Anna shook her head. “I don’t know where she is now. I just know where she was an hour ago.” She met my eyes with a look I was getting tired of seeing. “I don’t think she wants to be found, unfortunately. Or she’s too scared to let it happen.”
“Did you talk to her?” I asked. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“I didn’t talk to her,” she said, but her eyes twinkled. “I wasn’t even sure it was her at first. I went to the hospital to have my mammogram.” She turned to Peyton. “You know how they always do an ultrasound too, with my history.”
Because her mom—my dad’s twin, Sophie—had died of breast cancer at twenty-eight.
“Yes,” Peyton said.
Anna’s eyes ping-ponged between the three of us. “So there I am in the waiting area, when a pregnant woman walks out of the imaging suite. She starts heading toward the checkout area across the room. But then she whirls and heads back the way she’d come. Which was strange—but so was everything about her. Jet-black hair, styled into a wolf cut. She had a bunch of piercings, and all her clothes were black, like she was trying too hard to be emo.”
“Emo?” Peyton said like she’d smelled something putrid. “Juliette would never.”
“Exactly,” Anna said, like it was genius.
Because it was. “I mean, it makes sense,” I said. “She’d be way too easy to recognize if she didn’t disguise herself.”
Anna offered me a fist-bump for getting it.
“No.” Peyton pursed her lips. “Juliette would never do that to her gorgeous hair. Or her face.”
“Maybe it’s a wig, and the piercings are fake,” Ford said. “Anna, go on.”
She nodded. “Of course, I had to see if it was her. So there I am, following Emo Juliette down the hall, and it only took a couple of steps to realize my hunch was correct because?—”
“Her walk,” Peyton squealed. “It’s unmistakable.”
“Right?” Anna bounced on her toes. “That runway strut is seared into her muscle memory, and it totally gave her away.”
Okay. Jules did have an unmistakable walk that was sexy as all get out.
“Even pregnant?” Ford asked like he was trying to picture it.
“Yes.” Anna laughed. But then her expression turned sheepish. “Not gonna lie, I was so excited I wasn’t thinking, and I just called out her name.”
Ford closed his eyes.
Peyton made a sound.
I just stared.
Anna winced. “Sorry.”
“Well, what did she do after that?” Peyton sounded disheartened, like she already knew the ending.
“She stumbled a bit,” Anna said. “Her shoulders hunched too. I called her name again, and she sped up. So I broke into a jog. Then she started to jog.” Her voice picked up speed as if reliving the encounter. “It was insane. I’ve never seen a woman that pregnant run that fast. She darted through the exit doors, and by the time I got outside, she was gone. Tenseconds, maybe. Vanished.” Her hands burst open like a magician’s.
I deflated, grabbed the back of my neck, and looked at the floor. “So you never saw her face?”
“No, sorry. I know, I know. I shouldn’t have called her name. I spooked her. It’s my bad.”
Her bad?
That’s what you say when you take the last slice of pizza. Not when you’ve just spooked the mother of your unborn niece or nephew back into hiding.
But I couldn’t be mad at Anna. It’s not like she’d known she was about to run into Jules and had time to map out the perfect response. She’d reacted. Anyone would’ve. At least we now knew Jules was close. Hopefully. Unless she’d hightailed it out of town.
“It might not have been her at all.” Peyton’s shoulders dropped.
