“Wait! Are you drunk?”
“Do drinks drunk at forty thousand feet even count? They’re like calories eaten standing up.”
“You know, thepackagewe stashed in my yard the night youborrowed my sled? Did. You. Move. It?”
“Oh,the package!” she said. “I don’t want to eat Indian for dinner. I’ll be farting all night. Sorry. Talking to my friend, Elaine. We’re in an Uber. I brought her to be my emotional support animal since you’re busy.”
“Layna! Focus! Did. You. Move. The. Package?”
“No, I didn’t move him.”
“Nothim,” I insisted. “It.”
I slammed on my brakes to avoid hitting a goose. My car skidded, then blessedly stopped without plowing into anything. The guy behind me laid on his horn. I rolled down the window and leaned halfway out. I might have screamed a couple choice obscenities at the driver—and the goose.
“Tilly, wash goin’ on?” Layna said. “Are’s you okay?”
“It’s nothing. A goose in the road.”
“You can’t swing a dead cat in Boise without hitting a freaking goose. No sushi! You know wasabi burns my sinuses. Wait. Is he—the package—is he gone? LikeGone Baby Gone?”
Longing for my mother sliced me like a hot knife through cheesecake. And I missed Emmylou too. Layna might want to be my new bestie, but right now she was hammered in an Uber with someone named Elaine who had a craving for sashimi. I forced myself to push my grief down, to focus.
“I can’t talk about it now. Not on the phone,” I said. “But don’t worry about me. Good luck listing your house.”
“Burt, Tilly!” she was still shouting as I hung up.
Forty-One
Outside Roosevelt Elementary, bundled to the gills in my winter camouflage, I avoided the other moms as I shivered under a sky so gray it was hard to believe it would ever be blue again. Where the hell was Connor’s body? If law enforcement somehow came across it, they’d surely pair it with my scrapbooking scissors, in which case Miranda and I would both be in deep shit. The police might come for me at any moment. Or worse, Ralphie and Errol might find me. I needed to spend some quality time with my girls while I still could.
When the twins came out the school’s front entrance and spotted me, they ran toward me, arms outstretched to give me a giant double hug.
“Why are you wearing sunglasses, Mommy? The sun is never out in Boise,” Alice asked.
“You look weird in that scarf,” Phoebe added. “I can’t even see your face.”
“Since it’s Friday, I thought we could go to Caffeina for hot chocolate,” I said.
They jumped up and down, clapping and cheering, my odd outfit forgotten.
As I drove, I told myself the rest of the day would be fun and festive because I’d make it fun and festive. But the twins and I had only tramped halfway across Caffeina’s parking lot when I slipped on an icy patch and landed right on my butt in a dirty pile of slush.
I was still brushing bits of snow from my soggy jeans when Phoebeyelled, “Look, Mommy!” and pointed toward the entrance of the Library!
No, I thought.No, no, no.Because Agent Nate Duran, Principal Cruz, and Maricela were emerging, laughing and joking, each of them carrying a stack of books. They looked like that impossible thing: a happy extended family.
“Maricela from soccer! And Coach Duran!” Alice said, like an LA tourist spotting Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya in the wild.
“And Principal Cruz!” Phoebe said. “Mommy, let’s hurry so we can say hi!”
“No!” I hissed, pulling the twins behind a parked Sprinter van. No one would recognize me under the bundle of my scarf, sunglasses, and hooded coat, but the twins were unmistakable. I peeked quickly around the edge of the van to see Nate and his family climbing into his road-worn Land Cruiser.
“What’s wrong?” Phoebe asked.
“Why are we hiding?” That was Alice.
“I can’t handle a Stop-and-Chat right now,” I said. Not after Nate had searched my house with his ATF bro that morning, both of them thinking I was hiding my white supremacist paramour in a nook or closet.
