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“You don’t think Mom was selling drugs, do you?”Abby asked.Morgan shook her head at Abby, who shrugged.

“Maybe she thought if they had an earthquake, she wouldn’t be able to get money out of an ATM?”Charlie wondered out loud.

“At least I have one sister with all her brain cells,” Morgan cracked.

Abby turned around, “accidentally” knocking Morgan into the shoe rack.Morgan then “accidentally” shoved Abby back.

Suddenly, they were all rifling through the pockets of Carla’s jeans, jackets, and boots.

Slowly, they pulled out more and more cash, all wrapped in stacks held together by rubber bands.When they were done going through the whole closet, Charlie counted the money.There was more than three thousand dollars, mostly in one-hundred-dollar bills.

“This is far more than Mom would’ve kept out of the bank in case of a disaster,” Morgan said as she stacked the money in neat piles on the dresser.

“Then what was she hiding it for?”Abby asked.

Charlie left the closet, got down on her knees, and looked under the bed.She slid out two big suitcases and stood each one upright.“Why are these so heavy?”she asked.

Charlie unzipped the first suitcase, which was packed neatly with winter clothes.Abby unzipped the second suitcase, which was packed with summer clothes, toiletries, and their mother’s passport.

“What the hell…” Morgan said.

“Was Mom going on a trip?”Charlie asked.

“Not that I knew of,” Morgan said.“And where would she go that she’d need both warm- and cold-weather clothes?”

“And her passport,” Charlie said.

“It’s like she didn’t think she’d be coming back,” Abby said.

“And she didn’t,” Morgan said solemnly.

“Was she running away from something?”Charlie asked.

“Or someone?”Morgan said, staring at the suitcases as if the clothes would answer all their questions.

Morgan pulled out her phone and started typing while Charlie and Abby continued to look through their mom’s suitcases.

“I texted Mom’s friend Ginny to see we could come over to talk to her,” Morgan said.“Maybe she knows where Mom was planning on going.”

“Good idea,” Charlie said.

“She invited us for brunch tomorrow,” Morgan said.

“That’s nice of her,” Abby said.

“Speaking of food, I’m starving,” Charlie said.

“That’s because we haven’t eaten since lunch,” Morgan said.

Abby volunteered to make dinner with the groceries she’d bought before they went to Vegas.Forty-five minutes later, the women sat down to chicken tenders, macaroni and cheese, and apples cut into chunks—foods of the toddler gods.

After dinner, each sister took on the job Carla had assigned to them when they were children: Morgan washed the dishes, Charlie dried them, and Abby put them away.When the kitchen was clean, Morgan dished out bowls of mint chip ice cream, which was their mother’s favorite, and they sat down to watch a sappy TV movie.Albert cuddled up with Abby, Morgan held Brigitta on her lap, and Charlie grabbed a throw pillow and held it against her chest.

When the credits rolled, Abby yawned.“I’m going to bed.”

Morgan turned off the TV, and Charlie and Abby went to their bedrooms.Morgan pulled a sheet and blanket out of the linen closet and made up the couch.After she got comfortable, she suddenly jumped up, knocking her pillow to the floor.They had forgotten to close their mom’s bedroom door.If Morgan had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, she couldn’t bear to see Carla’s bed without her in it.Morgan went into the dark hall and closed the door.

The following day, the sisters parked on a quiet street in Hancock Park across from a stately Victorian mansion.The four-story cream-and-white house, designed by a famous architect, looked as if it had been put together with pieces from different puzzles.It had a mixture of bay and arched windows, and the roof was steeply pitched with a turret and multiple cantilevered gables.The archway above the large double wood doors was brick, as was the walkway and the five stairs leading up to the front door.