I had just replaced the handset when my cel phone rang. I sprinted across the room and dug it out, once again vowing to find a better storage location than my purse. It took a moment for the voice to register.

'Anne?'

'What are you doing?' she asked.

'Finalizing world peace. I just got off the phone with Kofi Annan.'

'Where are you?'

'Montreal.'

'Why the hel are you back in Canada?'

I told her about Bertrand.

'Is that why you sound so bummed?'

'Partly. Are you in Charlotte? How was London?'

'What does that mean? Partly?'

'You don't want to know.'

'Of course I do. What's wrong?'

I unloaded. My friend listened. Twenty minutes later I took a breath, not weeping but close.

'So the Arthur property and unidentified foot issue are separate from the crash complaint issue?'

'Sort of. I don't think the foot came from anyone on the flight. I have to prove that.'

'You think it's this Mitchel character who's been missing since February?'

'Yes.'

'And the NTSB stil doesn't know what took that plane out?'

'No.'

'And al you know about this property is that some guy named Livingstone gave it as a wedding gift to some guy named Arthur who sold it to some guy named Dashwood.'

'Uh-huh.'

'But the deed is in the name of an investment group, not Dashwood.'

'H&F. In Delaware.'

'And some of the officers' names match up to the names of people who died right before local seniors went missing.'

'You're good.'

'I took notes.'

'Sounds ridiculous.'

'Yes. And you have no idea why Davenport is on a tear for you?'

'No.'

Silence hummed across two countries.

'We heard about some lord in England named Dashwood. A friend of Benjamin Franklin's, I think.'

'That should crack this wide open. How was London?'

'Great. But too much the ABC tour.'

'ABC tour?'

'"Another bloody cathedral." Ted likes history. He even dragged me through a bunch of caves. When wil you be back in Charlotte?'

'Thursday.'

'Where are we going for Thanksgiving?'

Anne and I met when we were young and pregnant, I with Katy, she with her son, Brad. That first summer we'd al packed up and taken the babies to the ocean for a week. We'd been going to one beach or another every summer and Thanksgiving ever since.

'The kids like Myrtle. I like Holden.'

'I want to try Pawleys Island. Let's have lunch. We'l discuss it and I'l tel you al about my trip. Tempe, things wil get back to normal. You'l see.'

I fel asleep listening to sleet, thinking of sand and palmetto, and wondering if I had any chance at al of having a normal life again.

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