Across the Vanishing Sky (Starlight Grove, #1)(6)
I fought the scowl that wanted to rise, inhaling deeply. If you hadn’t gone through losing someone this way, you’d never understand the brutal blow that was “There’s nothing left to find.” And I refused to believe it.
I clicked on the image I’d uploaded before we left that morning: a shot of Yeti in the redwoods after a search exercise. I never posted places I’d been until after I left, and I never showed my face on the feed—safety precautions I’d learned from getting involved in the missing-persons community.
The caption of the image read: Yeti loves new adventures.
There were about ninety-eight comments. A few familiar names of people I knew from the missing world.
TheGamerGirl13: Yeti is the goodest girl! All the bones for you!
PDustan88: What did you have her searching for this time? I tried the sock exercise yesterday and it took Bingo three tries but he got it and his peanut butter reward.
DogLuverX8: What kind of pupper? I’m in love with that face.
That drooly face, I thought to myself. As I caught the next comment, my blood chilled.
V.Fabes911: New adventures, huh? I wonder where…
It wasn’t threatening. Not exactly. But I still clicked the profile. Private. No profile photo. Just like always. Every time, it was a different incarnation of Vincent Faber’s name. It was like he got some sick pleasure out of my knowing that, even though he hadn’t wanted us, he was still keeping tabs.
I hit block and locked my phone. He didn’t get to steal this from me like he’d stolen so many other things. I wouldn’t make my profile private to keep him out because he didn’t get to keep me from the community I’d built. He didn’t get to win.
Vincent had been letting me know he’d been watching since the moment I left. Anonymous emails. Even texts until I changed my number. And now, this.
It wasn’t exactly a shock. He’d always had a petulant side, the kind of personality that meant he just had to have the last word. When we started dating, I’d found it amusing, even adorable. But that was before I saw the other side of it.
I shoved all my anger and hurt down into the same cavern I kept my Nova emotions in. Locked away where they couldn’t take over. Where they wouldn’t affect me or Owen or the new life we were building. Because we were going to build something beautiful.
And I would find Nova. So she could share in the beauty with us.
2
DEX
My SUV made the final turn into Starlight Grove as if on autopilot. Or maybe it was me who was. My hands moved with the kind of knowledge that came from years upon years of making the same turns, even after almost a decade away.
It wasn’t that I never came back. I did. Made the visit at least three times a year. Sometimes more. Christmas. Anytime Great-Uncle Waylon had a follow-up scan after kicking cancer’s ass. My niece Skylar’s birthday as often as possible. And always Mom’s birthday…or what would’ve been.
But there was always a cost. Coming back here, to a place where people knew exactly what my brothers and I had come from. Exactly why our great-uncle had taken us in.
The reactions varied: pity, disgust, fear. But there was always a reaction. I hadn’t had to deal with it in DC—not in a city where I was practically invisible, just one of the many filing through the streets and metro stations. That anonymity had become a comforting blanket, and I’d just ripped it clean off by deciding to move back here.
I eased my car to a stop as a woman I recognized stepped into the crosswalk. People never worried about cars coming to a stop for them in Starlight Grove. There was blind trust around here, a belief that people would do the right thing.
Maisy Carmichael, one of the ladies who worked at the Yarn Barn, the local quilt and craft shop, slowed a fraction as her gaze met mine through my windshield. Her pale-green eyes widened, making the endless wrinkles on her face deepen.
Fear.
That was what those eyes held. It was as if she thought I’d gun the engine and run her down right then and there. Part of me didn’t blame her. She knew whose blood ran through my veins. But another part of me did blame her—her and every other person who looked at my brothers and me with wary eyes.
Instead, I forced a smile I’d donned more times than I could count. The kind that said I’m nothing like the monster who makes up half my DNA. And then I waved. A little finger wave that was beyond ridiculous but made to tell her I was no one to fear.
Maisy sent me a tight smile and a nod, then scrambled the rest of the way across the street. I didn’t think I’d seen the woman—who had to be deep into her eighties now—move that fast in years.
Guilt swamped me. I was an asshole. And that assholishness had been made worse by the fact that I’d just spent the past four days driving cross-country, sleeping in crappy motels, and drinking awful coffee, and I was pretty sure I’d pulled something in my back.
I wasn’t sure how you could pull something in your back by doing nothing but sitting for forty-two-plus hours, but I’d managed it. Was this what it was like to get old? If it was, it sucked. And the fact that I was feeling the effects at thirty-one was concerning.
I waited until Maisy was deep onto the sidewalk before easing off the brake, but I couldn’t stop my gaze from flicking over to her. A scowl twisted my lips when I saw a cell phone pressed to her ear, no doubt telling her sewing circle that all five Archer boys were back in Starlight Grove now.