And then we will drive to Big Sur where I very well might, no, scratch that, where I will find a clue that will lead me to Nina. And then my life will be perfect. Then my life will be absolutely complete.
I watch the door. Four guys emerge with McDonald’s bags. The woman with the screaming kid is walking out with a ketchup-stained shirt and a pile of napkins. And then there’s Sean walking through the door; he’s so beautiful, so incredibly beautiful. I remember the first moment I saw him, back at the Mothership. Back then, if someone had told me what he would end up meaning to me only four days later, I never would have believed it. How could I have? How could I have even begun to understand?
As he gets closer, my heart pounds harder. I smile, giddy with anticipation for the moment when he opens the car door, for the moment when I’ll get to touch him again. He’s close enough now for me to see his face clearly. He’s staring at the car window, at me. But he doesn’t smile. He has this crazy look on his face that I don’t understand.
He walks past the driver’s side door, around the front of the car. I roll down the window. “Hey? What’s going on?” My heart is pounding. Did he lose his wallet or something? He doesn’t answer. Just keeps walking until he’s standing right in front of the passenger side door. “Hey?” I reach out and put my hand on his arm. “Is everything okay?”
Sean doesn’t say anything. He just takes my hand and gently, puts it back inside the car. He opens the car door and reaches and unbuckles my seat belt and wraps his arms around me. He holds me tightly against him. His skin smells warm. “Oh, Ellie,” he says. He leans back. Takes both of my hands and holds them in his. He raises my right hand to his lips and kisses it. And then does the same thing with my left one. He looks like he’s about to cry. My heart is pounding now. I can feel the adrenaline rushing up and down my spine.
“Ellie,” Sean says. “I have to tell you something.”
I look up at him. “Okay?” A horrible thought flashes into my head—he has a girlfriend. Oh God. Amanda was right. I start to turn away. “Ellie, please look at me,” he says. “Please.” I stare into his eyes.
“My family knows this private investigator, okay? My father hired him for something once, a few years ago, something for his company.” He pauses. Takes a deep breath. “This guy is pretty much the very best there is. He’s an ex-FBI agent and has contacts everywhere. If a person exists on this earth, he can find them.”
“Uh-huh…”
“So when I first met you and found out about Nina, I thought, maybe I was meant to meet you to help you with this, to help you find her. I called him when we stopped at that first rest stop on the way to Nebraska.”
I nod.
“I didn’t want to get your hopes up in case he didn’t find anything, so that’s why I didn’t mention it before.”
I nod again.
“Anyway, yesterday when we were at the show, when you were dancing with that guy, I went outside and called him to check in.” The tears in Sean’s eyes look like they’re about to spill over. “He had some information.”
I feel my heart pounding. It’s pounding so hard and loud that I can barely hear Sean anymore.
“This morning, when I was saying how I thought maybe we should stop looking…I”—Sean’s voice cracks—“it’s because I had talked to him before and the stuff he said did not sound good and…”
“Did he find her?” I hear my voice ask. I sound so quiet, like I’m far, far away from myself. “Did he?”
“Ellie,” Sean says. He looks down. And looks up. He opens his mouth, his lips are moving. But, the weird thing is, I can’t hear anything. It’s like the world has gone mute. He’s motioning with his hands. He’s nodding. But I don’t hear anything, except for the beating of my own heart, like someone pounding on a drum inside me. Pounding over and over and over. And I’m frozen. Sean puts his hands on my shoulders. And shakes them gently. I hear a gurgling, like water rushing past my head. And then suddenly the sound comes back, loud, too loud. Cars honking. People laughing. One of the college kids calling out to her friend something about some onion rings.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” I say to Sean. And I smile. Because it is awfully strange to suddenly go deaf in the middle of a parking lot. So strange it’s funny, really.
“That investigator found out about Nina,” Sean says. “She died.” Sean looks at me again. “She’s dead, Ellie.”
And I nod. Because turns out I guess I did hear him after all. But I can’t think about any of this right this moment because someone is screaming, a high-pitched, bloodcurdling, ragged shriek of a scream. A scream so loud that everyone turns in the direction of the scream. And it makes it hard to think, all that screaming. And then I realize something: It’s not just someone screaming. It’s me.
Thirty-one