Then I hang up. I hang up and go back to pulling up the old UT-Austin football schedule.

“Who was that?” Bailey says.

“Wrong number,” I say.

“Is that what you call Belle these days?” she says.

I look up at her.

“Why even pretend?” she says.

She’s furious and she’s scared. And, apparently, I’m making that worse as opposed to better.

“I’m just trying to protect you from some of this, Bailey,” I say.

“But you can’t,” she said. “That’s the thing. No one can protect me from this. So how about you agree to be the person who tells me the truth?”

She looks older than she is suddenly. Her eyes are unwavering, her lips pursed. Protect her. The one thing Owen asked me to do. The one impossible thing.

I nod, holding her gaze. She wants me to tell her the truth, as if that is a simple thing to do. Maybe it is simpler than I’m making it.

“That was Belle. And she essentially confirmed for me that Avett is guilty, or that, at the very least, he has things to hide. And she seems surprised that Owen has gone off the grid as opposed to helping Avett hide those things. All of which makes me wonder what your father is hiding. And why.” I pause. “So I’d like to find these churches and see if that offers any clue as to why he felt like he had no choice but to leave us. I’d like to figure out if it’s just about The Shop or if what I’m suspecting is true.”

“Which is?”

“What he’s running from goes back further than that,” I say. “And it’s about him. And you.”

She doesn’t say anything. She stands in front of me with her arms crossed over her chest. Then suddenly, she drops them. She drops them and moves in a little closer to me.

“So… when I asked you to tell me the truth, I meant, like, don’t lie about who is on the phone.”

“I went a step too far?”

“In a good way,” she says.

It may be the nicest thing she has ever said to me.

“Well, I was trying to listen.”

“Thank you for that,” she says.

Then she takes the map from my hands and studies it herself.

“Let’s go,” she says.

Three Months Ago

It was 3 A.M., and Owen was sitting at the hotel bar, drinking a tall glass of bourbon, straight.

He felt my eyes on him and looked up.

“What are you doing down here?” he said.

I smiled at him. “I believe that’s my question for you…” I said.