“Actually, no,” Nora said. “I’ll take an Arnold Palmer.”
Arlen gave her a bit of a sideways look as he took his hand off the sleek Guinness tap. But he poured the iced tea and lemonade mocktail without question and came around the bar to deliver it to her table. He was humming “Candle in the Wind.”
“Thanks, Arlen.”
Nora sipped the drink—too sugary—and bounced her knee as she settled in to wait. After the shock of Tiffany’s betrayal and the fruitless search of all their former favorite haunts, Nora needed something much stiffer. But she couldn’t risk dulling her senses with alcohol, no matter how much she would have liked to.
Ethan had let her crash on his couch for a couple of hours and then insisted she take a shower. While he was out. Nora locked the doors to both his apartment and the bathroom, and stood for far too long under the lukewarm spray. She wished she could wash her problems away as easily as she lathered the grime off her body. But even after she had toweled off, the sickening miasma of the trouble she was in would not dissipate. Nora didn’t dare go to her apartment alone. She didn’t dare contact Quinn or call the cops or do anything to upset the delicate balance of the precarious situation in which she found herself.
But as she slipped on the jade blouse she had worn to the bank and her now-rumpled pair of jeans, her phone pinged with a text.
We need to talk.
It was Donovan’s number.
Meet me, he wrote. The Cue.
She had only agreed to meet him because she was afraid that if she didn’t say yes he would hunt her down. That was a bit melodramatic, but he did often remind her of a bird of prey. Hawkish features; slick dark hair; thick, weightlifter arms that were intimidating, to say the least. Nora could still remember the first time that she ever met him on the porch at the farmhouse she shared with Tiffany and Everlee.
“I’ve heard so much about you,” he said, extending his hand toward her as she walked slowly up the front steps. She was still wearing her apron from her evening shift at the Grind (she had just started), and before that she had worked eight hours at the car dealership, where she washed and detailed the trade-ins and got them ready for the lot. Nora had been weary and irritable, not at all in the mood to meet Tiffany’s boyfriend du jour. But from the moment her fingertips touched Donovan’s—no matter how reluctantly—she knew that there was something different about this one. Instead of shaking her hand, he pulled her into an uncomfortable embrace. Too close, too intimate for a stranger. As he held her too tight, he whispered in her ear, “We’re going to be one big, happy family, aren’t we?”
Everything inside her screamed no.
But less than two months later she moved out and Donovan moved in.
I should have fought harder, Nora thought. But what could she have done? The spell had been cast and Donovan was suddenly a part of their lives. Well, he was a part of Tiffany’s and Everlee’s lives. Nora found herself being slowly but surely edged out. Once it had been her job to wake Everlee and get her ready for the day. To dress her in the frilly pink ensembles that she and Tiffany bought on the clearance rack at Shopko. Nora made most of the meals and bathed Everlee and often put her to bed, too. But when Donovan moved in, Nora was lucky to see her patchwork family once a week, and though Everlee complained at first, though she cried and clung to Nora when she visited, the little girl was young enough to begin the guileless process of forgetting. It wasn’t her fault, but it broke Nora’s heart.
Her pulse quickened and her palms went clammy just thinking about it. It was a conditioned pain response, the only way she knew to deal with the hurt that came with knowing that she had been replaced. Breathe through it. Try to forget.
It had been so difficult to let Tiffany and Everlee go. Tiff was her best friend, but Everlee was altogether different. She wasn’t just Nora’s friend’s daughter or a girl she cared deeply about. Nora loved her more than that. More than anything, really. Sometimes she had to remind herself that Everlee wasn’t hers and never had been.
Nora checked her phone and was surprised to see that it was nearly five. Donovan was late. She wasn’t sure what to think about that.
Of course, she was terrified to see him. She and Ethan had worked on a script, a series of things that she could say that were safe, benign. And though Nora doubted they would be effective, she had to try. Tiffany is gone. I don’t know where she is. Everlee, too. Let them go, Donovan. Just let them go.
But he wouldn’t. He wasn’t the sort. Obsessive, addictive, controlling, manipulative—never mind the money that Nora was sure Tiffany had taken. He was dangerous. It was enough that he considered Tiffany his possession. Unconscionable that he called Everlee his daughter. His girl. His. How dare he? After what he had done?
Nora squeezed her eyes shut and wished on every golden thing that Everlee was safe. But how could she be? She was hidden in plain sight—with Quinn, who was both long-suffering and relentlessly curious. It wouldn’t take her long to start digging for answers on her own. And what would she find? What was Everlee—Lucy—sharing about her past? About her mother, her relationship with Nora, where she came from? Thankfully, Everlee didn’t know much. Her real name was a hint, but even Quinn couldn’t put those pieces together. Or could she?
The front door whooshed open and Nora looked up, her heart tight as a clenched fist. But it wasn’t Donovan. Just a group of rowdy guys from the window factory. Nora knew them by the embroidered name patches over the pockets of their navy shirts. They gave her appreciative looks as they entered, and one of them waved, but no one wandered close or offered to keep her company. Word about her had gotten around. Perhaps a single glance in her direction was enough to warn them that she wasn’t in the mood.
Nora watched them laughing at the bar for a while and battled nerves when the door to the Cue opened three more times. It was never Donovan.
Finally, at five thirty, the door opened and Ethan was standing there.
The Cue was bustling and he had to scan the room to find her. Nora was jittery and exhausted; she barely had the energy to lift her fingers in greeting. But he found her easily enough and wove through the crowd to slide into the booth across from her.
“How’d it go?” he asked, unsmiling.
“He never showed.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what happened.” Nora held herself taut, stifling a tremor that threatened. Where was he? Why would he set up a meeting and then not show?
A waitress who Nora didn’t recognize sidled up to their table and gave Ethan a pointed look as if to say, “I’m busy, make it fast.”
“I’ll have whatever she’s having.” Ethan nodded at Nora’s still-full glass.
“It’s an Arnold Palmer.”