“Still lying,” Griffin said.
Chase swore. “Okay, it’s fifteen hundred. But if she doesn’t pay up soon, I’ll have to sell her things.” Finally, he seemed to get a fix on Griffin’s face. “Anyone ever tell you that you look like Griffin Hart?”
“Once or twice.”
“Mind if I look at Vivien’s room?” Lana said.
Chase led them into a living room that lived up to the exterior. Another guy was asleep on the sofa beside a bong. He stirred.
“You gonna clear out her stuff?” Chase said.
“Not right now.”
“Shit, man!” The guy on the sofa sat up. “That’s Griffin Hart!”
“Dumbass, it’s not Griffin Hart. You know why the cops were here?” Chase asked Lana.
“They were? When?”
Stoner Two jumped up. His blanket slid to the floor, leaving him in tighty-whities that hadn’t been white in quite some time.He pointed at Griffin with both hands. “That is Griffin Hart. Shit, where’s my phone?”
“A detective came by a few weeks ago,” Chase said, leading them down the hallway. “Maybe a week after Vivien split? Maybe less? She asked to check her room, wouldn’t say why. I thought she’d bust us for the weed but… She left a card.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Dunno where it is.”
“We used it to cut lines,” his mate called, laughing.
“Shut up, dipshit!”
“Was it Detective Keisha Graham, by any chance?” Lana asked.
“Yeah, that’s the name.”
“Did my sister say anything to you about being pregnant?”
“What? No! I wasn’t screwing her, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I … wasn’t, but okay.”
Chase pushed open a door to a simple room overlooking a small, overgrown yard. It was tidier than the rest of the house. His buddy staggered up the hallway, aiming a phone camera at Griffin, who held up a palm. Chase pushed the guy back to the living room, yelling.
“I got the impression from the cop that no one was looking for Vivien,” Lana said to Griffin. “But that detective came here? That’s something, I guess.”
Griffin picked up a book from the windowsill. “The adoption book.”
“It’ll be well overdue now—not that that matters! There’s a laptop charger here, but no laptop. And a phone charger. If you were going away, you’d take your chargers.” Lana opened and closed some drawers and checked the closet.
Stuck to the wall above the bed were snapshots—photos of Vivien at various life stages, some with Lana, some with a couple who had to be their parents. “You’re such a mini-me—both ofyou,” he said, peering at a picture of Lana as a baby and Vivien as a grinning toddler at a lake with their dad. All three pairs of eyes could have been cloned—the deep shade of brown, the shape.
“Oh, this is cute.” Lana picked up a piece of paper from a desk—a photocopy of an old newspaper. “That’s my parents.” She pointed out a couple in a photo, raising champagne glasses. He wore a suit; she a slinky dress. “‘Revelers at a Christmas Eve party in the city center,’ the caption says. Dunno which city, or which newspaper.”
“They looked happy to be part of the world then.”
She pointed to the date. “The year before Vivien was born. They moved to the commune after I came along.”
“So you weren’t born there?”
“No. Dad fell out with his family after that, so we hardly ever left again. He doesn’t like to talk about it, but his father didn’t approve of us joining a ‘cult.’” She air-quotedcult. “Dad had a sister, but she died young—car accident.”
“Where are your mom’s family?”
