Page 10 of Mending Fate

I rubbed my forehead. “All right. I’m heading over to the house now. I’ll let you know if Brie’s heard anything.”

“Be careful, Lumen,” Josalyn said.

“I will,” I promised before ending the call. I meant it, but I wasn’t going to change my plans to go search for Soleil. I’d do it as carefully as I could, but I wouldn’t hide in my apartment simply because it was dangerous.

I spent the rest of the ride marking up homework in the hope that I’d have less to do after I got home tonight. I managed to finish a few minutes before my stop, cramming the papers back into my bag in time to be on my feet when the door opened. The rain had turned to a nasty sort of slush, and even my umbrella couldn’t keep it from soaking into my slacks as I walked.

This was going to be miserable.

“Lumen!” Diana charged at me the moment I stepped inside the house.

I barely got my arms open before she wrapped her arms around my waist and squeezed. “Good to see you.”

“Will you find Soleil?” Her big eyes shown with unshed tears. “She hasn’t been home in days, and I miss her even though she could be mean to me sometimes. Can you help me with my homework? Kaitlyn is supposed to do that today but she–”

“All right, Diana.” Brie appeared and eased Diana away from me. “Why don’t you go get started on your homework while Lumen and I talk?”

To my surprise, Diana did as she was told without arguing. I called out greetings to the other kids as I followed Brie through the living room and into the kitchen. A couple of the kids shouted back, but a couple completely ignored me. No surprises there.

Brie wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Can I get you something to drink?”

I shook my head. “No, thank you. I just wanted to touch base about Soleil.”

“Have you talked to Josalyn?” Brie took a bottle of juice from the fridge and then leaned against the counter.

“She said she filed a report.” The expression on Brie’s face said she knew what that meant as well as I did. I blew out a long breath. “It’s always possible a cop will run into her at some point.”

“That would be something,” Brie said, pressing the cold bottle against her cheek, “but we both know that if the cops find her, it’ll probably be because she’s gotten in trouble.”

She was right. Unfortunately. The longer Soleil was missing, the more likely it was that she’d end up in juvie or worse…and that was if she was ever found at all.

“So, none of the kids have heard from her? No feeling that they’re lying?”

Brie shrugged. “My gut says no. Soleil keeps to herself.”

“Have you thought of any other things she might’ve said that could give me an idea where to look? I’ll go back to the places I went last night too, just in case she shows up there, but I’d like to have some new options.”

“Her grandmother passed last year, and that was the only family she had left.” Brie rolled the bottle between her hands. “She used to spend time there. Maybe she went back? Wanted to see the place for old times’ sake?”

“Possibly,” I agreed. I doubted it, but I was willing to try anything. “Do you have an address?”

“Let me check her file.”

Twenty minutes later, I was leaving with a single new lead and still-damp shoes. I meant what I’d said about checking out the same places I had before, but now I was hoping that wouldn’t be necessary. Perhaps she’d made friends living near her grandmother and had wanted to go see them.

Maybe I was being naïve, but I was trying to lean toward optimistic.

I took the train this time to keep me from walking between bus stops. Plus, the seats were much more comfortable and the time shorter. I was willing to spend a little extra to have that.

The walk from the train station to the apartment building wasn’t a long one, but it was a wet one. For a Seattle native, that wasn’t really anything new, but that didn’t mean I liked it.

The grandmother had lived on the third floor, which made that my first stop. Apartment by apartment, I knocked on doors and smiled at people who looked less than pleased to see a stranger who wanted to ask questions about a missing kid. Some of them recognized her, but only from back when Soleil had spent time with her grandmother. No one had seen her since then.

Two hours, and all her work led to was a dead end.

Wonderful.

By the time I made it back down to the lobby, I realized I actually did have more than one new lead because there were places around here that I wouldn’t have checked before learning that Soleil had spent time in this neighborhood. I didn’t have any specific places in mind, but I did know a little about Soleil. I was confident I could guess a few places she might’ve gone if she’d come back here.