“So. You left us in the middle of the night and never came back. Never called. Never sent a Valentine’s Day card. Not even now that you’re blissfully happy and married and in freaking art class.”
Her swollen knuckles are white around her juice glass. “I was terrified. I knew you’d hate me. I was afraid to hear I’d ruined your life.”
“My life was fine. We were just fine without you. Almost like nothing was missing,” I lie, assembling one arched eyebrow and a slight sneer into Jessa’s trademark mask of icy disinterest, usually reserved for enemies.
“I hoped you would be okay,” Sidonie answers in a small voice, looking down through the curtain of her hair. All at once, it’s like she’s the kid and I’m the grown-up.
I like it that way. I want to keep control while I have it—it’s better than letting in the old rotten-tooth pain. “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t come so you could apologize. I already knew pretty much everything before I came. There are just a couple questions I have, and then I’m leaving.” Might as well go for the big one right off, though by now I don’t expect to get much out of it. With a deep breath, I ask, “When was the last time you spoke with my dad?”
“About a week ago, I guess? No. Exactly a week ago, actually.”
I can feel every muscle in my body seize up and stiffen, my heart leading the charge. “Seriously? You’re telling me you spoke with him?”
She hesitates, chewing on her thumbnail and its chipped blue polish. “Not directly. But I thought you knew. I thought that was why you came to see me. Imogene, what’s going on here?”
“Just, please tell me what he said.”
“It was a message he left on our machine. Last Thursday. Todd was already gone—he had an early department meeting. I got out of the bathroom and saw the machine blinking, so . . .” She chomps on her nail again. “I hadn’t heard from him in so long. He used to send letters, and sometimes they got to me, but I never wrote back. Then, there his voice was, coming out of the speakers. He said he wanted us to meet.”
“On Valentine’s Day,” I finish.
“Yes, I guess it was. He told me he needed to see me and he’d be waiting for me by the water. That was it.” She shrugs helplessly.
“So what did you do about it?”
“What could I do? He didn’t leave a number. And I couldn’t leave my husband to traipse around every body of water in Massachusetts.”
I’m not so much listening to her excuses as digging through Dad’s message. By the water? Did he mean the Charles River in Boston? It’s not far from Good Shepherd Hospital. Or did he mean . . .
“Do you think he could be talking about Victory Island?”
“Oh my god.” Her eyes are hazel moons. “I haven’t thought about that place in almost twenty years. We only went once, you know? We stumbled onto it on a long drive and stayed the night in this hotel down by the shore. This silly little tourist trap, the cheapest place on the beach I bet. The room was such a laugh. It had this Hawaiian theme. But as soon as we walked into the lobby, I knew it was the right place to be.”
“And it was important to you guys?”
“It was where we, um, decided to . . . keep the baby. You. That was the whole point of the big, long drive. To decide what to do.” She nods. “It was important. I even kept our old room key. They were still using keys then, you know? I bet I still have it in my jewelry box.”
Jesus. This whole time. The police drove out there and found nothing, and neither did Lindy and I. Then again, how could I have? I was so convinced he was running toward my mother and not holed up alone, I didn’t even really look for him. Besides, the beach was our place and belonged to us, to my dad and me. At least, I thought it did.
The list of what I know is shrinking by the second.
I want to walk right out the door and not stop until I get to Victory Island, but that would be stupid beyond stupid. It turns out I’ve been a fairly bad detective thus far, so I have to get serious. A good detective would get all the information she could before running off. Reaching into the bag at my feet, I extract the stone heart and place it gem-side-up on the kitchen table. It rolls slowly along its curve until it’s tilted, winking at my mother in the chandelier light from above.
“Where on earth did you get that?” She leans for a closer look and hugs herself, fingertips digging into her arms.
“From my dad. I want to know where he got it and what it means.”
“It was my mother’s,” she says, and crazily, my pulse skips a beat. “I had a collection of these things when I was a kid. My father worked for this company—they made screws for everything. Jewelry, ovens, vending machines, just everything. They would send him to visit their big buyers and he’d always bring one of these back for me. Geodes, I think they’re called. I don’t know why he started, but he went away enough that I had drawers of them. But this one”—she reaches out and brushes the rind of stone around the crystals with an index finger, and it rolls on its axis—“they found in her coat pocket when she died. The police thought maybe she was on her way to Fitchburg . . . or on her way from. I don’t know.”