I leaned closer to the screen, my stomach doing thatsomething’s not rightflip. Scarlett and her husband had split around that time. I vaguely remembered the whispers about a messy divorce. But why hadn’t she shared anything since? Most people overshare. Most moms post their kids’ first everything. And yet, here was Scarlett, a woman who had once posted her Starbucks orders — now acting like she didn’t exist online.
“Wow,” a voice says from behind me.
I jump, slamming the laptop half-shut. “Ashton!”
She grins, sauntering into the office with a coffee in one hand and her phone in the other. “I’m rubbing off on you. Who are you creeping on?”
I groan and open the laptop again. “It’s not that. I was looking at Scarlett’s profile.”
Ashton plops down in the chair across from me, raising her brows. “Scarlett? As in Scarlett-Scarlett? Oh boy.” She shakes her head. “Yeah, she was… off for years, you know. Used to be fun, used to come to things. Then—” She makes a dramatic deflating gesture with her hand. “Pfft. She got weird. Depressed. Honestly? Half the time, I avoided talking to her because it was like walking into a thundercloud. But it’s nice to see her back to her old self.”
I let out a long exhale.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “I need to tell you something.”
She squints. “That usually means something insane is coming.”
“Last night,” I say, “after the barbecue… I went back to Nathan’s place.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “You did?”
“Not like that,” I say quickly. “His door was open. I just wanted to make sure he was okay.”
“And?” she presses.
“And I walked into something that felt like a crime scene.”
She straightens.
“His entire living room,” I say, “was covered in papers. Photos. Maps. Printouts. Strings on the wall. Like a war room.”
Ashton’s expression shifts from curious to alert.
“He’s been looking for someone,” I continue. “A little girl. Missing.”
Her mouth parts slightly. “Ella…”
“And Ashton,” I say, my voice dropping, “the picture on the wall—his main one—the one everything was built around?”
I swallow.
“She had one brown eye and one blue eye.”
Her face goes completely still.
“Just like Aurora,” I whisper.
The room feels quieter. Thicker.
Ashton doesn’t answer right away. She’s thinking. I can see it in her eyes.
“Lots of kids have different colored eyes, right?” I continue quickly. “It’s rare, but it happens. And Scarlett adopted her. We all know that.”
Ashton slowly crosses her arms. “Yeah. She did.”
“So this can’t be the same little girl,” I say, more firmly now. “It doesn’t even make sense.”
“You said he’s been looking for her for years,” Ashton says.
