Then, in a voice so flat it barely sounded like hers, she said, “She’s gone.”

“Gone?” I stared at her, waiting for something—clarification, reassurance, anything that made sense. “Gone where?”

She finally turned to face me, and the emptiness in her eyes made my chest cave in. “She ran off.”

A sharp ringing filled my ears.

No. No, this didn’t make sense.

“She wouldn’t just leave,” I argued, shaking my head as I tried to make sense of something that wasn’t supposed to be real.

“She’s gone,” Mom repeated. Her hand lifted slightly, as if gesturing toward something, then dropped limply back into her lap. “She left a note. Said she’s not coming back.”

“No.” My voice was nothing but air.

The floor felt like it had been ripped out from under me. Mom looked at me then, really looked at me, and the weight of her stare crushed me. She blamed me. It was written in every exhausted line on her face, in the way her lips were pressed into a thin, unforgiving line, in the way her eyes—red-rimmed and sunken—seared into me with the weight of all the things she wasn’t saying.

She didn’t have to say it; I felt it.

This was my fault.

I had made Beverly feel like she had nothing left.

I had let her believe she was alone.

I had walked away first.

“My husband is gone,” she said, her voice shaking. “And now, my daughter, too.”

A cold sweat broke out along the back of my neck.

Beverly is gone. The words repeated over and over in my head, but they didn’t make sense. My knees nearly gave out.

“What was in the note?” I choked out. “Did she leave an address? A phone number? Anything?”

She turned back to the damn blank TV, her expression closing off completely.

I took another step forward. “Mom.”

Nothing.

“Jenna.” My voice was louder now, edged with something desperate, something bordering on a plea. “Tell me where she is.”

Still nothing.

Seething, I turned away from her, my body running on pure panic, my hands shaking as I tore through the house.

I yanked open drawers, my fingers fumbling through the clutter—papers, pens, receipts, mail—nothing.

I bolted upstairs and searched Beverly’s desk, her nightstand—anywhere she might have left the note. Where the hell was it?

The more I searched, the tighter the knot in my chest grew.

When I finally found the note, it was tucked neatly on Mom’s nightstand, folded in a way that made my stomach twist.

I picked it up with trembling fingers, nearly ripping it in half as I unfolded it. My throat closed up as I read the words written in her familiar handwriting.