This Story Might Save Your Life(22)

My chest hollows. “We thought it might help.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Hold on.” Over the next several minutes, we hear flurries of indistinct chatter. “You have a pen?” Keller asks when she’s back. I say I’m ready, and she huffily provides the contact info for the team member she’s assigned to the tip line.

“Thank you,” I say.

“Don’t thank me. Because of you, we’ll be chasing rabbits for days.”

I mumble an apology as Mallory leans toward the phone. “Are there any updates?”

“Still processing,” Keller says before hanging up.



* * *



LUNA TEXTS FOUR more times as Mallory and Quinn and I transfer the incoming leads over to the police and get our tip line connected with theirs. Each time her name pops up on my screen, Mallory gives me the side-eye. “I’ll get to it,” I say.

But I don’t have a moment to breathe until 2:00 a.m., and by then the messages have stopped. We’re all half dozing on the couch when my phone rings again at six.

“What do you know?” Luna says the second I answer.

“Too much and too little.”

“Too vague. Start from the beginning.”

I already have communication fatigue, but Luna’s going to keep asking questions until she has the whole story, so I do the best I can.

“A break,” she says when I finish. “That’s all she said?”

“That’s all she said.”

She makes an exasperated noise, and I nod my agreement. It’s weird, unloading my troubles onto her again. We’ve chatted briefly a few times since our divorce, but the last time I saw her was six months ago, when she showed up unannounced to find me lying in the middle of my unfurnished living room feeling sorry for myself. “This is pathetic,” she’d said, dropping down next to me on the hardwood floor, where we held hands and stared at the ceiling.

“She said she was going to tell you,” Luna says now.

“What?”

She sighs.

My blood pressure spikes. “Luna?”

“I’ll be there in an hour. I can’t say it over the phone.”



* * *



THE DOORBELL RINGS, and I jolt upright from the breakfast table, where I’ve been resting with my head on my arm. My body hums with confusion as I take stock of the rising sun. It’s 7:00 a.m. In a too-loud-for-early-morning voice, Quinn calls the overexcited dogs to the backyard, and I stumble to open the door for Luna, who’s wearing bright red leggings and a white tank top, holding a tray of coffees and a paper bag.

“You look terrible,” she says.

I can smell her lavender lotion as she whooshes past me into the house. Before I’ve rubbed the cobwebs from my eyes, she’s set her bag down on the coffee table, handed out drinks, and reintroduced herself to Mallory and Quinn. She’s met them only once before, when they were in town at the start of our tour.

“Two with bacon, two without,” she says, removing several wrapped sandwiches from the bag.

I can’t wait any longer. “What was it you couldn’t tell me over the phone?”

“We need plates.” She holds up a finger and heads for the kitchen. “Holy hell, when did that happen?”

Somehow I’ve managed to forget about the tree again. I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Tuesday night.”

“Did it do any damage to the house?” She returns with four plates and takes a seat on the opposite chair.

“Just my shed.”

“His Zen Den,” Mallory adds with more significance than necessary.

Luna turns to me with plain amusement. “Your what, now?”

I avoid her gaze. “It’s nothing.”

My exceptionally observant ex-wife knows it’s not nothing, but I can’t get into it right now. “Thanks for the food,” I say. “Now, please. What couldn’t you tell me over the phone?”

Luna gestures for us to start eating, but none of us move. “Fine.” She clears her throat. “I’ve been helping Joy with her divorce.”

Time stops. Mallory and Quinn and I all gawk at her.

Quinn finds her words first. “Her what now?”

“So she really didn’t tell you?” Luna says, more to me than the others.

“I think she almost did.” Even to my own ears, my voice is small. “I asked if the break had something to do with Xander, and then…”

“What?” Luna asks.

I shake my head. Everything feels so jumbled. Twenty minutes ago, my best friend and her husband were missing. Now, my best friend is missing with a husband she intends to divorce. These are not the same. “Did Xander know?”

“Not that I’m aware,” Luna says. “She was going to tell you first.”

My heart struggles to process this information. She was going to tell me first. Because I’m her best friend? Because she needed help? Did she change her mind before or after my verbal diarrhea?

“She was worried about the podcast,” Luna explains, saving me from myself. “She knew things were going to get thorny.”

I breathe out and let my brain recalibrate. Thorny. An understatement. Xander is part owner of our corporation and the point man for all business-related affairs, including—no, especially—negotiations with Apex Plus. I can’t wrap my mind around how a divorce might complicate the situation. We knew he would try to talk her out of a break from airing episodes. I can only imagine his response to learning she wanted a break from him. Of course Joy would be worried. Of course she’d need to tell me first.