“I’m so sorry, Lulu. Did she tell you why she hid her passports?”

“Yeah. I guess Mark smuggled them out through France. It was their backstory here if anyone asked where they were from. Because of that, Gram and her mom were legally French citizens. Gram hid the passports because she’d never told my dad the whole truth and she didn’t want him to stumble across them.”

“Wow! You could totally write a book about this one day,” Olivia says with a shake of her head.

“I just want to sleep. Maybe when I wake up, this will all have been a bad dream.”

Olivia nods, and her mouth pulls down. “I know exactly how that feels.”

“I know you do,” I say, wiping my eyes. “You’re going through so much, and this whole day has been about me. I’m the one who should say ‘I’m sorry’ to you.”

“Nope, don’t even go there. You’re my best friend. I love you. You’re there for me, and I’m there for you.”

“I love you too. I don’t know how I would have gotten through today without you and Max.” I prop my phone against my pillow and smile as she rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, Max is okay, I guess,” she says. “He was really worried about you.”

My heart does the dance of a hundred butterflies. “That’s nice of him.”

She snorts. “Yeah, right, it’s because he’s so nice. Whatever you need to tell yourself. Okay, then, I’ll text you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, yep.”

I hang up and cradle my phone. With Olivia gone, sadness mixes with a smattering of hope in my neurotransmitters.

The room dims and I close my eyes. I drift off slowly when something triggers my hypothalamus. It fires up and kicks me with a healthy dose of adrenaline.

I sit up in bed with a gasp, my chest heaving like I’ve run out of air. Silence fills the night with darkness and shadows. What woke me? I grab my phone. The glowing clock shows me it’s too early to be up. I slip out of bed. The hallway is quiet, but the rumblings of Dad’s snores filter through the walls.

I head down to the kitchen for a snack, pausing at Gram’s room. Her door is wide open.

“Gram?” I keep my voice low in case she’s sleeping. She always shuts her door. I can’t recall a time when she’s left it open at night.

I walk closer, listening for the light whistle of her snores. The quiet is eerie. Every part of me strains to hear a sound. But all I hear are the quick gasps of my own breathing.

“Gram,” I say again, louder this time.