“Are you married?” I blurt out.
Camila looks up at me in surprise, as if she was expecting another question, but then her lips twist into a grin. “Getting a little personal, aren’t we?”
“If it would help, you can ask me if I’m married.”
She lifts the mop off the floor. “No. I’m not married.”
“Children?”
“No. No brothers or sisters. My parents are gone. I have nobody.”
“Oh.” I shift on the sofa. “I’m sorry.”
“No reason to be sorry. In some ways, it’s easier not to have anybody. I have less to lose.”
I grope for my phone, now nestled in my pocket. Talking to Lucy just now didn’t help at all with all my questions. It’s just created new questions. As soon as Camila goes upstairs to clean, I’m going to call that number. I can’t do it in front of her. Maybe she looks like an honest person, but looks are deceiving. I don’t know what she’s going to report back to my supposed husband.
“Have you ever been in love?” I ask her.
“In love?” She crinkles her nose. “No. Definitely not.”
“You’re acting like it’s a bad thing.”
“I wouldn’t know either way.”
“I was in love once.” My voice cracks on the words. I don’t want her to know who I’m talking about, but I can’t help myself. It’s all I can think about. “I recommend it.”
“Mmm. Do you?”
“Yes. It was… nice. But I know what you mean about having something to lose.” I swipe at my right eye to prevent tears from falling. “Because once it’s gone, it’s all you can think about. It’s hard to be happy after that.”
Camila shoves the mop into a bucket in the corner of the room. She looks at me, her brow crinkling. “I’m done down here. I’m going to clean upstairs.”
Our eyes meet, and my hands break out in a sweat. Does she know what I’m planning to do? Somehow, I feel like she might know. Something about the way she’s looking at me. And if that’s the case, will she tell Graham? Maybe the second she gets upstairs, she’ll go right to him and tell him what she suspects.
I hope she doesn’t. But I have to take the chance.
Once she’s gone upstairs, I take out the little piece of paper where I transcribed the number written on my leg. I’m not sure what to expect. The letter I wrote to myself said Harry is in jail. What if I can’t reach him?
But I know the answer. If I don’t reach him today, I’ll leave another note for myself. I’ll keep trying until I find him.
My hands are shaking as I type the number into my phone. I hold it to my ear, looking up the stairwell to make sure nobody is within earshot. The phone rings and rings.
And rings.
Damn it.
He’s not going to pick up. I should have known. Who knows if that note I wrote to myself was even real. Maybe I was just delusional. The ten digits are probably just made-up numbers.
I was kidding myself to think I was ever going to see Harry again.
“Tess? Is that you?”
“Harry!” I grip the phone with both hands, immediately regretting the volume of my voice. I clear my throat and lower it several notches. “It’s you…”
“It’s me,” he confirms.
My eyes fill with tears. It’s really him. I can’t believe it. “I didn’t think you would pick up. I found this letter I wrote to myself saying that you… that you were in jail.”
There’s a long silence on the other line. “Tess, don’t make me lie to you. I don’t want to talk about myself. I want to help you. And today I’m going to do it. Once and for all.”
“Okay…”
“So here’s the thing.” He sounds almost breathless, like I caught him in the middle of something. “Every time I see you, you tell me you called your father, and he never returned the call. And I got to thinking how strange it was that in a whole month, he never once called back his only daughter. I mean, he wasn’t the warmest person in the world, but he loved you. He would never ghost you for an entire month.”
He’s right. Lucy returned my call, but my father never did. “So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying, that’s not your father’s number.”
I frown at the phone. I never memorized my father’s phone number. But the voicemail had his voice on it.
“Graham must have gotten a burner phone and recorded your father’s voicemail message onto it,” Harry explains. “So when you leave the messages, he never gets them. But I found your dad, Tess.” He pauses. “He never got any of your messages. Not a single one. And I’m driving to his house right now.”