this place with Pete Knight, who she was, against her better judgment, falling in love with. She wouldn’t be in this place where her real identity and reason for being here might be discovered.
“Then I can go?” Lizzie asked. “You’re going to let me?”
Dana pulled herself back to the conversation at hand. It was five o’clock and only growing later. “Okay. Just get your pajamas and things together while I check with Alice. And don’t forget your inhaler.”
“I already told you, Mrs. Brooks said she would drive us to Jody’s house.”
Jody was another youth camper, and she had invited Olivia and Lizzie to her house for a sleepover. Sleepovers, like so many things, had been rare in Lizzie’s life. There were no cats on the premises—Lizzie had made sure to check—and Jody lived just over the bridge in a development Dana was familiar with. She could reach her daughter in minutes if she had to, and while Lizzie was away and the light was still good, she could use the metal detector and search just one more time.
“I’m going to check anyway, because that’s what mothers do,” she told her daughter.
Lizzie rolled her eyes, but not for long. She was off like a Thoroughbred at the starting gate to stuff her backpack.
Dana called Alice and was reassured that yes, Alice would drive the girls to Jody’s house. She was going out for dinner anyway, so it wasn’t an imposition.
Dana hung up and calculated. Pete was due that evening, but if Lizzie left now, Dana might have as many as two hours to search.
Lizzie was back in minutes with her pack weighting her narrow shoulders, and her eyes dancing. She promised she had everything she needed, including the inhaler. Dana thought of all the things she’d been forced to deny her daughter and was glad this had not been one of them. At least when Lizzie looked back on their months here, she would have happy memories.
Dana gave the protesting preteen a hug and sent her on her way. Ten minutes later, after she witnessed Alice’s car backing out of the driveway, she went to the utility shed at the back of the house to get the metal detector. She was hauling it around the side to her car when she saw her neighbors approaching. Tracy, Wanda and Janya were walking together, and they looked oddly serious. For a moment Dana considered ducking back the way she had come. She could go inside and pretend she wasn’t home. But when Tracy raised a hand in greeting, Dana knew she’d been spotted.
She leaned the detector up against the cinder block wall and told herself to behave naturally. Maybe this was just another invitation to an impromptu sunset party. Maybe the women had seen Lizzie leaving with Alice and Olivia, and thought she might be lonely.
At closer range, the women’s grim expressions put that fantasy to rest.
“What’s up?” Dana asked, willing herself to sound calm.
“You have a minute?” Wanda asked.
“I was just heading out for a walk.”
“We’ve got something we have to talk to you about.”
Not “like to” talk to you about. “Have to,” as if Dana’s own opinion in the matter was of no consequence. She wondered if, in pursuit of a happy ending, Wanda had broken her word and told her husband all the things the women thought they knew about her. She wondered if he was even now digging into a past that had nothing to do with hers.
“Would you like to come inside?” she asked, with no genuine invitation in her voice.
“We don’t need to trouble you. Let’s sit out here.” Wanda gestured to some folding chairs in the shadiest spot in the yard.
“Why don’t I get some cold drinks for—”
“No need,” Wanda said. “But there’s something you got to know.”
Dana gave up trying to delay the conversation. She gave a slight nod and led the way. Wanda pulled one of the chairs closer so that the women formed a circle.
“So what’s this about?” Dana struggled to sound calm.
“I promised I wouldn’t tell Kenny anything about you, and I didn’t,” Wanda said, without preamble. “But I didn’t promise anybody I wouldn’t have him check out somebody else. Janya here came across Pete looking through your mail a couple of weeks ago—”
“On the Fourth of July,” Janya said. “He claimed you had asked him to pick it up and bring it into town when he joined you there for the parade.”