“Excuse me?” He lowered the camera.
“Most people these days just hold it up and look at the screen.”
“Oh,” he said, scrolling through some controls to see how intuitive or not the setup seemed. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“Do I know you?” She tilted her head; her name tag said her name was Meg, and she looked maybe forty, forty-five? “You’re real familiar-like.”
Her voice had shifted in a way he didn’t like; the wall of TVs still blared that there were no new developments in the case of his life. He said, “I think I’m going to take this one.”
She unlocked a cabinet beneath the display and slid out a SONY box.
He followed her to the register and she rang up the camera while studying him curiously. All at once the TVs switched to a baseball game. He handed over a wad of bills.
“I just figured it out.” She held out his change. “I do know you.”
“No offense”—he took his change, folding the bills around the coins and shoving them in his front pocket—“but you don’t know me.”
Her lips curled with offense.
“Maybe you recognize me,” he said. “But don’t for a second think you know me.”
He grabbed the camera bag and turned to go.
“No one believes your story,” she called out after him.
The automatic door slid open and he stepped out, heart hammering at his ribs.
Camera crews had the car surrounded.
He had to fight his way through them to get to the passenger-side door.
Inside, Scarlett was in tears.
“What do you think it is?” a reporter shouted. “Why do you think you would swallow something?”
Then another, louder: “Why aren’t you doing more to help find Max?”
“Start the car,” Lucas said.
She nodded but didn’t move.
“Start the car,” he repeated.
This time, she turned the ignition with a shaky hand and put the car in reverse and inched back; the reporters pulled away and scattered and banged on the car some, but she just kept going, slow and steady, and in a moment they were free.
“I like your haircut,” he said at a stop sign, and her hand went to her neck.
She said, “Thanks.”
AVERY
It was a ridiculous thing to be jealous of. Scarlett, with some mysterious object inside her, at the center of the drama. Avery was on the outskirts and didn’t like it out here. She needed to be closer to the action, closer to information. Because her mother was going downhill fast. She spent her days pacing and her nights fighting panic attacks. She’d wake up thinking she heard a knock on the door, then cry uncontrollably when it ended up not being anyone at all. Avery actually found herself wishing for a Mannequin Mom. She’d pose her by the pool with an umbrella drink and leave her there until all this was over.
“What do you think it is?” Emma asked.
They were on the beach; Emma had insisted. The hotel they were parked near was having a Hula-Hoop contest.
“I honestly have no idea.” Avery was watching one contestant in particular; thinking maybe if Scarlett did some Hula-Hooping the object would get unhinged and come out faster. She’d thought about calling Lucas maybe three hundred times today already.
“I can’t imagine what she feels like,” Emma said. “The whole world waiting for her . . .”
“. . . to take a dump,” Avery said.
“Exactly.”
Avery shook her head. “I can’t really imagine what any of them feels like.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just mean the whole thing is messed up. Imagine if you didn’t remember the last eleven years.”
Emma sat quietly, tilted her head. “Nope. Can’t imagine.”
Avery laughed. Emma was maybe not the deepest person in the world.
“What?” Emma asked.
“Nothing.” Couldn’t even explain.
“No, what?”
“You’re a good friend, is all.” Avery nodded. “Talking about this with me endlessly.”
“You’re a good friend, too.”
“Not lately.”
“No?”
Emma was the kind of friend who would give her a kidney if she need ed it. Avery wasn’t sure she’d give anybody a kidney—let alone Emma.
“I’m keeping secrets from you,” Avery said. “Do good friends do that?”
There was no tracking information available on the book. There was no way to track the feelings she was having for Lucas now.
“Maybe I’m keeping some from you, too.” Emma shrugged.
“You know who wrote the note?”
“No, of course not. Not that.”
Her mother had started checking the mailbox like crazy, too.
“What am I going to do about my mom?” Had the woman even gone beyond the mailbox since this all started again?
“This may make me sound awful,” Emma said, “but that’s really your dad’s problem.”
“But he’s not dealing.”
“Then I don’t know. I guess you’re just there for her in whatever way you can be, without also losing your mind?”
“I feel like that’s my whole life story. If I ever write my biography, that’ll be the title. I Was There.”
There at the bus stop.
There at the police station.