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When she stands back up, her head swims, which only heightens her anxiety. The panic presses against her temples.Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze,and she fixates on the yellow onesie neatly folded on her dresser.Jacob’sonesie—he’d worn it yesterday. It was freshly laundered—by Rhiannon.The idea that she’d slipped in here and touched Lenna’s thingsagainsuddenly makes her uncomfortable. What else did Rhiannon touch in here? The mug withtea is gone. What else did Rhiannon discover in here? Did she see Lenna’s phone? Lenna turns to it and wakes up the screen.
This is silly. She’s making herself crazy. Her friendwantsher here. No one is trying to gaslight her. In fact, forget about walking the dogs, forget about Marjorie—she’ll march out to the fence line right now andfindRhiannon. Talk to her point-blank. The air needs to be cleared immediately.
On go her shoes. On goes sunscreen. She heads back down the hall and out into the main room, trying to get her bearings. Marjorie said Rhiannon took a four-wheeler to the perimeter fence. Which is…everywhere?
Wheels roll on gravel outside. Lenna’s hopes soar—maybe Rhiannon is back early. Perhaps she even realized her mistake with the dogs and she’s come back.
Lenna heads toward the front door. Her hand is almost on the knob when she hears a car door slam—notRhiannon, then.
Another door slams. Another. Lenna hasn’t heard this much car activity since she’s arrived. Voices rise. People say hello. She hears Coral, and then Amy. They’re chirping about someone in the car.
“Sarah!”Amy calls.
Lenna licks her lips. Right. That woman at the OB appointments out of town. Lenna forgot about her, and she’s not in the mood to meet anyone new. She wants to wait until the residents go inside or move around to the back before she heads out to look for Rhiannon. Fewer questions, less fuss.
As she bides her time, hiding in the shadows, her gaze drifts to the walls. To her right is the group photo that she’d noticed the first day she came. It’s covered with a fine sheen of dust, but when she wipes it away, she can just make out Rhiannon, holding a tiny Teddy in her arms.
God,she thinks, and her suspicions rise up again.HowdidRhiannon get pregnant? Who is the father? Why won’t she answer Lenna’s questions?
Her gaze moves to the center: Marjorie looks maternal and proud. Then she spots Amy and Melissa, Ann and Coral, and even Gia in the back, wearing the same silk blouse Lenna saw her wear the first day. They look no different than they do now, for the most part.
She spies another woman, too—a dirty-blond woman off to the side, set a little apart from the others, her hands shoved into her pockets. She isn’t one of the kids, but she’s barely an adult. Someone who has left, maybe. Her mind catches on a gossipy story Gia told last night. Something about a woman who crossed her. Karen? Carmel?
Then she spies another blond woman at the other side of the photo. She’s pretty.Reallypretty. Lenna leans back, something twanging in her brain. Sheknowsthis face.
“Howwasit, Sarah?” Coral chirps through only a thick wall of adobe. “How’s the baby?”
And then this new person, this Sarah, answers: “It was great. Baby’s doing really well. A strong heartbeat!”
A chill runs up Lenna’s spine. She knows the face, and she thinks she knows the voice outside, too. Except in her mind, that voice didn’t belong to someone named Sarah. She went by another name.
She hurries over to the window. The Suburban sits at the front of the house, two of its doors wide open. Coral hefts some luggage. Two other women stand at the front of the vehicle, chatting excitedly. One is Amy, who seems so delighted that she’s holding the other woman’s thin, pale forearms. The other woman is the person in the group photo. But she’s also the woman in a dashboard picture. The woman who appeared outside Lenna’s office building,wrecked when her fertility treatment failed. The woman who knocked on Lenna’s door after Gillian went missing.
Lenna’s heart starts to pound. She can’t quite feel her feet.
Out the window, Amy leans in to give Sarah a hug. Coral reaches down to pick up Sarah’s bags. But Lenna doesn’t know her as Sarah. She knows her as Sadie. Gillian’s roommate and friend.
The one person who might know the terrible thing Lenna did.
14
Lenna
July–December
Two years before
Lenna had a general idea of where Gillian lived: She’d shown Lenna the house online several times. The bungalow was along the Runyon Canyon path. Her roommate had gotten it for a steal, Gillian said, at least by LA standards. Inheriting some money for a hefty down payment helped.
Getting there was a straight walk uphill through the park, and she wasn’t in the mindset to do that in the early morning or the icky weather. So she drove and parked her car a few streets away from the house, nearly blocking someone’s driveway, telling herself that this wouldn’t take long.
It was an unusually miserable morning for July in LA. The temperature was in the sixties, bizarre for that time of year, and the spitting rain made it seem even chillier. Twice on the walk to the house, she stopped in her tracks, telling herself she should go back. Confrontation wasn’t her thing.
But then she was there. The house glowed, perched on the edge of the cliff. Gillian’s Prius sat to one side of the slanted driveway.The garage door was closed. Lenna shifted from foot to foot, unsure. She really didn’t want to have an intervention with another person around. But she was pretty sure Gillian said Sadie left early.
The front door opened, and Lenna ducked behind a tree, watching Gillian step out. She wore a quilted, hooded vest, long tights, running shoes. After popping wireless headphones into her ears and pulling her hood tight against her head, she headed down a side street toward the entrance to the canyon trail.
So Lenna followed.
