His phone was an appendage, so I decided to text him in case he was in the middle of class and couldn’t take calls.

Willow is missing. Call me ASAP.

I waited a minute, then another for a reply, then realized I hadn’t called Grant yet. I had a feeling he’d tell me I was overreacting, that when he was Willow’s age he often skipped school. But that wasn’t Willow. Willow was a straight-A, goody-goody, perfect-attendance kind of girl. She never missed school unless she was on the verge of being deathly sick, and even then I had to force her to stay home. Hooky wasn’t in her vocabulary.

Grant picked up on the first ring, God bless him. “Everything okay, honey?” He spoke with the anxious concern that my rare calls to his office always engendered.

“No, Willow’s missing. She showed up at school, but the principal just called to say she disappeared—even left her book bag at school. I’m thinking about calling the police.”

“Don’t do anything until I get home, okay? I’m on my way.”

He hung up before I could say anything else.

By the time Grant got home fifteen minutes later I had no call from Ryan, no update from the school, and no idea where my twelve-year-old daughter was. I had slipped from a Sarah Connor badass take-no-prisoners heroine into a panic-mode mom. So I called the only other person who could help me through my terror: Mackenzie. Despite our fight, despite what had happened between Ryan and Aria, I needed my best friend now more than ever. She was the only one who understood, one mother to another, that when it came to our kids, we put them above all else. Above any drama that came between us.

My butterfingers fumbled around my cell phone screen as I misdialed once, twice. Third time’s the charm.

I could barely hold the threads of my sanity together as I spoke. “Mac, it’s me, Robin. Please don’t hang up. I need your help.”

Nothing but silence for a long moment, then a sigh. Thank God she hadn’t hung up on me. “What do you want?”

“I’m freaking out here. Willow’s missing.”

“Oh, Robin. What happened?”

In an instant my friend had returned. No matter what happened between us, I knew she’d be there when I needed her most. “She was at school this morning then suddenly disappeared. No one knows where she is. If you can think of anywhere she might have gone—”

The front door swung open and Grant rushed in, his eyes wild with worry. He saw me on the phone and immediately started pacing the room, swiping his hand through his hair and muttering underneath his breath. He was so agitated it was a miracle he made it home in one piece. He waved me to hurry up.