“Maybe you’re right, but I don’t know how to change it.”

“I do.”

He seemed taken aback by her answer. “So how do I do it?”

“Let her go,” she said softly. “Let her go at last.”

He didn’t ask whom she meant. She knew that would be obvious.

Surprisingly, he didn’t get angry, as she felt he would’ve done in the past. He just hung his head for a few seconds before meeting her eye. “It’s not that easy, Mom.”

“Losing someone we love is never easy. I don’t mean to suggest that it is. But—”

“Her love is the only love that’s ever made me feel whole,” he interrupted. “Without you, I wouldn’t even have been half-whole. But she took me the rest of the way, completed me, showed me what it felt like to be truly happy. I don’t know how to explain to you how vital she was to me.”

“I understand. And I believe you. But you need to consider this—you’re not doing her any favors by holding on the way you are. Do you think she’d want you to be lonely or isolated or unhappy? Watching you suffer would be hell to her.”

He didn’t argue. He just dropped his head again.

“Will you think about that?” Aiyana pressed gently.

And, finally, he nodded.

There he was! His name hadn’t been easy to find, but Tia had scoured all the various celebrity-gossip sites, looking at the fine print for a list of editors, contributors and photographers—until she’d found him. Ray Kouretas worked for The Lowdown.

Whoever had told Kouretas that she’d come to Silver Springs for the holidays had to have been someone familiar enough with Hollywood to have known how to find him. That meant it couldn’t be her family—unless he had tracked them down, and that was even more frightening than the possibility of him getting a good shot of her damaged face.

No, that couldn’t be it, she decided. If that was the case, she would’ve seen or heard something about it.

Or...maybe not. Since the accident, she’d purposely avoided the news in all its various forms, other than a few push notifications on what she considered safe subjects that popped up on her phone.

Steeling herself for what she might find, she put her name into Google’s search box.

Link after link appeared, but they were all about the movie or the accident, and there was nothing new except more Oscar speculation.