Chapters (51)
- Cover
- Praise for Sara Shepard
- Also by Sara Shepard
- Dedication
- PART ONE
- —
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- PART TWO
- Piper
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Piper
- Eighteen
- Piper
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Piper
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Piper
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Piper
- Thirty-Four
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- What’s next onyour reading list?
Andrea was so stunned she merely nodded instead of spoke. Then Max asked if she still wanted their mother on. “Maybe not,” Andrea said. Because, suddenly, she knew how this would go. She wasn’t going to get her happy ending with Cynthia. Her mother wasn’t going to magically say everything was okay just because Andrea was ready to live open and free. She thought of what Reginald had said when they’d had takeout on her couch—people generally didn’t change. It was usually your responsibility to just work around them . . . or cut them from your life. As much as she’d hoped that she would tell this to Cynthia and Cynthia would embrace her with open arms, that was about as far-fetched as Cynthia uprooting her Upper East Side life and going to live on the moon.
And also, maybe it was okay that Cynthia wouldn’t accept her with open arms. Because look at what just happened. Max had.
The officer was off his phone now, striding back to Lauren and her group. Andrea dropped her phone back in her pocket and started through the grass, feeling wet blades prickle her bare ankles. “Excuse me, Detective Allegra?” she called out to him, and he looked up. And then it began.
Thirty-Two
Ronnie sped down the highway. Lane kept calling—he probably suspected something was up, maybe had even heard there were police cars at Piper’s property—but she’d ignored him. She needed to get back to Vanessa’s motel.
It was only ten minutes to the motel. When Ronnie looked at the odometer, she realized she was going fifteen miles over the speed limit.
Finally she was at the turnoff to the shell-pink motel where she’d put up Vanessa and Esme. Ronnie rounded the corner to the motel, her heart pounding hard. Please be there, please be there, she prayed silently.
The parking lot came into view. A few cars were scattered here and there, but Ronnie didn’t see Vanessa’s battered Mercury. A lump formed in her throat. Her brain stalled. She pulled into the parking lot and drove around the whole thing, even circling to the dumpsters in the back.
She pulled into a space, so distraught she couldn’t think straight. Ask the desk? She darted to a trash can by the automatic doors of the entrance, spying an empty McDonald’s Happy Meal container stuffed into the bin. Had that been Esme’s Happy Meal?
She tried the cell number Vanessa had begrudgingly given her. No answer.