“You and Marin spoke to my daughter’s boyfriend and didn’t tell me? How long have you known about Austin?”

Cody held up his hands apologetically. “I swear, Felicity, I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you. Apparently Vera had told Marin about him in confidence, and when we talked to him, he didn’t know anything anyway. He and Vera had broken up and he hadn’t even seen her the night she disappeared. So there was nothing to tell. I promise if there was something to tell, I would have told you.”

“Whether it’s something worth telling or not isn’t up to you to decide when it’s my daughter missing, Cody. You should have told me.”

Even in the dark my handprint lingered on his cheek. But I wasn’t sorry about it. He deserved so much worse than a slap on the face after keeping this from me.

“I know. Marin was worried you’d turn him over to the cops for no reason and he’d end up getting in trouble for something he didn’t do.”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses.” My stomach churned. This secret was too big, it threatened to detonate my heart. “You know what hurts worse than your deception? The fact that Vera told Marin about having a boyfriend, but not me, her own mother.”

Then…boom! I felt it explode. Tears and snot and sobs all at once, a tsunami of motherhood failure.

“But that’s what daughters do, Felicity. They keep secrets from their parents and confide in their friends.”

“Why was Marin her friend but not me? Why couldn’t I have been both to Vera—parent and friend? I always tried to be that person she could tell anything to.”

“I know you did, but it doesn’t always work that way. Kids are complicated. We all need something that is just ours. Even teenage girls who love their mothers.”

In a way I understood this, a little too well. I had kept my own secret all this time, and I couldn’t tell a single soul, not even with Vera’s life on the line. But that time of secrecy was coming to an end. It was jail or finding Vera. As a mother, the choice was being made for me, because I would always come in last. And I was okay with that, if only I could know with certainty that the kids would be okay—if Sydney could survive—without me.

“I guess you’re right,” I conceded.

“I’m so sorry, Felicity,” Cody pleaded. “I didn’t think.”

“I know, but I can’t forgive you for not telling me. Not yet.”