Mine. The necklace and the shroud she’d been wrapped in and the blood-spattered walls, the memories, the good and the bad—this was my tragedy, the great unanswered question of my life.
My mother and I had never had a home, never stayed anywhere very long. But I thought she’d like being laid to rest near me.
My father didn’t argue with me. He never did. I hung up the phone. Beside me, the little girl solemnly considered the penny in her hand. Her bright hair caught in the sun.
“Are you making a wish?” I asked.
She stared at me for a moment. “I don’t believe in wishes.”
“Laurel!” A woman in her mid-twenties appeared at the little girl’s side. She had strawberry blond hair pulled back into a loose ponytail. She eyed me warily, then pulled her daughter close. “Did you make your wish?” she asked.
I didn’t hear the girl’s reply. I stopped hearing anything, stopped registering any sound other than the running water in the fountain.
My mother was dead. For five years, she’d been dead. I was supposed to feel something. I was supposed to mourn her and grieve and move on.
“Hey.” Dean came up beside me. He wove his hand into mine. Michael took one look at my face and put a hand on my shoulder.
He hadn’t touched me—not once—since I’d chosen Dean.
“You’re crying.” Sloane stopped short in front of us. “Don’t cry, Cassie.”
I’m not. My face was wet, but I didn’t feel like I was crying. I didn’t feel anything.
“You’re an ugly crier,” Lia said. She brushed my hair lightly out of my face. “Hideous.”
I let out a choked laugh.
My mother’s dead. She’s dust, and she’s bones, and the person who took her away from me buried her. He buried her in her best color.
He took that away from me, too.
I let myself be bundled away. I let myself retreat into Dean and Michael, Lia and Sloane. But as the valets pulled our cars around, I couldn’t help glancing back over my shoulder.
At the little red-haired girl and her mother. At the man who joined them and tossed his own coin into the fountain before lifting the girl onto his shoulders once more.
The private airstrip was clear, but for the jet. It sat on the runway, ready to spirit us to safety. This isn’t over. It isn’t done. The objection was just a whisper in my head this time, drowned out by a dull roar in my ears and the numbness that had settled over my whole body.
The agony of not knowing what had happened to my mother—of never being able to silence that last sliver of maybe—had been with me so long, it felt like a flesh-and-blood part of me. And now, that part of me was gone. Now, I knew. Not just in my gut. Not just as a matter of deduction.
I knew.
I felt hollow, empty inside where the uncertainty had been. She loved me more than anything. I tried to summon up the memory of her arms around me, what she smelled like. But all I could think was that one day, Lorelai Hobbes had been my mother and a mentalist and the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, and the next, she was just a body.
And now, just bones.
“Come on,” Michael said. “Last one on the plane gets their initials shaved into Dean’s head.”
Every time I felt myself going under, they pulled me back up.
Dean was the last one on the plane. I went in front of him, trying to fight through the fog with each step. I was better than this—better than giving in to the numbness and going hollow inside because I’d found out something I already knew.
I knew. I made myself think the words. I always knew. If she’d survived, she would have come back for me. Somehow, some way. If she’d survived, she wouldn’t have left me alone.
By the time I turned down the aisle, Lia, Michael, and Sloane had already claimed seats near the back. On the first seat to my left, there was an envelope with Judd’s name on it, written in careful cursive scrawl. I paused.
Somewhere, beneath the numbness and under the fog, I felt something.
This isn’t over, I thought. This isn’t done.
I picked the envelope up. “Where’s Judd?” I said. My voice was rough against my throat.
Dean eyed the envelope in my hand. “He’s talking to the pilot.”
My heart beat once in the time it took Dean to turn around and go for the cockpit.
This wasn’t Agent Sterling’s handwriting. It wasn’t Agent Briggs’s. I’d learned, months ago, to stop telling myself it’s nothing, it’s probably nothing when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“Judd.” Dean’s voice reached me a second before I turned toward the cockpit myself.
“Just a little electrical trouble,” Judd assured Dean. “We’re taking care of it.”
This isn’t over. This isn’t done.
I held the envelope wordlessly out to Judd. My hand didn’t shake. I didn’t say a word. Judd eyed it for a moment, then looked at me.
“It was on the seat.” Dean was my voice when I had none.
Judd took the envelope. He turned his back on us to open it. Fifteen seconds later, he turned back around.
“Get off the plane.” Judd’s voice was gruff, no-nonsense, calm.
Michael responded like Judd had shouted. He grabbed his bag and Sloane’s. He pushed Sloane lightly in front of him and turned to Lia. He didn’t say anything—whatever she saw in his face was enough.
Off the plane. Into Judd’s rental car. Michael didn’t say a word about leaving his own car behind.