"What's going on with Tayen?"
"I'd rather explain in person.Please, Kari.I don't know who else to turn to."
Family.On the reservation, that word carried weight that outsiders rarely understood.When family asked for help, you helped.It was that simple.
"Where do you live?"
Lola gave her an address near Tuba City, about an hour's drive from her current location.Kari noted it on her phone and promised to be there before sunset.
She ended the call and sat for a moment in the silence of her Jeep, the sun beating down on the windshield.Two families now, both asking her for help.Dorothy Naalnish, who wanted to know who had killed her son.Lola Chee, who wanted something that had to do with a niece Kari had never met.
And somewhere in the background, always, the question that had driven her for seventeen months: What had really happened to Anna Chee?
Kari put the Jeep in gear and headed toward Tuba City, the bundle of blue corn bread shifting on the seat beside her as she turned onto the main road.The investigation into Evan Naalnish's death was out of her hands for now, locked behind FBI jurisdictional walls she couldn't climb.
But family was something she could do.Family was something she understood.
Whatever Lola needed, Kari would find a way to help.
CHAPTER THREE
Lola Chee looked older than Kari remembered.The last time they'd seen each other had been at Anna's funeral, a brief embrace in a crowd of mourners, and before that, scattered family gatherings throughout Kari's childhood.Now, standing in the doorway of her small house near Tuba City, Lola seemed to have aged a decade in the space of a year.
"Thank you for coming."Lola stepped aside to let Kari in."I know you're busy.I wouldn't have called if I had anywhere else to turn."
"Family doesn't need to apologize for asking family."Kari entered the house, taking in the modest living room with its worn furniture and walls covered in photographs.Many showed a teenage girl with full lips and defiant eyes."Is that Tayen?"
"That's her."Lola's voice caught."That's my niece."
They sat at the kitchen table, and Lola poured iced tea from a pitcher that sweated in the late afternoon heat.The windows were open, but the breeze did little to cool the room.Somewhere outside, a dog barked twice and fell silent.
"Tell me what's going on," Kari said.
Lola wrapped both hands around her glass, staring at the condensation rather than meeting Kari's eyes."My sister Mary died two years ago.Car accident on Route 89.Tayen was sixteen at the time."
"I'm sorry.I didn't know."
"It happened fast.A truck driver fell asleep at the wheel, crossed the center line.Mary didn't have a chance."Lola's voice was flat, reciting facts she'd clearly repeated many times before."She was a single mother, no family besides me.Tayen's father left when she was three, never paid a dime of child support, never even sent a birthday card.It was always just Mary and Tayen against the world."
Kari thought about what it would be like to lose your mother at sixteen, to suddenly find yourself alone in a world that had shifted beneath your feet.She'd been thirty-two when Anna died, and even then, the grief had nearly broken her.
"I was going to take custody of Tayen," Lola continued."Had already started the paperwork.She was going to move in here, finish high school in Tuba City.We had it all planned out."She finally looked up, her eyes red-rimmed."But Tayen ran.Just days after the funeral, she packed a bag and disappeared.Left a note saying she couldn't stay here anymore, that she needed to find her own life.She was sixteen years old, Kari.Sixteen."
"What was she like before?Before Mary died?"
Lola smiled faintly at the question."Headstrong.Smart.Always talking about getting out, seeing the world.She wanted to be an actress, or a model, or a singer.Something glamorous, something that would take her far away from here."The smile faded."Mary worried about her.Said Tayen had too many dreams and not enough patience.Said she'd end up getting hurt chasing things that didn't exist."
"Did you report her missing?"
"Of course.But she was almost seventeen, and she'd left voluntarily.The police said there wasn't much they could do.She wasn't in danger, she wasn't being held against her will.She just...didn't want to be found."Lola's voice hardened with old frustration."I tried everything.Hired a private investigator with money I didn't have.Put up flyers in every bus station between here and Los Angeles.Called every homeless shelter, every youth hostel, every organization that helped runaways.Nothing.It was like she'd vanished into thin air."
"Until recently?"
Lola nodded and pulled out her phone, scrolling through something before handing it to Kari."A girl who went to school with Tayen recognized her.In an ad.For makeup."
Kari looked at the screen.It showed a Glimmer profile for someone named Tayen Stern.The profile photo was a professional headshot of a young woman with flawless makeup and carefully styled hair.The same full lips from the photos on Lola's wall, but everything else had changed.The defiant teenager had been transformed into something sleek and polished, like a rough stone cut and buffed until it gleamed.
"She's a model now?"
