She isn’t sure where the knowledge comes from. Revelation or experience, her body, her heart, her soul, her mind, everywhere, nowhere. But as she looks at Wade, she realizes,Nothing I do will ever work.
And the reason it will never work is this:
He doesn’t want it to.
Oh, Ash realizes.Oh, I’m going to have to do this, too. Like I’ve had to do everything else.A deep, weary grief comes over her.Just once,she wants to ask him,just once could you take action? Accountability? Do the heavy emotional lifting?She’s not being fair. She knows that. There were times he did. But that Wade no longer exists.
Ash’s heart is broken. She doesn’t know what else to do. So she picks up her bags and the key to Hope’s rental car.
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll see you at home, then.”
“Excuse me?” Wade says.
“I’m going to stay here until we find Hope.”
“It could be years until they find her,” Wade says. “They might never find her.”
“What makes you say that?” Ash asks, briefly livid. “You don’t know.”
“You’d leave me and the girls to stay here and wait around for a friend?” He clenches his jaw, and she hates how cold his eyes are. “I’ve known you care about your friends more than us for a long time, but this is bullshit, Ash.”
“That’s not true.” Ash tries to keep her voice even. “If we don’t find her soon”—her throat aches at saying this—“then I’ll go home to Portland and get the updates from there. But I can’t give up on her yet.”
“Ash.” Wade’s walked over to the door. Will he block her if she tries to leave? His voice is tight. “Why are you changing your mind? You said you were coming home now. This doesn’t make any sense.”
No, she wants to say.It doesn’t. None of it does. Where did you go, Wade?
He steps aside from the door and his eyes are hard. So is his voice. “I’m not going to come get you again,” he says.
She knows.
56
CARO
“HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?”Caro is at the Spring Creek Police Station, her head in her hands. She doesn’t know why she’s asking this. It’s not the police’s fault.
“I’m so sorry,” Dan says next to her. It’s not his fault, either. She knows this, even though she’s furious at him. He was bringing Henry to see her, and he lost him.
She can’t look at Dan. She knows he’s there—his steady presence, his brown eyes and hair, his hand on her knee. She knows there is more comfort there if she would turn and fold into his arms, but she can’t.
She is so angry with him, with the staff at Lookout Pointe, with everyone, but she knows it’s only her brain trying to create a distraction from where the blame really lies.
It’s her fault. Hers alone. She is his daughter. She is the one responsible for him.
Dad, where did you go?
“What about his tracking device?” Caro asks Dan, lifting her head. They’d picked one up yesterday, and the bracelet is supposed to be impossible to remove. “Was he wearing it when you went inside the grocery store?” The last time the device updated it said that he was at the hotel.Now it says it’s “inactive,” which means it’s either not working or he’s turned it off. But he’s not supposed to be able to do that.
“Yes,” Dan says. He had taken Henry into the Spring Creek Grocery on their way to Sonnet, to get some snacks Henry wanted, and he’d given Dan the slip somehow. Her dad is still fast when he wants to be. “I don’t know why it’s not updating and saying we were there. He had the bracelet. I saw it on him.” His voice is deep and sad. “Caro, I’m so sorry. All I did was look down and pick up a box of granola bars and he wasgone.”
“We have a Silver Alert out on him,” Officer Clark says. “We usually find people quickly once we’ve done that. I’m sure he’ll turn up. The waiting is the hardest part.” He slides a phone and a wallet across the table to Caro. “Someone did find these in the Wendy’s at the edge of Spring Creek, about half a mile away from the grocery store.”
“He loves Frostys,” Caro says.Okay. This is good. He’s been seen since he disappeared. He’s going to places he likes.
“That’s good to know,” Officer Clark says. “Are there any other spots he likes to go? Or places from his past that he might want to revisit?”
“Yes, but they’re mostly in St. John,” Caro says.
