One fact kept blinking in front of me, demanding my attention: Marin was the last person to see Vera alive. How could she not tell me? Not tell the police? Vera’s last known location was in this very spot, Austin’s house, and my sister-in-law brought her here and said nothing while we frantically searched for clues, for anything that could help us find her.

A million thoughts crisscrossed my mind, but only one surfaced to my lips. “Vera was supposed to be babysitting that night.” I turned to Cody, as if he could answer for his wife. “How could Marin have allowed Vera to leave her little brother and sister home alone and take her to her ex-boyfriend’s house? And why wouldn’t Marin have made sure Vera got safely inside the house before leaving? You always make sure a person gets inside before leaving! Vera would still be here if Marin hadn’t left her on the street alone!”

Cody looked at me helplessly. “I don’t know, Felicity. Vera’s a teenager, and clearly she didn’t want Marin to know where she was sneaking off to. You can’t blame Marin for what Vera did.”

“Why are you defending Marin? My daughter is missing because of her! Vera could be dead because of her!”

It was my worst fear. The one thing I couldn’t accept, the one ending to this awful, tragic story that I couldn’t face had slipped out on my tongue: dead.

“Mrs. Portman, it’s not Miss Marin’s fault.” Austin’s soft voice just barely cut through my raging thoughts.

I turned on him. “How would you know?”

He shifted nervously. “Because Vera told me a few days before that her family had been lying to her about her sister, and she needed time to process it. I don’t know what exactly that meant, because she wouldn’t go into detail, but whatever it was, it had been bothering her for a while.”

Vera must have found out about Sydney. Overheard a conversation. Saw a medical bill. Pieced together all the appointments and suspected what we were going to ask her to do: save her sister’s life.

“What exactly did she say to you? It’s important I know everything, Austin.” I needed him to understand this was life-or-death, not just for Vera, but for Sydney too.

Austin thought for a moment. “She told me she found out something about her sister and she was really upset about it, like crying and feeling deceived. She called it a big family secret that you kept from her. It was one of her reasons for breaking up, that she needed time to figure stuff out. But then she didn’t bring it up again until right before she went missing.”

“Figure what out? And where would she have gone for ‘answers’?”