enough. A chain pulled a rubber flapper up when you flushed. The flapper lowered to seal the water inside once the tank was full again.

That chain? It could easily be unhooked from the bar that connected it to the handle. But wouldn’t it be more realistic if the chain broke?

She stuck her fingers in there, got the chain in both hands and gave a good, strong yank.

Whoopsie.

She dried her hands again, after which she replaced the tank lid and then tried to flush. Nothing.

Madison grinned, feeling downright devilish. She was a movie star, after all, someone who pretended to be other people for a living, someone who had writers to give her words to say and staff to see to her every need, a person who couldn’t be expected to understand how a toilet worked—let alone to have any clue what to do if something in there broke.

Before she had a chance to chicken out and hook the chain back together herself, she marched into the living area, picked up the house phone and punched in the number on the card.

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