that? He’d wanted to believe her.
Now he’s paying the price. He’d always known that a reckoning would come.
HE’S NEVER BEEN happier to see his van, parked where he left it on Nassau, not towed away overnight. Patient old friend, his vehicle, waiting for him, no matter what.
He pulls away from the curb and rounds the block. Charlotte has come downstairs. So far, so good.
As his sister buckles herself in, she turns and looks at the nest of discarded jackets, cables, wooden farm crates in the back of his van. The part of her that expects to find Daisy—the part that coexists with the terrified part that thinks her daughter is gone forever—says that the back seat is not a safe place for a child to ride home when they find her.
Rocco says, “We’ll work it out.” The mess in the back is the least of their problems.
“Okay,” Charlotte says.
He sets Waze for the Hoboken address and puts his phone in the holder on the dashboard.
All he wants is to get where they’re going and not hit anyone. All he wants is to find Daisy. He’s always been good at finding things. He was that person in his family. The finder. He’d found his mother’s favorite soup ladle, slid behind the stove. Once, Charlotte lost a diamond ring she’d inherited from their aunt, and he’d found it in a pile of autumn leaves. Something had led him to it. Now something will lead him to Daisy. Once, he’d found Ruth’s lost earring in their bed. Ruth—or whoever she is.
He has no idea what Charlotte’s thinking. All he needs to do is follow the cheerful electronic voice. Let’s take the Williamsburg Bridge. Exit left for the Lincoln Tunnel.
He’s never been to Hoboken. These days, that doesn’t matter. The GPS will get them through. In that way, it’s a great time to be alive. But for him and Charlotte—and Daisy—this is the worst time ever.
A mustard-colored Saturn cuts him off, and Rocco brakes, not hard, but hard enough so that Charlotte jolts forward.
“Watch it,” she says. “I taught you to drive.”
He can’t even be annoyed at her. Everything is his fault.
In his fantasies, they find Daisy. He imagines Ruth and Daisy sitting on the steps of the grandparents’—the dead grandparents’—brownstone. Or maybe they’re hiding behind the bushes.
It will be fine with him if Ruth and Daisy have been picked up by police. Scary for Daisy, but at least they’ll be warm and safe.
Somehow he knows they’ll be at the Hoboken address. Maybe he didn’t figure out some important things about Ruth—Naomi—whoever she is. But he knows her well enough to predict where she’d go if she stole a child and was feeling insecure.
He has to keep reminding himself that her grandparents are dead.
It’s a brownstone just like all the others on the block, except that it’s on the corner, with a sliver of garden around the side.
All that Rocco and Charlotte see is absence: Ruth and Daisy aren’t there.
Rocco says, “We’ll find her. I have a feeling—”
Charlotte says, “You didn’t know your fiancée’s name, and now you’re psychic?”
“She wasn’t my fiancée,” says Rocco. “And if I’m wrong this time, it’s on me.”
“It already is,” says Charlotte.
“I’ll ring the bell. See if anyone’s there. Then we’ll figure out what to do next.”
“Ring the doorbell. It’s worth a try. I’ll wait in the van.” Charlotte seems to have slipped into a trance. Borderline catatonic. Rocco wishes Eli were here to help him with his sister.
Maybe it’s just that Charlotte doesn’t know what to do after this. If Ruth and Daisy aren’t here. The trouble is, he doesn’t know what they’ll do, either.
No one answers the doorbell. Inside, the lights are off, except in a back room, maybe a kitchen. Or maybe the TV room. That’s how Ruth described it.
Light shines weakly into the foyer, onto a tangle of paint cans and tarps.
Otherwise he sees nothing.
Charlotte is yelling at him from the van.
“I’ve got a signal!”
There’s nothing to see here. He runs back to the van.
Charlotte has checked the asthma-inhaler locator app. The bunny bounces on the map.
“Look. Does this mean anything?”
Rocco stares at it for a while.
“Wait. I just thought of something. Ruth used to talk about this picnic spot where her grandparents used to go. It’s around where the light’s blinking. Not all that far from where we are. Just up the Hudson.”
If everything Ruth said was a lie, why should she have told the truth about her grandparents’ picnic spot? Because Rocco believes