I don’t know what to say to this. She is right and wrong all at the same time. But then I think she is just right, so I have nothing to say.

But this is not the end of her little story.

“You should know that better than anyone,” she says. “You got to watch it happen.”

I feel my arms release just a little, wanting to hold this child just a little less. As little as I possibly can without prolonging this night. Without undoing my work.

I wonder who put this thought in her head, and if she knows how deeply she has wounded me. I think, then, that wounding me was her intention. Now she can feel sorry for me.

The muscles in my face quiver as I fight to keep them steady.

I feel her drift off, and then I drift off too, not to sleep, but to thoughts.

Thoughts about how we are born to die. Thoughts about death, period.

And what I have hidden under my bathroom sink.

Chapter Twenty-two

Day fourteen

Officer Reyes met Nic in the business center of the hotel. He was off duty and Nic sensed that she’d pulled him away from something.

“Are you okay?” he asked. He sat down next to her then slid his chair closer to see what had captured her attention on the computer.

“I really don’t know,” she said. “But you didn’t have to come here. I could have explained it on the phone.”

Reyes nodded. “I know. But I was just watching a game.” He looked up then, around the empty room. “I’ve been here plenty of times. Never knew it had an office until . . .”

He stopped himself from saying it. Until your mother disappeared.

Nic moved them forward.

“It’s actually a business center.”

“Ahh,” Reyes said, smiling now. “A business center. Very upscale. And clearly a big hit with the clientele.”

Nic felt her shoulders drop with an exhale. The bite of sarcasm was soothing.

She pulled up the satellite image of the property behind the inn. Reyes leaned in closer. His arm brushed hers, then pulled away.

“I’m not sure what you want me to see.”

Nic pointed to the screen—to the inn, the fence she’d seen on her run, how it turned away from Booth’s property and seemed to encircle a large parcel of land behind it. Then she traced the line of the driveway all the way up to a house.

“Okay. So there’s a property with a fence and a house on Abel Hill Lane. I don’t get why this helps figure out what happened to your mother.”

Nic sat back in her chair. “It’s a tall fence, with barbed wire. Someone cut a hole into it, making a kind of flap. And the property isn’t listed on Zillow. It isn’t listed anywhere on the Internet.”