Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Rolling over, she released a mournful groan into her pillow. She didn’t know if she’d ever see him again. She could hear his voice now: You’re an adult, Sunshine. You don’t need their permission to go to school. You don’t need their permission for anything. And while that might legally be true, she wasn’t ready to sever her family ties just because she wanted to see Edward again.
Even so…there was something deeply wrong with those family ties. Why couldn’t Ren stay in both worlds? Why did it have to be all or nothing? She felt so intensely uneasy that she couldn’t stop shivering, even beneath the warm blankets.
When she finally did sleep, her dreams were restless. She walked for miles up an endless grassy hill, and with every step, the top seemed just a few yards in the distance, always just out of reach. She fell back, tunneling down into darkness, and—for the first time in her life—the flowerworks exploding all around her weren’t a balm; they were unsettling. Unease scratched at her throat, trapped there in a silent scream. This time there was no big, warm hand to take. It was only her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
EDWARD
Edward was losing his mind, stuck without any way to reach Ren, impotently pacing a path in the Konings’ living room rug. The revelation that Ren had been kidnapped when she was three years old, and that Gloria wasn’t even her mother—had in fact been lying to Ren her entire life—ignited a bomb in his bloodstream. The moment it became clear that Steve and Gloria could be taking Ren anywhere right now, that they were unlikely to be easy to find again—might move to a new place, take on new names, forever remain off the grid—the situation turned urgent.
Chris had no idea who Gloria and Steve might be, Edward had never seen them, and they were unlikely to be traveling under those names, so unless they were walking through airports with Ren’s golden hair flowing down her back, finding them would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Chris called his contact at the FBI, and Edward had recounted every detail he could remember about Ren’s descriptions of home: a couple hours outside of Moscow; a place called Corey Cove; the small town nearby with the Hill Valley Five and Dime; a big plot of land with a pond and the cabin with the rock chimney, a red barn, and picket fence.
Anxiety pulsed like a twin heartbeat—Go now. Go now. Go now—but unfortunately, they’d missed all of their fastest options; there were no flights to Idaho until morning. The contact assured them that agents in the vicinity would keep watch for someone matching Ren’s description until the bureau was able to get a full team in place. Edward had no idea what exactly that meant or when that might be. Would they be going, too? Whether or not that was the FBI or Chris’s plan, it was definitely his. Every second that passed was the second when Ren could vanish forever.
Becky put their daughter to bed and came down to kiss Chris good night. “Keep me updated,” she told him, and the reminder of Edward’s own plea to Ren earlier that day sent a spear of frustration straight through him. She didn’t leave anything on his phone—no text, nothing in his notes, nothing emailed. What on earth did Gloria say to make Ren walk away without even a glance backward?
Chris collapsed into the sofa, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I’m going crazy.”
“Me too.”
“I just wish I knew who these people were. Did they know us? Was it random? Why Grace? Who does that? Who takes a little girl watching fireworks with her father on the Fourth of July?”
“Monsters, that’s who.”
“Her mom and I had divorced,” Chris said. “Gracie’s mom, Aria…She—I mean, I’ll admit it, she was a bit of a mess. She drank too much. The woman was terrible with money. All that’s what ended us, and I’d filed for full custody, and it hadn’t been a battle. But then Aria came back into the picture. She’d show up at all hours, banging on the door, wanting to see Grace. A few times she was so drunk and disruptive, I even had to call the police. So, of course, when Gracie went missing around that same time, we spent two months just looking for Aria, thinking of course she’d taken her, thinking that was our path to Gracie. But then one night Aria just showed up on the porch, wanting to see our girl, and after some pretty intense interrogation by the cops and checking all of her alibis and locations, it was clear that she’d had nothing to do with it. She’d just gone on a bender. We’d lost so much time looking in the wrong place.”