by Nicole Baart
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.”
“Clearly it’s going to be a wild Friday night.” Ethan smirked.
“Is that all you want?” The waitress looked unimpressed, but her smug expression didn’t seem to bother Ethan. When he nodded, she shrugged. “Whatever.”
“You could have ordered something stronger,” Nora told him when the waitress was gone. “Just because I’m not drinking doesn’t mean you can’t.”
“I happen to love a good Arnold Palmer.”
“This one’s terrible.”
Ethan grimaced. “I’ll try to choke it down.” He reached for a handful of her untouched popcorn and tossed the whole bunch into his mouth.
They were quiet for a few minutes, the noise and laughter of the bar crowd washing over them. Conversation would be difficult, and Nora couldn’t decide if she was grateful for the chaos or discouraged by it. She had hoped that Ethan’s appearance would temper things with Donovan, but now that Donovan hadn’t showed, Nora felt vulnerable and awkward. Scared of things she couldn’t name.
“What now?” Ethan said, angling himself across the table.
“I don’t know,” Nora said again. “He won’t stop until he finds them.”
The waitress appeared at Ethan’s elbow and plunked down an overfull glass. Iced tea and lemonade sloshed on the table, sending syrupy rivulets across the worn wooden boards. Both Nora and Ethan scrambled for napkins while the waitress walked away unconcerned.
“Well, let’s do something about it,” Ethan said.
She had done something about it. Or tried to. Only a few days ago, on a lazy Tuesday morning, Nora showed up at the farmhouse. It was Nora’s day off and she had a date with Tiff and Everlee, a morning of antique store shopping followed by a trip into Rochester for a root beer float at Bea’s Cafe—Everlee’s choice. But when she knocked on the door at ten, no one answered. The cars were in the yard, the shades drawn as if no one was up even though it was the middle of the morning. Even though Everlee was a habitual early riser and an enthusiastic door opener. Usually all Nora had to do was walk up a few of the porch steps and Everlee would come running, alerted by the high-pitched cry of the creaky stairs and so eager for company Nora couldn’t help but feel like the Publishers Clearing House Prize Patrol. If only she carried an oversized check for a million dollars.
A ripple of concern made Nora shiver, and she knocked again—harder this time. The doorbell had never worked, so she jogged back down the stairs and made her way around the house to the door that opened onto the mudroom and the dark little kitchen at the rear of the house. She knocked again, banging her hand on the wooden frame until it was red and aching. And then the door swung open.
It was unlocked. It was an invitation.
Nora crept through the dirty kitchen, dishes abandoned on the table, Donovan’s gray socks lying limp across the radiator as if he had thrown them there to dry. The house smelled at once stale and sharp, the acrid tang of something chemical and elemental making Nora’s nose wrinkle. Her heart dropped like a stone and settled deep in the pit of her stomach. She was nauseous, terrified.
“Everlee?” Nora called, bypassing Tiffany entirely. There were times her friend made her so angry she wanted to throw things. To punch holes in walls and swear until her mother’s ears burned from hundreds of miles away.
Tiffany was brash and foolish, selfish and immature. But she was also a woman who had never really had a fair chance in life, who had been abandoned and forgotten and cast aside. Nora had seen that deep hurt the moment she laid eyes on Tiffany Barnes in first period English their freshman year of high school. The girl was all arms and legs, too much makeup and too much hair. She was raw and hurting, and doing a poor job of covering it up in a tank top that she kept yanking down to expose her nonexistent cleavage and jeans so tight Nora spent the majority of the period worrying that the girl with the long brown waves wouldn’t be able to stand up again when the bell rang. She pictured the stiff lurch of a Barbie doll and determined that when the class was over she would be there to help lift her up. Turned out that Tiffany could indeed stand on her own, but over the years there were many other instances when the job fell to Nora.
Was that what had drawn Nora to Tiffany? Her need? Maybe, in the beginning. But it wasn’t long before Nora began to see her not as a project but as a friend, a girl with a killer sense of humor and a sarcastic streak that never failed to make Nora laugh so hard her sides hurt. And all those things, those good, kind, real things inside of Tiffany only added up over the years. She wasn’t perfect, but she was Nora’s best friend. Everlee’s mother. For better or worse, they were bound together.
But there were times, like that morning, in a house that was dark and forbidding and filthy and cold, that Nora wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her until her teeth rattled. What were you thinking? What in the world were you thinking?
