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Back Safe in My Arms Save as PDF
Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for Sara Shepard
  3. Also by Sara Shepard
  4. Dedication
  5. PART ONE
  6. —
  7. One
  8. Two
  9. Three
  10. Four
  11. Five
  12. Six
  13. Seven
  14. Eight
  15. Nine
  16. Ten
  17. Eleven
  18. Twelve
  19. Thirteen
  20. PART TWO
  21. Piper
  22. Fourteen
  23. Fifteen
  24. Sixteen
  25. Seventeen
  26. Piper
  27. Eighteen
  28. Piper
  29. Nineteen
  30. Twenty
  31. Twenty-One
  32. Twenty-Two
  33. Twenty-Three
  34. Piper
  35. Twenty-Four
  36. Twenty-Five
  37. Piper
  38. Twenty-Six
  39. Twenty-Seven
  40. Twenty-Eight
  41. Twenty-Nine
  42. Thirty
  43. Thirty-One
  44. Thirty-Two
  45. Thirty-Three
  46. Piper
  47. Thirty-Four
  48. Epilogue
  49. Acknowledgments
  50. About the Author
  51. What’s next onyour reading list?

You’re so riled up you kick a filing cabinet, hurting your toe. And then the tears come, salty and thick. You want to say it’s because of the pain in your foot, or even because of the anguish you’re feeling from dredging up old memories, all that was lost. But it’s neither of those things. It’s fear.

You don’t think this is over. Not by a long shot.

Twenty-Six

Ronnie had no idea how to tell Esme about Vanessa, and so she didn’t say anything. Instead, they went to the park. They ate ice cream—real ice cream, not the almond milk crap Lane tried to pass off as real.

Then they spent the evening with Lane, watching a movie. It was awful, saying nothing to either of them, counting down the hours until their lives were blown apart. She kept looking around the peaceful living room and thinking, Tomorrow, I won’t have this. In a few hours, all this will be gone. And she didn’t just mean Esme would be gone. She meant Lane, too. She’d hid too much. Lied too many times. He would want nothing to do with her.

In a few hours, she’d have no one, nothing.

That night, when Ronnie slipped out of her own bed and curled into Esme’s, taking her into her arms, her fear was so overwhelming that she couldn’t even cry.

On Tuesday morning, Lane asked Ronnie if he could come home early and take them out to lunch. Ronnie made an excuse to Lane that Esme had coughed a lot through the night and that they should take a rain check. Lane’s gaze lingered on Ronnie a few seconds too long, like he thought something was up, but he didn’t argue. Ronnie’s heart broke. She almost said to him, Please make your goodbye meaningful. You’re never going to see us again. I’m so sorry.

But she couldn’t form the words. Maybe she was more terrible for keeping even this from him, denying him a last moment—but actually saying what was about to happen made it so real.

It made her ache to see Lane kiss Esme’s forehead and tell her to feel better. Then Lane kissed Ronnie on the lips and said to call him right away if she got any calls from the police. “We are not going to let them mess with us,” Lane said.

She almost laughed. The cops were the least of her worries—they weren’t the ones wrecking her life. Funny enough, the cops had called that morning—Ronnie saw their number show up on the caller ID. She hadn’t answered. Her brain couldn’t concentrate on two nightmares at once.