“I want to speak with Kevin,” she said. “This is his sister.”
“Mr. Lynd isn’t taking calls right now.”
“Would you please tell him it’s Aubrey?”
“I’m sorry. He’s not taking any calls.”
“Who are you?” Aubrey asked.
“I’ve been hired by the family,” the man said.
The family, she wanted to scream. I’m his family.
“I’ll tell Mr. Lynd you called. I’m sure he’ll return your call when he’s able.” He disconnected.
What the heck was that about? What if someone called with a ransom demand? Would they talk to a stranger? Or maybe the caller wouldn’t know it wasn’t Kevin answering his phone.
She sent her brother a text, not sure he would see it, but she had to try. I’m at the house. Can come see you anytime. Just say when.
She hesitated. Should she say she was here for him? That she loved him? But it would sound false after the distance between them for so many years. She pressed “Send,” hoping he would write back or call.
Hoping his silence didn’t mean the war with Mama was back on.
She stuck her phone in her pocket, then went across the hall to her mother’s room. It was cool in the large corner bedroom, which was shaded by towering bamboos that blocked the sun from this part of the house. The bed was made, throw pillows piled up against the brass headboard, no indentation on the old patchwork quilt. She ran her hand over the satin squares in crimson, emerald green, and navy blue. It didn’t look like her mother had slept, or even lain down for a rest.
Two faded-pink brocade armchairs were pulled close to the fireplace; a small table with a book on it stood between them. Now that she lived up north, she realized how odd it was to have fireplaces in Miami.
When she was little, she had longed for a fire, like in the Hans Christian Andersen stories she read, but her parents had never made one. So one winter when she was eight or nine, she’d talked Kevin into helping her gather wood. They’d filled the hearth with twigs and dead leaves, threw in some wadded-up toilet paper, then lit the mess with matches. It flamed and smoked, and Mama had coming running into the room, shouting hysterically. Aubrey had never seen her so upset. Mama had doused the fire with water, and had then climbed into bed beneath the patchwork quilt, suffering from one of her dizzy spells.
After that, with the smell of burned leaves lingering in the upstairs hallway, Aubrey and Kev had tried to follow the rules and be exemplary children. They only had themselves to rely on and became each other’s best friends and confidants. Aubrey missed that so much . . . Kev’s whispered dreams about reclaiming the Lonely Mountain, like Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. Promising her someday they’d be a real family again.
Well, maybe they could be, once they got Ethan back. One thing was for certain—she wasn’t giving up on their family, even if Kevin had.
She went downstairs toward the dissonance of multiple voices talking at the same time. The family room had been transformed, crammed with folding tables and people talking on cell phones and tapping on computers. These strangers didn’t belong here, surrounded by photos of her and her brother in front of their bunks at summer camp, hiking in the Rockies, throwing snowballs in Breckenridge. But Ethan wasn’t supposed to be missing, either.
Neither Detective Gonzalez nor Special Agent Smolleck was in the room, so she went over to a youngish Asian man in a suit who was frowning at several computer screens.
He sat taller in his chair when he noticed her. “You’re not allowed in here.”
“I’m Aubrey Lynd. I’m looking for my mother, Diana Lynd. Do you know where she is?”
“Sorry. No.”
She left the family room and pushed open a French door that led to the backyard. The mildewed-brick patio was shaded by so many trees—crepe myrtle, gumbo limbos, palms, and soaring bamboos—that the sun could hardly break through, and the little areas of grass around the rock garden were perennially thin. Unlike the inside of the house, transformed by all the people who didn’t belong, out here nothing had changed. Still the same impossible-to-lift wrought iron chairs and filigreed table with a hole for an umbrella that Mama had never got around to buying.
Aubrey followed the brick path that meandered around the side of the house. This was the one area that was sunny, where the grass grew so fast it always looked like it needed mowing.
When they were kids, Aubrey and Kevin had begged their parents to put in a swimming pool. Dad had finally agreed, but Mama had dug in her heels. She’d said she had enough to worry about with her sick patients, without imagining her own children diving in and breaking their necks.
Mama was always waiting for a catastrophe to happen.
It finally had.
A couple of lawn chairs faced a small fountain near the tall hedge that separated their property from the neighbor’s. Someone was stretched out on one of the chairs. Soft-brown leather loafers, pressed navy slacks, pale-blue shirt.
Dad.
For a moment she was a child again, remembering the joy she’d felt when her father would return home from an out-of-town trial and sweep her up in the air.
How’s my beautiful princess?
She had adored him. Then he’d let her down.
He must have heard her coming, because he put his feet in the grass and turned toward her. “Aubrey.”
His expression brightened, then his mouth fell, as though he’d remembered the circumstances. His full head of hair looked whiter than ever against his red face, but his blue eyes were the same—clear and concerned. Eyes that were known to sway the toughest juries.
And, once upon a time, even her.