Tuesday morning, when Nora found Donovan, he was passed out on the couch in the farmhouse. He was wear
ing a pair of pajama pants and nothing more, his thick, hairy chest naked and shiny as he sweat off the high. Both of his arms were full-sleeve tattoos, sexy if not for the fact that pressed beneath one of them, pinched tight between the back of the couch and the crush of his rank body, was Everlee. Her eyes were huge and frantic, her cheeks crimson from the heat of his burning skin and the fear that choked her. And she was choking. Nora could see that the second she laid eyes on the child—mouth wide, lips thin and bluish, tearstains tracking from lash line to chin.
Nora was across the room in seconds, hands under Everlee’s arms, lifting her up and away with no regard for Donovan as he slept. No, he wasn’t sleeping, he was unconscious, and he didn’t so much as twitch when Nora wrenched the little girl from beneath him. She gathered the child close and left the house without a second thought about his well-being. Or Tiffany’s, for that matter.
It was hatred that bubbled up in Nora’s chest. Thick and viscous and black as bile. She wanted to take Everlee far away, to call child protective services or maybe the cops. But even as she buckled her into the back seat (no car seat, no booster, nothing at all), Nora knew that getting law enforcement involved wasn’t an option. It never had been.
Instead, Nora texted Tiffany one word: Now. It looked innocent enough glowing on the screen of her cell phone, but it meant so much. Everything they had planned for, all the weeks of watching and waiting, of scrabbling together money for papers and possibilities, had come to this. They couldn’t wait any longer. It was now or never.
Now what?
Tiffany was gone. She had abandoned their plan and her daughter.
“We need to find her,” Nora told Ethan, her throat aching. “Donovan’s obsessed. He makes Everlee call him Daddy.” Nora didn’t realize she was white-knuckling the edge of the table until her fingers turned numb.
“I think it’s time to call the cops, Nora.” He said it gently, but the words sounded dangerous in Nora’s ears.
“No, that’s not an option.”
“Why not?”
She paused for a moment, considering. But what did she have to lose? Quietly, urgently, Nora told Ethan about the hiding place at the farm. The detached garage and the loose plank beneath the workbench. Ten thousand dollars was missing. More? It was everything Tiffany needed for a clean break.
Without Everlee.
Nora’s stomach flipped. Tiffany was stupid. Foolish and shortsighted and selfish. Had she paused, even once, to consider what leaving would mean for her daughter? Donovan wouldn’t stop. He wanted his money and he wanted his girl.
“Worst case scenario, she’ll go to jail. Best case, who knows?” Nora said. “And what will happen to Everlee? We have to find Tiffany.”
Ethan was quiet for a long time. He templed his fingers together in front of his face, holding Nora’s gaze as if the answers resided there. After a couple minutes he asked, “Where would you go if you wanted to feel safe?”
“Away,” Nora answered without pausing to think about it. “As far away as the money would take me, and then I’d hitchhike. Walk. Swim. Whatever it took.”
Ethan nodded. “Where would Tiffany go?”
Just as easily, Nora said: “Home.”
Nora hadn’t even considered the possibility because it was the last place on earth she would go. But to Tiffany, Key Lake was everything she had left behind. It was stability and family, a fractured sort of love. Home.
“I think that’s where you’ll find her,” Ethan said. “And Donovan, too.”
LIZ
THE HOUSE SEEMED quiet enough, but Liz cracked open the door that led from the garage to the entryway and called through the narrow gap: “I’m home!” She waited, straining to hear any hint of movement—the shuffling of feet, a knife thumping against the cutting board, anything. There was nothing. Thank goodness. When she texted Macy she hadn’t paused to consider what she would do if she came home to find her friend skewering mozzarella pearls and cherry tomatoes in her kitchen. How would Liz explain away the funeral dress? Even worse: What about the urn? Liz could hardly leave poor Lorelei’s remains buckled in the front seat of her black car. It was a furnace in the summertime. No pun intended.
Since it felt wrong, downright disrespectful, to simply abandon Lorelei’s ashes, Liz hurried over to the passenger side of the car and grabbed the urn. She clutched it tight to her chest and slammed the door with her hip. In the entryway, she stepped out of her heels and kicked them under the bench where she sat every morning to lace up her tennis shoes. The house was empty for now, but Macy could pop in the door at any moment. Liz rushed to the bedroom on bare feet, breathless because the situation was just so ridiculous. Her life had suddenly become a daytime soap opera complete with all the usual intrigues: a secret granddaughter, a mysterious threat, and the ashes of a beautiful woman in an ugly urn.
