“No problem,” Bennet said. “Try calling.”
Tiffany’s name was right at the top of Nora’s call history, the photo next to her information as familiar as Nora’s own reflection in the mirror. She held her breath as she hit Call.
It rang. Once, twice, a half-dozen times. It rang and rang, but it didn’t go directly to voicemail. In fact, it didn’t go to voicemail at all—even after Nora let it ring for thirty seconds, more.
“It’s on, but she’s not answering.”
“Maybe she can’t,” Liz said.
The thought filled Nora with a blind horror.
“Okay,” Bennet said, stepping into the fray before Nora could completely lose her mind. “Let’s go. You can keep trying. In the meantime, I’m sure someone will pick them up, thanks to Mrs. Sanford.”
Liz made a dismissive sound in the back of her throat.
“Unless they’ve changed the plates,” Nora said. That was another thing they had included in the envelope—a set of license plates so Tiffany could change hers before she traded in the car she was driving for a new one. They had thought of everything, or at least tried to. New papers, a little cash, a forged recommendation letter from a nonexistent landlord.
“That’ll make it harder,” Bennet agreed. “But I’m hopeful. We’ll pick them up soon. They couldn’t have gotten too far.”
But Nora worried that they wouldn’t have to go far to achieve Donovan’s purpose. She hadn’t even told Bennet about Tiffany’s inheritance, the will. The money that Tiff had taken from Donovan and the way that she knew he would never let her go—would never let either of them go—without a fight. She almost said something, almost told Bennet that there was even more to the story than she had already shared, but tucked deep in her pocket, her cell phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Saturday
5:21 p.m.
Tiffany
The corner of 338th and Goldfinch.
Nora
What? Is that where you are?
Tiffany
Come quick.
Nora
Are you okay?
Tiffany
Bye, Nora. Everlee is all I ever wanted. Take care of her.
Nora
Tiffany?
Tiff?
We’re coming.
LIZ
NORA AND BENNET were gone in a squeal of tires and a fine cloud of gravel dust. It settled over Liz in a gritty film that coated her skin, her tongue, and tasted exactly like despair. She had wanted to go along—they all did. But Bennet had been professional, removed. He refused point-blank. No cushioning it in niceties or trying to spare their already raw feelings. It was simple, straightforward, devastating: No.
“Now what?” Quinn asked, voicing the helplessness they all felt. They made a reluctant quartet—Ethan, Walker, Quinn, and Liz—the tenuous thread connecting them taut and quivering like a plucked string. This concern for a little girl they barely knew was deep and sonorous, engulfing. Liz felt herself shrink before it, her shoulders caving in as if she wasn’t just helpless, she was hopeless.
The texts Tiffany exchanged with Nora were nothing short of terrifying. Nora had leaned out the car window and let Liz read them while Bennet gave Walker last-minute instructions. They made her heart flutter weakly in her chest.
Bye, Nora.
“You need to talk to JJ,” Walker said, surprising Liz with a hand on her shoulder. It was gentle, protective, and she was suddenly undone. Or, nearly.
“I do,” she managed. But those two words were heavy as baggage, one in each hand, weighing her down.
“Are you crazy?” Quinn spat.
Liz very deliberately closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of her daughter and the desperation etched across her face. “He’s right.”
“What?”
“We have to talk to JJ.”
“But—”
“Your brother has a right to know,” Liz interrupted. Walker’s hand was still on her and she drew strength from the unexpected connection. Who was this young man who presumed to know her? To touch her? But when she looked at him, the unraveling hem of the old T-shirt he was wearing and the beginning of a beard on his proud jaw, she was surprised by tenderness. Thank you, she wanted to tell him.
“I’ll take you,” he said. And suddenly he was more than all the fragments she had collected over the years. Skin smooth and dark as mahogany, hair wild, teeth white. The hands of an artist and the scent of a stranger. But here he was: whole. Walker.
“Yes,” Liz said.
Ethan stayed so that there would be someone at the cabin should Nora and Bennet return. (With Lucy? Liz seized that hope and held it fast.) And Liz gave Walker the keys to her Cadillac and climbed into the back seat so that Quinn could sit beside him in the front.
“Should we call?” Quinn asked.
“I don’t think so.” There was purpose in this and Liz was clinging to it. Drawing herself up and buttressing the walls of her resolve. “There’s no way to soften the blow of something like this, Quinn.”
“What about Amelia?”
What about Amelia, indeed? JJ’s obsession with Tiffany had only overlapped his relationship with Amelia a little—at least, as far as Liz could tell. The happy couple had met in college and fallen in love over the stacks in the library, or so the story went. Liz suspected their love story had much more to do with frat parties and beer pong—she wasn’t naive when it came to the pretend purity of her slightly playboy son—but she went along with their narrative anyway.
Sadly, she couldn’t feign ignorance about the fact that JJ and Amelia were definitely together the night of that Everly dance. Nora had just graduated, and Amelia had accompanied JJ to Key Lake for the celebration. If Liz remembered correctly—and the night was slowly beginning to take shape in her mind—Amelia had stayed home with Liz and Jack Sr. the night of the post-grad dance. It had something to do with “townies,” and the term was not used fondly.
It fit. Everything was starting to fall into place like the tumblers in a padlock. And then what? Liz wished that some secrets could remain hidden.
“She’s going to be devastated,” Quinn whispered from the front seat.
But Amelia’s hurt was unavoidable. And just the tip of the iceberg.
They were turning into JJ’s subdivision—a shiny new neighborhood that flanked the golf course—when Quinn’s phone rang.
From the back seat, Liz could see her daughter startle at the sound. Quinn groped for her phone and accepted the call, holding the device with two hands tight against her ear.
“Nora?”
And then: “What? Yes. Okay. Okay. We’re on our way.
“Turn around,” Quinn told Walker, a quiver in her voice.
“What?”
“We’re meeting Nora at the hospital.”
“The hospital?”
Liz froze, fear crackling and snapping through her veins like ice forming. “Is she . . . ?”
“They have Lucy,” Quinn said. “They’re bringing her to the hospital. That’s all I know.”