I didn’t know all the details, because despite my hunger for more, Vera had only grazed the bare bones of what happened between them, but I knew it had something to do with Vera breaking up with Austin and Blythe siding with him. Before the falling-out, the girls had been uber-close—hell, they’d even gotten matching Celtic tattoos—and I wondered if Blythe knew more about Vera’s whereabouts than she let on. No matter how much I played up my cool aunt persona, there were some secrets even I couldn’t tap into.

After Vera’s disappearance, Felicity thought she had cornered the market on grief. She would never understand why, but it broke me just as much. Glancing around the room, I thought of all those secrets that had been dumped here, just waiting to be found. The tears that stained Vera’s pillow. The whispers into her cell phone. The fervent scrawls in her journal. I returned the yearbook to her bookshelf, where it caught a gap in the wood and fell between the shelves.

“Shoot!” I mumbled.

Unable to reach it, I decided I’d leave it for now, then I turned to her desk. I slid open the top drawer. My fingers rummaged, my eyes searched, my heart thrummed. I would unearth nothing new today, so I slid the drawer shut. Almost. It wouldn’t quite close all the way, as if a tissue or something soft was stuck in the gap. Opening it back up, I felt along the back of the drawer, sliding my fingertips across the smooth wood. Nothing there. I closed it again, but again it left a gap.

I knelt down and crawled under the desk. Peeking up, I noted a long sliver of space where the leg met the base of the desk and a loose piece of wood normally created the seal. I jiggled the piece of wood free, exposing a hollow leg. No kidding.

Sticking out from the gap in the leg was a clear plastic something or other. I grabbed it and ripped it out, replaced the wooden seal, and shuffled out from under the desk. Once back on my feet, I recognized the baggie of pot I’d given to Vera, turning it over in my palms. I opened the baggie and inhaled the floral tang of Pineapple Express. Good stuff. I’d gotten it from Brad, a friend since my early theatre days. Clever girl, Vera, hiding it behind her desk like that.

Footsteps startled me into dropping the baggie on the floor. Shit! I wasn’t supposed to be here.

I picked it up just as Felicity blocked the doorway.

“What are you doing in Vera’s room?” Her question was terse, her anger palpable.