When I open the door, he has a fierce expression. “What is it?” I ask.
“Deer entrails in your driveway.” He points.
I shake my head. “Whoever is doing this is not LNB. They don’t give warnings.”
“Maybe,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean whoever this is isn’t dangerous.”
“Agreed. Let’s call the sheriff and get the alarm updated and go from there.”
“I think you should stay with Phoebe.”
I shake my head. “It’s going to get pretty awkward once she realizes we’ve been sleeping together.”
“First of all, why would she know?”
I raise my chin. “Because she knows us. Both of us.”
“And secondly, why would it matter?”
I sigh. “I’ve never told her the truth.”
For a long moment, he simply gapes at me. “You’re kidding me.”
I shake my head. “I know. But she had a terrible crush on you and I didn’t want to tell her that we were together, and then you were gone forever, and I was pretty sure I’d never see you again, so it didn’t seem like it was worth the drama to tell her the truth.”
He frowns. “Except that it was a really big part of your life. At least then.”
“It was.” And suddenly an entire bubble of repressed memory and emotion boils up and explodes in my chest. I make a sound, overcome by a kaleidoscope of memories—my father knocking me down, the feel of the razor against my head, the loneliness of the unwed mothers’ home. In a pained whisper, I ask, “Why didn’t you ever call me?”
His body goes still. Poised. “I didn’t know where you were. No one told me. I sent you a letter so that you could write to me, and when I never heard from you, I assumed you didn’t want to talk to me again.”
“A letter? I never got a letter.”
“I gave it to Phoebe. To give you.”
I meet his eyes, my heart thudding much too hard. “She never gave it to me.”
His hands fall on my shoulders. “Oh, Suze.” He presses his head against mine. “Oh my God.”
A car pulls into the driveway.
“Speak of the devil,” I say. Phoebe pulls up in her Subaru, her elbow hanging out the window. I’m about to storm over to her window and scream something awful, but before I move, she cries, “Jasmine is missing. Help!”
And everything else is forgotten.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Phoebe
“Tell us everything,” Suze says, and I spill it out as coherently as possible. Jasmine was so upset yesterday about the apartment and insisted that she wouldn’t move, but I didn’t take it seriously.
She said she would run away. But kids say that. I said it and I never did.
I didn’t take her seriously. The knowledge lives like a boulder in my chest, heavy and dark, making everything hurt. We split into three groups—me and Ben with Maui, Suze and Joel, and two deputies who agree to search for her. Suze and Joel take the trail leading away from the house up into the forest, while Ben and I search the flower garden and then the beach. Joel and the deputies are at a disadvantage because they don’t know her, but one has an eleven-year-old daughter, so he searches the places she might have gone. As I walk the rows of the fallow fields, calling her, look in the greenhouses and behind shrubs, I can’t help thinking of all the things that could hurt her out here. Mountain lions, bears and elk, getting lost completely and having no idea how to find her way home. People. People are the most terrifying of all.
In three hours, we find no sign of her. Every nerve in my body is drawn so tight that my limbs barely operate. I move in a jerky way, my mind roaring, flashing horrific scenarios. I barely avoid a complete, sobbing breakdown, and only because that will not help find her.
Gathering at my house, we show our empty palms. I have to call Stephanie, and the sheriff sends out a bulletin to look for her.
I close myself in my room and dial Steph’s number. It’s already late in the UK, but this won’t wait. My heart squeezes when she answers. “Hi, Mom,” she says, not at all groggy. “Is everything okay?”
“No.” I brace myself, and spill it out: “Jasmine has run away in protest.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“She ran away. She left a note and said that she had no choice because we wouldn’t listen to her.”
“Run away? Where?”
“I don’t know. We’ve been looking for her for hours and we haven’t found her.”