“When is Daphne due to return?” I ask.
“She said she’d be back first thing this morning, but she hasn’t answered any texts since yesterday afternoon, and her phone is going straight to voicemail.”
“That’s not good.”
She bites her lip. “Tracking her phone is bad, right? I try not to track my brothers’ phones either, even though we all share locations, because they deserve their privacy, and she does too but?—”
“If she was due back and you cannot reach her, you’re hardly invading her privacy to verify that she hasn’t been in an accident. Or perhaps she simply misplaced her phone, and you would be doing her a favor to locate it.”
“I’m going to ask you later to sayprivacyagain, but for now…” She taps her finger over her phone screen.
And then squints one eye.
Tilts her head.
The pulse flutter at the base of her neck flutters faster.
“Bea?”
“This isn’t right.”
“What, love?”
“Her phone last pinged six hours ago in eastern Pennsylvania.”
I sit straighter. “Where is her family?”
“She was going to the Hamptons. The tip of Long Island. Which isnoteastern Pennsylvania.”
She holds the phone to her ear for a moment, wrinkles her nose, and sets it down again. “And it’s still going straight to voicemail.”
“Butch has former army friends across the country. Shall I ask him to have one of them check on her?”
“Simon,” she whispers. “Do you remember what Madame Petty said? That one day, she wouldn’t come home?”
My heart thumps in dread.
I swallow hard.
“Surely not,” I say, though my mind is also flashing to Madame Petty saying that a man would betray Bea, and I certainly did that, did I not?
She blinks hard and fast, but it’s not enough to clear the shine from her eyes. “Okay—” she starts, only to be interrupted by her phone ringing.
She wrinkles her nose at the readout—not a number in her phone—and then swipes to answer. “Hello?”
My heart starts beating again as I lean in to listen closer.
“Bea. It’s me.”
“Oh my god, Daph,where are you?”
“I’m okay. I’m safe. I’m voluntarily doing what I’m doing.”
“Why is your phone showing in Pennsylvania?”
“Shit. You weren’t supposed to see that.”
Bea squeezes her eyes shut and presses a hand to her forehead. “Daphne.”
