Until I Find You - Rea Frey Page 0,80

can hear it in his voice. He loves being needed. He loves taking care of any little thing that will bring me some sense of happiness or comfort. I hunt for the baby’s cries, but all is quiet.

When Jake is back, I smile. “He likes you.”

“He is a creator of crime scenes. What has that kid been eating?”

“Welcome to motherhood,” I joke.

“How’s your back?” He slides in next to me and adjusts the ice. The crunch of it tickles my spine.

“Sore.” I lean back and look at him. “Talk.”

He sighs and props my head up with a pillow. “Pat cross-referenced all of the cards on file and we narrowed it down to a few possibilities. We found one that traced to an address here.”

I snap my head up and the pillow falls away. “Here where? Like in Elmhurst?”

“Yes.”

My breath quickens. “Who?” My brain wraps around the outcome, of strangers I don’t know, of neighbors I do.

“I don’t know how to say this, Bec. It’s someone you know.”

Fear and anticipation flood my system and tamp down the pain from the fall. “Who?” My fingers constrain the fabric of the couch cushion until my knuckles ache. Blood fizzes in my ears. My mouth goes cottony.

“It’s your friend.”

Time reverses. A riot explodes in my head.

“Which friend?” I run through their names in my head, the ones I’m close with and the ones I’m not.

I hear the syllables form before the name is even out of his mouth:

“Beth. Beth Harrison.”

36

CRYSTAL

“Savi?” Crystal calls her name when she arrives home. Her stomach grumbles, and she passes through the house, already knowing it’s empty. She checks upstairs anyway and texts Pam to see where they are. She makes herself lunch and attempts to sort through all of the information Rebecca provided.

Her mind drifts to Paul. When Paul was alive and Savi was a baby, Crystal was bone-tired. She was always weepy, hormonal, and unexplainably sad. She literally wouldn’t have survived Savi’s first year without Paul. If Paul had already been dead and she’d had no support, what might she think was real?

Someone knocks on the front door and interrupts that dark train of thought. Crystal swallows the last of her sandwich and wipes her hands on her jeans.

“Hi, so sorry to drop by unannounced. Caroline Walker.” On the other side of the door, an elegant older woman with cropped hair, linen pants, and a cream top thrusts a flyer into her hand. “We’re holding a candlelight vigil tonight at seven for one of our own. Please come. It’s important.” She’s gone before Crystal can ask questions, leaving a trail of expensive perfume. A vigil? She shuts the door and glances at the paper. Her stomach bucks. It’s for Rebecca. The flyer is vague, but the message is clear: a baby is missing and this community is going to find him.

After Paul died, people placed bouquets of flowers on the side of the road to commemorate the crash. They were hideous arrangements that reminded her of a funeral every time she passed by. The same for his grave. Tacky plastic flowers from his friends or coworkers, who insisted on getting bigger and better ones every few months.

How can you move on when everyone keeps reminding you?

A few minutes later, the front door opens. Savi steps through, breathless. Her cheeks are red. “It’s still so hot!” she exclaims. She kicks off her shoes and scratches her calf with one socked foot.

“Just wait a few months and you’ll be begging for sunshine.” Pam closes the door and waves at Crystal and then moves around her to drop bags.

Savi tells Crystal about the latest tricks she was attempting from her magic kit, and she rotates her wrist in a circle. “I even healed my own wrist! See?” On cue, she produces a wand from thin air. “Ta-da!” She taps in her mother’s direction. “You’re healed too.”

Crystal refrains from asking what she’s supposedly healed from and tells her to go upstairs and wash her hands.

Once Savi is out of earshot, she turns to Pam. Before she can say anything, Pam starts talking. “That kid is hysterical. She had all the kids at the park mesmerized.”

Though Crystal and Savi share the occasional sacred moment, it’s Pam she likes to spend time with. It’s Pam who takes her to do fun things. Crystal is just the mom who works too much and tries to keep it all together, erasing memories of her dead father, living in a fancy house, and still …

So many secrets