Chapter 26:
A car pulled up in the driveway.
Seven hours early?
No!
Velma had not been expecting this. Daphne had said she would probably be back around midnight... or 1 a.m. Not 5:30 in the afternoon...
"Shaggy?" she whispered, alarmed. Had he heard it too? Maybe it was just Velma's overactive imagination.
But no, Shaggy had heard the tires pull up in front of the house as well. He let go suddenly. Hopefully neither Daphne nor Freddie had caught sight of them through the window.
Well, the blinds were drawn, at least. Still, there were those narrow windows next to the door. Granted they distorted everything with their little wavy pattern-- it was someone's idea of aesthetic housing design-- but maybe out of the corner of his or her eye, someone had caught a glimpse of a green blur that was just a little closer to the orange blur than it should be.
Velma jumped up and answered the door just as Daphne had reached the front step. "Daphne! You're back early!"
Daphne grinned. "We just missed the rest of you so badly we had to come back. Actually, that is part of the answer. And... the other part is we felt that the sooner we got back, the sooner we could move everything into the new house. I'll move a few necessities today and tonight will be our first night at home."
Freddie smiled at his pregnant wife. "You won't be moving anything. Just tell me what needs moving and I'll do it for you." He kissed her, out in the open.
That's not fair, Shaggy thought. Why can't Velma and I do that in front of Daphne and Freddie? But even as he thought that, he felt certain spots on his cheeks grow very warm. He was worried somehow that bright pink lip-shaped prints were already open and obvious, despite the fact that Velma never even wore lipstick.
Velma, likewise, was beginning to wonder if Shaggy's perpetually greasy hands had left telltale prints against her sweater. Did Freddie and Daphne know, somehow, what had happened, and maybe they were just playing dumb?
And of course, both wondered whether the six boxes of Scooby Snacks they had initially used to bribe Scooby Doo with would really suffice to keep their secret.
"So, did you guys get lonely without us?" Daphne asked Velma, and Velma could almost hear the telltale heart. Daphne knew, surely she knew, that while of course Velma had missed her, Shaggy had always and would always be enough to keep her company...
Velma went with the lie. "Of course, Daphne!" She hugged her friend, feeling the secret burning in her chest...