a layer of dust. There had to be more to it than that. She couldn’t have asked for money and just left. Not without seeing us. Not without at least asking about us.
I blurted out a question—an accusation—I had never intended.
“Why did you send her away? Were you afraid that she’d want me and Katie to go with her?”
Even to my own ears, my voice sounded like that of a hurt, angry child. But I wanted my aunt to admit that she’d ordered my mother to leave. That she’d forbidden her to see us and maybe even threatened to call the police. Because it was easier to be angry with Aunt Lucy than to know with certainty that my mother didn’t love me.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Aunt Lucy said. “I asked her to stay. I even showed her your pictures. Yours and Katie’s. I told her that you both still loved her. And would forgive her. That I’d help her stand up to our mother. But all she wanted was money. I gave her every extra dollar I had. And then I told her that this was the last time, that I had to save for college for you and Katie. She must have believed me, Brooke, because I never heard from her again.”
By the time I said goodbye to my aunt, I was running late. But I lingered a while longer, parked at the side of the road, shedding the tears that I needed to shed and telling myself that it was foolish to be upset by the past actions of a virtual stranger. Especially someone whose maternal instincts—assuming that she’d ever had them—had long ago been replaced by the compulsions of an addict. It didn’t really matter, I assured myself, that my mother had passed through town nine years earlier and hadn’t sought me out. I’d accomplished what I’d intended by talking to Aunt Lucy and cleared away the secrecy surrounding my mother’s actions. The best thing to do now was to forget all about Lydia Tyler.
When I turned into the rutted parking lot at Camp Cadiz, I wasn’t surprised to find that Chad was already there. He’d pulled his personal vehicle—a red, three-quarter-ton Chevy pickup—into the very spot where I’d once parked a boxy blue van. Back when I was sixteen and was just learning to believe in human monsters.
As I slid from my SUV, Chad climbed down from his truck.
Like the hot pink I wore, he’d also chosen a T-shirt that would be easy to see among the rocks and foliage of the forest. It was a brilliant orange, emblazoned in dark blue with the University of Illinois logo and the words Fighting Illini. But it wasn’t the way the shirt’s color clashed with his copper hair that drew my attention and made my breath catch in my throat. It was how the fabric stretched across Chad’s broad shoulders and muscular chest. The way it tucked into the waist of his soft, worn jeans, drawing my eyes downward…
Abruptly, I focused my attention on lowering the tailgate and leaning into the back of my SUV. Oh God, I thought, how long would it take before the very sight of him didn’t make me ache?
I didn’t look his way again until the scrunch of his footsteps on the gravel ended next to me. Before glancing back over my shoulder and flashing him a smile, I took a deep breath and then another. And I hoped he’d attribute the flush that I could feel still warming my face to the outside temperature, which was already creeping in the direction of ninety. With the humidity already at more than seventy percent, the forecast predicted that by midafternoon Maryville residents would feel as if the thermometer were well over three digits.
A thunderstorm, I thought, would be a welcome relief.
Chad immediately pitched in to help me unload our gear and add it to the lightweight backpack, canteen and metal detector he’d brought with him. Climbing harnesses for both of us. Nylon rope. Binoculars. A canteen for me. And my backpack, filled with ready-for-anything supplies that included toilet paper and wet wipes, an all-in-one tool, a first-aid kit and the inevitable crime-scene tape and evidence bags. Chad, I knew from experience, would have packed an assortment of supplies very similar to mine and some kind of snack for us both.
“Sorry I was late. Been waiting long?” I asked as we slung on our backpacks.