“Teo, they’re leaving for good. Not right away, but Bryce has a new job in Orlando. I’m guessing it’s a demotion, but he loves the girls more than his sub. He wants to be with them.” I sniffed. “And I know before too many years go by he’ll be calling to say he met a woman, and she’ll be their new mother. I’ll just be their aunt.”

“You’re already their aunt and their sister. Being their mother, too, would put you in the Guinness Book of Records.”

I slapped his back. “Not funny!”

He wiped my face with the hem of his T-shirt. “Ryan, you told me once you probably don’t want kids.”

“Well, I wanted those two!”

“Since you can’t have them, you might consider other options.”

I snorted. “Like?”

“Like, oh, I don’t know. Maybe getting married someday and having children the way other people do it? Or adopting kids if the other way doesn’t work out? Just saying you could be open to possibilities.”

“Is that a back-assed proposal?”

“Far be it from me to ever approach a proposal from the front, if the woman happens to be you.”

I smiled a watery smile. “We haven’t even lived together. You’ve only hinted you love me.”

“We could live together this week. I have a house, you have a suitcase. That might even give you enough time to come up with something else we disagree about. If you put your mind to it.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact you lied to the authorities about how you happened to know where your sister could be found.”

“Really, Teo? What makes you think so?”

He slowly shook his head.

“Not saying this has anything to do with your question, but for the record, I have the kind of job where I’m never quite sure what’s legal. The law’s a little murky since I don’t work for the police. And sometimes other people are involved.”

“Sophie?”

“Couldn’t say.”

“Your friend Glenn, the spy guy?”

“Couldn’t say, but he does have some wonderful gadgets at his store.”

“Like?”

“Like trackers so small you can slip them under car mats. Only, of course, Wendy was driving a rental, which I knew she’d trade in the moment she left Pronghorn, so even if I’d been tempted to do such a thing, that wouldn’t have made sense.”

“What else tempted you?”

“There are so many sophisticated possibilities. GPS units so tiny they fit into prescription bottles. Pharmacies put them on shelves with their schedule I and II drugs, so if somebody breaks in, the bottles can be tracked and the perps can be caught. It’s very cool.”

“I’ve heard of that.”

“All the tracking’s done by computer. Wouldn’t it be interesting if one of those GPS bottles had been labeled by someone with a certain expertise and filled with one of Wendy’s prescriptions?”

“And the tracking?”

I shook my head. “It’s all hypothetical. Who has that kind of know-how, really? Like I said, Wendy just happened to tell me where she was going. She slipped up.”