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There’s some typing. “Nope. Sorry.”
Lenna cancels her reservation, then hangs up. Sarah chews on her lips. “Fine. But that doesn’t prove she didn’t run.”
“I have this weird feeling. Like, maybe Rhiannon got in the middle of our secret, somehow. I know it sounds crazy, but we should consider it.” Lenna thinks again about how someone rattled her doorknob earlier this evening. “Have you ever felt on edge here? Like someone moved your things, or tried to get into your room at night? Like someone was…watching you?”
A look of worry crosses Sarah’s face, but then she shakes it off.
“What?” Lenna asks. “Haveyou?”
Sarah takes a breath. “I mean, okay, sometimes it all feels kindof too good to be true. But if I’m hiding something from everyone, maybe other people are hiding things, too.”
Lenna shivers. “Like Gia, maybe.”
Sarah looks uncomfortable. “I hate to think that.” She looks down at her midsection. Lenna can work out what she’s thinking. This is the place that facilitated the child growing inside her. She doesn’t want to do anything to jeopardize that.
“Just try to see it my way,” Lenna whispers. “We both could be in danger. We should at least try and figure out if this message is real.”
Sarah takes a deep breath, rolls back her shoulders. “Fine. We’ll do some investigating.Quietly.We’ll have to be very, very careful.”
It’s too quiet in the house in the middle of the night, so they decide to meet first thing in the morning, once everyone else is up and starting on their chores. Exhaustion hits Lenna hard and fast. She places Jacob carefully in his crib, so as not to disturb him, and then falls into her own bed for a few hours of restless sleep.
At sevena.m., the smell of coffee wafts from the kitchen, along with the shouts of footsteps, slammed doors, murmurs, and children’s whines. Lenna decides to take a calculated risk. In the kitchen, she finds Amy and clears her throat.
“Would you mind taking Jacob, just for a little bit?” she blurts. “I, um, need a few minutes to myself. In the bathroom.”
“Of course,” Amy says, holding out her arms. If Lenna and Sarah are going to poke around, it might be better to do it without a crying Jacob giving them away. Anyway, she trusts Amy more than anyone here.
She hopes.
“I’ll just be ten minutes,” Lenna tells Amy, which she hopes isenough time. She kisses her baby on the top of his head, praying that leaving him isn’t a mistake.
She finds Sarah at Rhiannon’s door, which is farther toward the back of the house. As she approaches, Sarah looks at her and shakes her head. Lenna thinks she can sense what Sarah is thinking. Bizarre, the difference a few hours can make. Yesterday, running into Sarah again was a fate worse than death. Now, they’re working together.
Rhiannon’s door is ajar. The lights are all off. Lenna peeks inside. The covers to Teddy’s little bed are thrown back, and his pillow is on the floor. He’d been taken into someone else’s room to sleep last night; she wonders how he’s doing this morning. A few toy trucks are on the floor, and a drawer is open, though she can see it contains messily folded kid-sized T-shirts. A miniature potty sits in the corner, though it looks unused; a stack of folded cloth diapers rests on the floor.
The diapers. Lenna thinks of the pilfered diapers from her own room, how Gia gave them back to her, saying she found them among Rhiannon’s things.Hadshe, or had Gia taken them herself and then blamed Rhiannon to seed her distrust?
“We need to establish if Rhiannon intentionally left.” Sarah turns to the neatly made bed. “She had the presence of mind to tidy up. Meaning she wasn’t, say, kidnapped kicking and screaming.”
“She couldn’t have gone willingly,” Lenna says quietly, looking at Teddy’s bed. “She wouldn’t leave her kid.”
“Maybe she thinks he’ll be better off. How do you really know?”
“I think Ido,though. She’s really concerned about being a good mother.” Lenna breathes in. “When Rhiannon was young, her mother drove her and her brother off a cliff. Her brother died. Rhiannon and her mom lived, but she never saw her again. It messed her up about having kids. She’s so afraid she’d screw something up the way her mom did.”
Sarah looks appalled. Unconsciously, her hands go to her belly. “She never said a word of that to anyone here.”
“That’s not surprising. It’s not something she likes to talk about. I think she told me only because my mother also passed away—it was something we shared. But I just can’t believe she’d willingly leave her child. Even if she has some sort of vendetta against someone, she wants to do right by Teddy.”
Sarah puts her hands on her hips. “Okay, so whatdidhappen?”
Lenna walks to Rhiannon’s desk. A writing journal rests on top. Lenna hesitates, then opens it. The binding crackles. The pages are blank.
She lets the book fall back on the desk and opens a drawer next. It’s full of a few pens and pencils, and then a receipt from a 7-Eleven in Bend, Oregon. She studies it awhile. It’s dated June 10, two years before. At the time, Lenna had still thought Rhiannon was out sick and fully intended to return to work. Turns out, she hadn’t even been in the state.
Reaching in the back of the drawer, Lenna feels for anything that might be hiding. There’s nothing. Next, she opens Rhiannon’s bureau; the drawers are stuffed with clothes. There’s also a drawer of old baby bottles, some books, a stamp pad, a pair of headphones, some batteries. A top drawer reveals mismatched socks.
Sarah walks over to a drawer that’s open. “Besides Teddy, what else would she take if she knew she was leaving? Can you think of anything really important? Because if we find it here, it might prove your theory that she either left in a hurry—or she didn’t know she was leaving at all.”