Liz placed the urn in the center of her armoire to serve as both a reminder and a reprimand while she changed for the party. She shimmied out of the black sheath and into the blue sundress, then loosened her neat chignon so a few strands framed her face. Peering into her lighted makeup mirror, Liz added a layer of mascara and smoothed on a plum-colored lipstick. The nude gloss she had worn to Lorelei’s nonexistent visitation was the furthest thing from festive. But the plum was particularly flattering, and when Liz surveyed herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door, she had to admit that she looked good. Sun-kissed and elegant, her dress tasteful and her hair really quite striking. Very shiny. The kit from Walmart had worked.
When Liz left her bedroom she felt like an actress. She had donned her costume and was preparing to play a role that felt completely detached from who she really was. Quinn was across the lake. Lucy, too. And Nora lingered at the edges of her consciousness, entangling Liz in uncertainties without end. Throwing a party was the last thing she wanted to do, but the scene had been set and she had no choice now but to rise to the occasion. If nothing else, the evening would be a chance for Liz to ask Bennet some delicate but pointed questions. She wanted to see his face, track each expression and reaction. Bennet had never been very good at hiding his emotions.
Liz had tucked the urn beneath one arm, the other hand supporting the flat bottom. She knew exactly what she would transfer the ashes to: an antique Egyptian box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. It was approximately the size and shape of a tissue box, a perennial favorite of hers and a gift from a friend who had traveled the world instead of marrying and having children. It would hurt to pass Tiffany her aunt’s ashes in such a treasured heirloom, but that was kind of the point. It couldn’t be considered a sacrifice if it didn’t sting a little.
Liz was so focused on her plan, so intent on transferring the ashes quickly and then painstakingly, believably performing the role of hostess, that she didn’t realize Macy was in her kitchen until she rounded the corner.
“Well, don’t you look gorgeous!” Macy gushed, turning from the sink, where she was rinsing tomatoes in a white enamel colander. “But what is that hideous thing you’re carrying?”
Liz felt a quick burst of justification. She wanted to say: “See?” She wanted to jab her finger at Christopher Thatcher. “This is the ugliest urn on the face of the planet. You should be ashamed of yourself.” But she forced herself to shrug, trying to be nonchalant as she deposited the urn on a side counter where it would be out of the way. “It’s nothing. I found it in storage and I’m going to get rid of it.”
“It’s hard to believe you ever bought something so vile.” Macy quirked an eyebrow as if her confidence in Liz had been shaken to the core.
“It was a gift.”
Macy turned off the tap and began to gently dab the tomatoes with paper towels. “I’ll have the skewers done in no time,” she said cheerfully. “Is there anything else we need to be doing?”
Liz paused, trying to sift through her thoughts and find the only thing that she could bring herself to focus on right now: her to-do list. “I set up the tables this afternoon,�
� she said. “And the chairs have all been wiped down.”
“The flag is out?”
“Of course.”
“I bet nobody knows what that means anymore.”
But Macy obviously remembered. Liz’s friend was wearing a long, creamy maxi dress and sandals. Her dark curls were loose and mussed in a style that was just enough bedhead to be sexy. It made Liz nostalgic for the days when beauty came so effortlessly. Messy ponytails and no need for makeup because their skin was silk itself. The long nights when the kids played Kick the Can around the cul-de-sac while the adults sipped wine spritzers and believed themselves to be kings and queens of their own little kingdom. How simple life had been back then.
Nothing felt simple anymore.
Liz grabbed a wide, handled tray and began stacking paper goods on it so she could easily transport everything outside. Napkins, thick plates, the small tags that she had printed in swirling text to set by each dish. She liked to know what she was eating and assumed everyone else did, too. “It doesn’t matter,” Liz said, picking up the thread of the conversation. “About the flag, I mean. Word of mouth is enough. And maybe an intimate, local party would be nicer than a big bash with strangers anyway. You look lovely, by the way.”
“Thank you!”
“Be right back,” Liz said, balancing the tray on one arm so she had a hand free to open the French doors that led to the patio. Out back, tables had been set at the four corners of the sweeping pergola. The wisteria that twined around the cedar beams had stopped blooming months ago, but the trumpet vine was dappled with flowers the color of ripe tangerines. Or maybe blood oranges; the heart of each cone-shaped flower looked as if it had been dipped in wine.
Liz worked on autopilot as she went around to each table, depositing some of the napkins and plates at every one. She intended to serve the way she always had: buffet-style. But instead of having all the food and drink in one place, she liked to offer different things at each corner of the patio. As people walked and talked and mingled they could try something unique at every location. The lawn was reserved for small circles of Adirondack chairs, two fire pits that she would ask some of the men to light later in the night, and the occasional pick-up game of bocce ball. Sometimes Liz regretted that they had never put in a pool, but the requisite fence would have impeded their view of the lake, which was gorgeous.
