And I’m already starting to piece together what I need to know. Why the grief of Nicholas’s loss feels riddled with something else—something urgent and incoming—that I need to understand. Something I feel certain that Nicholas would want me to understand, if he were still here to tell me.
But Bailey starts to turn around. She starts to turn around and see for herself that her grandfather is gone. I need to tell her first—not just about her grandfather, but also about her father. About what needs to happen now.
“Hannah,” Grady says. “Are you listening to me?”
No, I’m not. I’m only listening to myself. I’m only paying attention to what I know I need to do now.
“Not anymore,” I say.
This is when I hang up.
“So Dad was there last night?” Bailey asks. “At the design center?”
We’re standing in Jake’s garage, the trunk to the Jetta open. There are several large suitcases and duffel bags inside—clothes I packed for Bailey, clothes for me, and, hidden beneath them, a gray computer case, which I pull out now.
I nod. “He was.”
“How could you not tell me?”
I unzip the computer case, trying to figure out how to answer Bailey—and answer her quickly. It is a fine line, figuring out howto tell Bailey what she needs to know while not entirely overwhelming her.
Bailey, who is shaking before me. Her face red, her eyes averting mine. Overwhelmed and angry and shocked.
More than anything, I’m registering her shock. Her grandfather is gone, which I see her struggling to even begin to process. Her father is—inexplicably—back.
I have five minutes to calm her down before we need to be on the road. I have less than five minutes to calm her down and to open this flash drive. To study it. To do both of those things and to do them well.
Then I need us to be out of here, whether she is ready for that or not.
I need to be on the road, moving somewhere away from here.
“I couldn’t exactly talk to you about all of this in front of someone else, Bails,” I say. “And I needed a little time to process first. I needed to first try and figure out what he was doing there.”
“What did you come up with?” she asks.
“I’m still working on it.”
I slam the trunk shut and pull the laptop out of its case, resting it on the car. This clean laptop that has never been connected to the internet. That has had its wireless capability disabled. This laptop that will be untraceable—the laptop and any information from the flash drive that I download onto it. Available to no one. But us.
The computer powers on. I plug the flash drive into the laptop, the two of us standing side by side as I click on the drive and a screen pops up.
The home page takes on a circle formation, a circle formation with arrows and edges. A marine compass.
“What the hell is that?” Bailey says. “Is that a compass or something?”
“A marine compass,” I say. “Yes.”
I shake my head, unsure why Owen has put this compass on here. It gives me pause though. It makes me wonder for a moment if Owen knows—how could he know?—my plan for how to get Bailey out of here. The plan I haven’t even told her yet. That I’ve said, aloud, to no one.
I lean in closer to the screen and click on the one folder in the corner—a folder labeledPHOTO ALBUMS. Several files pop open. Five photo albums in total. Owen has named each of them.Sausalito;O & H Honeymoon;Baby Bailey;Family; Hannah’s Work.
No directions. No obvious message.
“What are we supposed to do with this?” Bailey asks.
I shake my head. I don’t know.
“Are they ordered somehow?”
