“Okay! It’s okay! If you say you saw him, then . . . you saw him.”
Not If you say you saw him, then he was there.
Stacey clenches her jaw. “I am not crazy!”
“Stacey, no one said—”
“You said it. I heard you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Back home, you said I needed a psychiatrist because of my mood swings and my . . . quirky habits!”
She sees the light dawn in Mom’s eyes.
With her blue contacts removed, they’re a muddy shade of brown, just like Stacey’s. In this moment, she looks almost like Stacey—like her worst self, tired, uncertain, clothes baggy and hair straggly. Under different circumstances, Stacey might take perverse pleasure in this flawed, human side of the perfect Nora Howell. But right now, she needs her mother’s usual self-assurance.
“I . . .” Mom takes a deep breath. “I’m so sorry. I . . . I don’t even know what else to say about that. I just . . . you saw Lennon out there?”
“Yes. Out there, and here.” She holds up her phone. “Look . . . I’ll show you.”
“You got a picture of him?”
“No.” She reopens the Stealth Soldier app. “See that blue heart? That’s him.”
“You’re . . . tracking him?”
Translation: You really are crazy.
“Only because he’s tracking me, Mom! He’s tracking everyone—his mothers, his sister . . . I thought it was just a thing he did, you know, to keep tabs on people, but . . . now I think there’s something seriously wrong with him.”
Her mother stares at her, then down at the phone.
The blue heart is inching up Edgemont Boulevard.
“He’s on his way to the park. He just texted me to meet him at our bench, by the fountain.”
“In this weather?”
“I know. It’s crazy. But I haven’t heard from him at all since we had this big fight earlier and now I feel like maybe he’s . . .” She shakes her head and rakes a hand through her hair. “He’s scaring me, Mom.”
“Why? Did he threaten you?”
“No!”
“Then did he say anything specific that—”
“No!”
“Stacey . . .”
“He didn’t. Not really, just . . . here, see for yourself.”
Stacey shows her the texts. Her mother scans them for a long time—too long, like she’s looking for something that isn’t there, or maybe seeing something that Stacey missed.
“Mom?”
Her mother seems startled, as if she’d forgotten she was even there. She takes a deep breath, lets it out, and says, “Stacey, you’re going to be okay. I promise. You’ve been so stressed lately. Why don’t you take a long hot bath?”
“I don’t take baths. That’s your thing, and Piper’s, not mine.”
“I know, but you need to calm yourself down, Stacey. Get away from your phone, your room, the windows.”
Her mother is right. And the bathroom door is the only one that locks. Maybe she’ll feel safe, for a little while.
Five minutes later, she’s standing naked over the tub, squirting Piper’s fragrant bubble bath beneath the roaring stream of hot water.
She can’t stop thinking about Lennon’s text, asking her to meet him out there in the park at this hour, in this weather, when he knows . . .
Then it hits her, like a steel beam to the rib cage.
Heart pounding, she reaches over and turns off the tap. For a moment, she stares down at the sudsy inch of water in the tub, thinking it through. Can she possibly be mistaken?
She grabs her phone from the pocket of the sweatshirt she’d hung on the door hook, opens the screen, and double-checks.
No. She’s right.
She throws the sweatshirt over her head, pulls on her jeans, and hurries back out into the hall.
“Mom!” she calls.
Her mother’s bedroom door is closed. She hurries toward it.
“Hey, Mom, I just realized something . . .” She knocks.
No reply.
She opens the door. The room is dark.
“Mom?” she calls, hurrying down the hall, down the stairs. “Mom! Where are you?”
Nora
A cold rain washes over Nora as she hurries up the boulevard.
The strip isn’t quite as busy as usual on this blustery night, but this is New York, and she’s far from the only pedestrian on the street. Unlike her, many have umbrellas. But like her, many are wearing dark-colored hooded raincoats. She’d grabbed Stacey’s black army parka from the coat tree by the door on her way out.
Twenty-five years ago, at the height of the crack epidemic, the park was crawling with junkies and predators at all hours. Venturing beyond the stone entrance pillars at night would have meant taking her life in her hands. Even by day, she was often uncomfortable here alone—and later, toward the end, even more uncomfortable when she wasn’t.
She pushes on through the storm, conversation looping through her brain.
“I’m worried about you, Anna. You need to get out of that house. They’re smothering you, and your mother . . . I know what she does to you.”
“The same thing your boyfriend does to you, Ellie. He’s a jerk. You need to get out, too.”
“Where am I supposed to go? The street?”
“There are shelters.”
“They’re more dangerous than the street.”
She rounds a bend in the path and spots the fountain, surrounded by empty benches.
All but one.
A man is there. Waiting. Watching. He, too, wears a dark, hooded coat.
He gets to his feet as she approaches, with an incredulous “Anna . . . ?”
She clears her throat. Finds her voice. “Hello, Jacob.”
Stacey
Stacey searches the house and finds it silent and deserted.
If this were a true crime novel, her mother would have been abducted. But by whom? Lennon?
No way. He’s intense, but he’s not a criminal. Besides, when people are being dragged out into the night against their will, they don’t take their keys and lock the door after them.
Which Mom did, Stacey confirms back in the front hall.
Noticing the empty coat tree, she’s even more perplexed. Where could her mother have gone so urgently that she’d be caught dead in public looking as unkempt as she had a few minutes ago, and wearing Stacey’s army coat with the ripped lining?
Kato is sleeping in the kitchen, so she didn’t take him out.
She dials her mother’s cell phone number. It rings in her ear and maybe—though it’s hard to tell—somewhere in the house, too?
Yes.
She follows the sound up the stairs and opens her parents’ bedroom door.
There’s the phone, lit up on the bedside table.
If Mom left it behind, she definitely didn’t go far.
Which means she is very likely down the street, telling Heather and Jules that their son’s behavior is upsetting her daughter.
Crap.
Lennon hadn’t even sent those messages. At least, not the final one, and probably not the others, either. Because Lennon, Stacey had remembered, is as much a stickler for proper grammar as she is, even in texts.
He would never have written RU Coming? Waiting 4 U.
No, he’d have written Are you coming? I’m waiting for you.