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Dammit. I should have come straight to her apartment from the airport.

“Lucy, I know you’re upset. I know you probably don’t want to see me right now. But we need to talk. Please.”

Still nothing. No footsteps. No shuffling. No sound at all from behind the door.

I pressed my ear against the wood, straining to hear anything that might indicate she was inside. A television. Music. The creak of floorboards. But there was only silence.

“Lucy!” I called louder now. “I’m not leaving until you talk to me. I don’t care if I have to stand here all night. I’m not going anywhere.”

I waited. One minute. Two. Five.

Nothing.

The panic started to creep in. What if she wasn’t here? What if she’d gone somewhere else? What if something had happened to her on the way home?

I pulled out my phone and texted her again.

I’m at your apartment. Please let me in. I just want to talk.

I watched the screen, waiting for the three dots that would tell me she was typing a response. They never appeared.

I called her. Straight to voicemail.

“Lucy, it’s me. I’m at your door. I know you’re scared. I know you think you’re doing the right thing by pushing me away. But you’re wrong. Please, just let me explain. Let me tell you what I should have said a long time ago.”

I hung up and stared at the phone, willing it to ring. It didn’t.

I knocked again, one more time, just in case. “Lucy? Are you in there?”

Nothing. Not even the sound of breathing on the other side.

She wasn’t here. She was hiding from me, and I had no idea where to look.

A shadow of doubt crept through my mind. What if I was wrong and she wasn’t pregnant. What if she left because she really was done with me?

I slumped against the wall, running my hands through my hair.

Think, Blackwell. Where would she go? Her office was at her apartment. She didn’t have a lot of close friends. I’d always been the one she spent most of her time with. She didn’t have family. Her grandmother was in Florida.

Grandma Gladys.

If Lucy was going to run to anyone, it would be her grandmother. The woman who’d raised her. The one person she trusted completely.

I pulled up Gladys’s number. I still had it from when I’d called to arrange the Thanksgiving surprise. My finger hovered over the call button.

What was I going to say? Hi, I think I got your granddaughter pregnant and she ran away from me, can you tell me where she is?

Yep, that was exactly what I would say. Gladys was the kind of woman who liked honesty.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Hawthorne? Gladys? It’s Jeremy. Jeremy Blackwell.”

A pause. “Jeremy, how are you?”

“Good. Well, not good. I’m sorry to call out of the blue. But I need your help.”

“I’ll certainly try.”