Page 52

“Yeah. Of course she did. She’s so proud of the two of you and it really showed in those letters. You turned out to be the family she never had.”

Sabre’s hand comes out and squeezes my arm. He doesn’t say anything, but he’s letting me know that he understands how bittersweet this news is.

“We love Aunt Carol as well,” I tell her because I want her to understand it’s a two-way street.

“I never met her because she left before I was born, but she sounds like a great woman. Aunt Dorothy loved her and she kept her promise never to tell the family about you and Noah. Anyway, when your father found the letters, he sat everyone down in Aunt Dorothy’s front room and passed them around. Uncle Gerald sat in Grandma’s chair and just listened to it all, but I think he’d read them already. Otherwise, why would he have made such a big deal of it?”

“That’s my dad, all right,” I tell her. “He likes to make a production of situations like this.”

“He went into a rant after they were finished, saying you lied to your own family for ten long years and kept their grandchild from them.” She pauses for a couple of seconds and then adds, “Nobody said anything back. Nobody ever does when he gets wound up like that.”

I can imagine how that went down in my mind’s eye. I’ve seen him get fired up like that a hundred times growing up. No one ever argued when my father was in one of those moods because that’s when he could get unpredictable.

“Then what happened?” Sabre has the presence of mind to ask. It’s the first thing he’s said, and Shelly answers right away.

“Then they started looking for Linsey. They had the name of the restaurant and the town and the school, all of it right there in the letters, so they got on the computer at the library and they found everything. They made notes of her work hours, her class schedule, Noah’s school information, and where Aunt Carol lives.” She makes a disgusted sound. “They were excited, like tracking down all the pieces of Linsey’s life was some kind of scavenger hunt.”

Sabre’s hand tightens around my arm and he tugs me closer, in some kind of protective gesture that I don’t think he even realizes he’s making.

“They called Dylan the next day,” Shelly continues.

“Of course they did,” I mumble.

“That answers the question of how he found you and how he knew about Noah,” Sabre whispers.

“Finding Dylan was easy because his parents still go to their church. He was in a halfway house outside Billings. They told him he had a son, that you’d named him Noah. Said if he had any self-respect, he should take what’s his and bring you back to the love of your family.” She snorts a laugh. “They sicced that asshole on you and called it love.”

“Did any of them come here?” I ask. “Have any of them been to California?”

“Not that I heard, and they are pretty loose lipped around me. They just think I’m a naïve kid who doesn’t understand what they’re talking about. They trusted Dylan to sort out his own family business.” Her voice hardens. “When he made his one call, after being picked up by the police, it was to his parents. When they told everyone, it was decided that Dylan was being persecuted all over again. Can you believe that? Anyway, that’s why I called you. I got sick of listening to them feel sorry for that asshole.”

I close my eyes for a second. My cousin is seventeen years old and has a better grasp of right and wrong than the adults around her.

“Thanks for letting me know. I mean that. You just supplied all the missing pieces of information that made this make sense for us.”

“You’re welcome,” she says, sounding a little more lighthearted. “When I’m gone, maybe those busybodies can whine about it and console each other about it.”

“Gone?” I ask.

“I’m still planning on leaving as soon as I turn eighteen. I want to head to LA and go to college,” she says.

“Well, if I can ever help you with anything just ask.”

“Thanks,” she says. We say our goodbyes, and I end the call knowing a whole lot more about how this whole thing happened than I did before.

***

The brothers spend the next two days comparing Shelly’s report to everything we already knew about Dylan. It matches up point for point.

We go over Zen’s latest report together at the kitchen table.

Sabre tells me, “Zen got a hold of the report outlining Dylan’s parole violation. Come to find out, that meetin’ with his parole officer the day before he broke into Aunt Carol’s house was a virtual meetin’. He used a VPN number to make it look like he was still in Montana. Normally they would have caught that, but their system was glitching because of a tornado the day before. Dylan told his parole officer he was visitin’ extended relatives in the southern part of the state.”

“I’m sure he got in extra trouble for lying,” I say. “It seems like he exploited every advantage that came his way to find us.”

“Yeah, all that time we went back and forth about whether or not it could be him was a gigantic waste of time. This is the last piece of the puzzle.”

“I’ve always wondered where he got the money to make the trip when he’d only been out of prison for a few weeks,” I say.