Her father tilted his head. “Prospective partner, now?”
“A hypothetical, obviously.”
Her parents murmured doubtful assents, as Griffin pulled up in the car.
“Dad, did you give up your dream of making it as an artist when Vivien and I landed on you?”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Sweetheart, I wouldn’t change a single thing.Youare the impossible dream, you and Vivi.” They group-hugged, but Lana sensed they were all thinking the same thing—someone was missing.
Lana picked up the box of produce. “Dad, next time you see Mike, get him to google Griffin Hart—H.A.R.T. Just for fun.”
As they drove away, Griffin was still grinning.
“I take it you enjoyed your afternoon as a regular guy?” Lana said.
“Like a fantasy. I could be myself—when I wasn’t pretending to be the grifter your dad thinks I am.” He looked at her for so long she was about to remind him to keep his eyes on the path before he took out someone’s compost bin. “I love thatyoutreat me like a regular guy.”
Lana tried her very best not to fixate on the use of “love” and “you” in the same sentence. “I’m not sure I do. Letting you in on a secret here, but I’ve been hyperaware of who you are all along.”
“I suppose they’ll have figured it out, next time I see them,” he said, sounding disappointed. Just as Lana’s brain latched onto the news that he expected to see her parents again, he clarified. “I mean, if they come to L.A. when we find Vivien. But maybe they won’t approve of me once they know, given their experience with Walter Shepherd.”
“Oh, I think they’ll approve—I’m a nepo baby too, after all. My parents always said my college fund was a legacy from my aunt.” Lana watched the cedar trunks flash past her window. “I kind of want another conversation with Walter, not that he’ll agree to talk a second time.”
“Let’s figure out a way.”
Lana bit her bottom lip. “What if we never find Vivien? What if she becomes one of the permanently missing?”
“Maybe don’t worry about that unless it happens?”
“But that’s the thing—what’s the point at which it happens, at which you know it’s happened? Maybe it’s already happened?”
“Darnell seems to think this latest discovery is significant. Let’s find out what it is before we lose hope.”
We.Griffin said that word a lot.We’re in this together.But for how long? Like with the moment Vivien’s disappearance became permanent, at what point did she and Griffin determine that the mission was over, and return to their very separate lives?
Lana dreaded both moments with her entire being.
Chapter 21
Griffin
By early evening, when they parked outside Darnell’s house at Point Dume, Griffin could sense Lana wavering between hope and fear. She’d sat quietly, wringing her pale hands, as they drove from the airport in a rental car. They might have taken a shortcut to Cedarwood Falls, but she’d had a long day, emotionally.
Griffin pressed the gate buzzer. No response. “There’s a patio out back where Darnell likes to sit,” he said, punching in his code. “The surf can drown out the buzzer.”
“This is not what I expected,” Lana said as the gate drew back, revealing Darnell’s 1950s board-and-batten cottage. His latest rental car was visible through the window of the separate garage, so he couldn’t be far away.
“It was sold to him in the eighties as a knockdown, but he just tidied it up and repainted it—in the original green with white trim.” Griffin knocked on the door, but again, no answer. “Let’s check the beach—it’s a northeasterly, his favorite.”
They walked around to the back of the house. Below the bluff, a dozen surfers were silhouetted against the beginnings of sunset. Griffin grabbed the binoculars Darnell kept beside his grill and scanned the waves. “Nope, not there.”
“Is that strange? Whatever he’s found, it sounded important.”
“With Darnell, unpredictable is the norm. He might have paddled around the point. Let’s go to mine—he’ll call when he’s back.”
