Page 18 of Dying to Meet You

Rowan

Over the next two hours, I edge toward a total breakdown. Natalie’s phone doesn’t reappear on the map.

Without my digital tethers, I feel helpless. I realize phones sometimes run out of batteries or accidentally get dropped off the pier. There could be a perfectly rational explanation.

On the other hand, there’s a murderer loose in Portland, and my daughter might have been in my dead ex’s car.

So I’m apoplectic.

That phone is practically glued to my daughter’s hand. Why has it suddenly gone dark?

With the school directory in hand, I do what I can. I call the mother of her friend Tessa, who connects me with Tessa herself.

But Tessa tells me she has no idea where Natalie is. “She was going to hang out with some kids, I think,” she says casually.

“Which kids?”

“Dunno, she didn’t say.”

I don’t believe a word of it. Those girls tell each other everything.

Then, as I’m clutching my phone in a clammy hand and picturing my daughter’s dead body, her avatar suddenly reappears on the map. She’s on the move—heading down Fore Street in the direction of our home.

I want to faint with relief. Right after I shake her.

Unable to contain myself, I’m actually waiting by the kitchen door when she rides up the driveway. I hear her lock up her bike. Then she opens the door and gets blown down by the hurricane that is me.

“Where have you been ?” I demand before she’s even made it all the way into the kitchen. “I’ve been trying to call you for hours.”

She jerks to a halt, her expression guilty. But just as quickly it turns to indignation. “Hello to you, too.”

“ Natalie .” My hands are white-knuckling the back rail of a dining chair. “Where were you?”

“At a coffee shop!” she screeches, looking close to tears. “With a guy . I had a cup of coffee and a cookie. He had iced tea. Does that answer all your questions?”

It takes a lot of self-control not to ask which boy. I would only alienate her, and I still need answers. “Look. I found a dead body last week. And the killer is still out there somewhere. Don’t pretend like this is just a normal Tuesday. Why was your phone off?”

Her mouth drops open. “Do you hear yourself? Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me to put my phone down for once?” She drops her backpack in the center of the kitchen floor.

“Answer the question. Where were you? Tessa didn’t even know.”

“You called Tessa?” she squeaks.

I don’t bother answering because I’m too busy watching her peel off her jean jacket. There’s no chain around her neck, no medallion.

“What is your problem with me?” she practically shrieks.

I take a slow breath and study my child. There’s a budding pimple on her chin, the only blemish on her impossibly young face. She has big, gray eyes so much like her father’s.

I take another breath and try to de-escalate the situation. “I need to ask you a question. Where is your medallion? The one that was your daddy’s?”

I haven’t referred to him as “daddy” in over a decade.

Her jaw drops again, and her face reddens. “Why would you ask me that?”

“Do you still have it? I looked in your room and couldn’t find it.”

“You looked in my room ?”

I’ve probably made things worse, but I need to be honest with her. “Where is it?” I ask softly. “Please.”

Her eyes dart away from mine. “If I show you, will you tell me why you care so much?”

“Probably.” It comes out sounding bitchier than necessary.

“Why are you like this?” she hisses, kneeling to open her backpack. She unzips a tiny exterior pocket and draws out the familiar chain with the medallion on it.

I let out my breath for the first time in hours.

“Seriously, what is your deal?”

I’m so relieved that I can’t even speak. I take the medallion in hand and squint down at it. I wasn’t wrong—it’s the same weirdly rendered saint that the detectives showed me. He’s molded against an oval background, holding a religious object in one hand and a palm frond on the other arm.

It’s right here. It’s been with her all the time.