Page 150 of Slumming It

I was dying to know. "What?"

"That photo was taken by Mom."

Knowing my mom, I could totally see it, but Vivian's logic was still eluding me. "But how did you know?"

Vivian pointed to the very edge of the framed photo, where the hand of one of my brothers was partially visible. "You see that? That's Trevor's old shark watch. It was supposed to be waterproof, so he wore it all the time in the summer."

I was still in awe. "And you remembered that?"

"Well, yeah…I'm two years older than you, so I remember a lot more. And besides, he gave me that watch the next summer, when he decided he was too cool to wear it." She made a scoffing sound. "But you know what?"

"What?"

"It wasn't waterproof at all."

I grimaced. "Nothing ever is, is it?"

"Got that right." She gave Mom's album another glance. "But you remember how Mom was with that camera. She was taking pictures of everyone and everything. And she was getting prints made all the time – not just double prints, but triple and quadruple prints, too."

Vivian was right aboutthat, and we had plenty of albums to prove it. The photo album in front of us was just one of many, thanks to my mom's ongoing mission to preserve our family history for future generations.

Sure, everyone else was going digital, but not Mom. Even now, she was a stickler for hard copies of everything – photos, books, printouts of old emails – as if the digital versions weren't quite permanent enough.

Vivian said, "And you remember how she liked to give those photos away."

I nodded. A lot of my childhood friends still had stacks of four-by-six glossies courtesy of my mom, who had handed out photos like candy at Halloween.

"So anyway," Vivian continued, "once I figure out who took the photo, I start asking myself what a photo of our hotel – and Trevor's hand – is doing in Chicago. So I take the photo off the wall and look more closely. And the longer I look, the more the kid looks like Reese Murdock."

I muttered, "I'm such an idiot."

"Why do you say that?"

"For the past few weeks, Mom has been saying that Reese looks familiar, but I totally blew it off."

"Really? Why?"

"Because Reese gets that sort of thing all the time. You should see it. It's actually kind of crazy."

Vivian hesitated. "Do you think Mom knows?"

"You mean that Reese and Buddy are the same person?" I shook my head. "No. Definitely not. If she did, she would've said something." My heart was racing in my chest. "You know what?"

"What?"

"We should call her, likenow."

Chapter 59

Reese

I was inside my suite, getting my things together, when I heard a commotion somewhere in the hall. I heard pounding footsteps and agitated voices – maleandfemale – along with a lot of banging and scuffling like the beginnings of a riot.

Suddenly a deep male voice bellowed, "Stop right there!" I heard more footsteps and a sudden crash as the man hollered out again. "I'll drag you if I have to!"

A shrill female voice yelled, "Do it! Grab her!"

Grab her?