“I was climbing on some rocks at the beach and I slipped. Mama and Daddy had to take me for stitches. Daddy says the scar is proof of how brave I was.”
“Oh, yeah? He says the same thing to me.”
“Do you believe him?” Tula tilted her head, hanging on the answer.
Ellery looked away, not wanting to lie. “I believe he believes it,” she said finally.
Tula nodded and reinserted her hand into Ellery’s as they began walking. “Yeah, me neither.”
As they waited for their food to be assembled, Ellery’s cell phone buzzed. She dug it out and saw the message was from Reed. She thought he might be checking to see that she’d kept Tula alive for ten consecutive minutes, but his message turned out to be about the Lockhart case: I’m doing reconnaissance on Ethan Stone, Teresa’s first husband. Turns out he was speaking at an economics conference this week. His talk was on Friday. Care to guess where?
Boston, she typed back.
Bingo. It was hosted by MIT.
Is he still here? She would love to get a look at him.
Doubtful. Conference wrapped up this AM. He will be my first target in Philly.
He’d shot to the top of Ellery’s list, too. She wondered if she could convince Conroy to allow her to accompany Reed to Pennsylvania. She was still lost in thought about this new development as they received their bag of sandwiches and started the walk home. Tula had hold of her hand again and she was humming some tune that Ellery barely registered.
“Ellery! Ellery!”
It took her a moment to hear her name. People recognized her in public all the time, but usually they responded with whispers and furtive attempts to snap her picture, like she was some lioness they spotted on safari.
“Ellery!”
“What?” She looked down at Tula with a trace of impatience. “What is it?”
Tula pointed across the street. “It wasn’t me. It was her.”
Ellery turned to see an unfamiliar young woman with a large backpack loping across the street. She stopped in front of them with an excited little hop, her cheeks pink from either the effort or the unusually warm evening. “Wow, I was just heading to your place when I happened to see you. I can’t believe I found you here!”
“Well, you did.” Ellery frowned, trying to figure out who the hell she was. Up close, the girl pinged around her brain, but she couldn’t recall her name. “Can I help you with something?”
“It’s me,” she said, spreading her arms and smiling brightly like a model in a fifties soap commercial. “Ashley.”
Ashley. Her stomach dropped and her mouth went dry in sudden recognition before the girl could add her final words.
“Your sister!”
Tula looked up at Ellery and made a noise of dismay at her incompetence. “You don’t recognize your own sister?”
“It’s okay. I didn’t have hair the last time I saw her. It’s growing out real fast now, though.” Ashley Hathaway sported short black hair worn in a slightly spiky style. She ran a hand through it. “What do you think?”
“I, uh … it looks great.” Her mind whirled as she tried to find the right words for this situation. Last she knew, Ashley didn’t know who she was. Their dad had skipped out on Ellery’s family to start a new one, unbeknownst to anyone at the time. He’d only returned when his new daughter needed a bone marrow transplant. Ellery had gone through with the procedure and abided by their father’s wish that she not reveal her identity to the teenager. “How are you feeling?” she asked her now.
“Really good.” She became shy and gave Ellery a mild shove. “Thanks to you.”
“No need to thank me. Really.” She hoisted the sandwich bag on her hip. “Uh, what brings you to town?”
“I came to see you. My sperm donor of a father finally confessed everything a couple of days ago. We had this huge fight and now here I am.”
“Wait. You’re saying your parents didn’t bring you?”
“No, Peter Pan did.” Off Ellery’s look, Ashley rolled her eyes. “You know, the bus?”
“You took the bus all by yourself?” Tula clasped her hands in admiration.
“From Michigan?” Ellery echoed.
Ashley’s bravado faltered. “I thought you’d want to meet me. For real this time.”
“I did. I do. It’s just—you didn’t tell your parents where you were going?”
“He said to leave you alone! He said you didn’t want anything to do with us. I knew that wasn’t true or you wouldn’t have agreed to be my donor.” She looked hurt, angry, and hopeful all at the same time—a trifecta that only a teenager could pull off.
Well shit, Ellery thought. Now she had a second missing kid to deal with, and this time she’d be booked as the kidnapper if she didn’t watch her step. She sighed and took Tula’s hand again. “You may as well come home with us for now,” she said. Her one-bedroom apartment was starting to resemble a crowded subway car.
12
“She looks healthy,” Reed said as he watched Ellery pace the length of her bedroom. They had shut themselves away while Ashley and Tula devoured the sandwiches in Ellery’s kitchen. “That’s something, right?”
Ellery halted and looked at him, her gray eyes pensive. “It’s everything.”
“I know you’ve wondered how she’s been doing.” The last time Ellery saw Ashley—the only time—had been just before Ellery donated the bone marrow cells to treat Ashley’s leukemia, when she lay half-alive in a hospital bed. Ellery’s antigens hadn’t been a match for her brother, Daniel, years ago, and she’d been afraid to check up on the girl for fear that she had failed a second time. Ashley, it seemed, had no such compunctions.
“I can’t believe she just hopped a bus and traveled over eight states without telling anyone. She’s only sixteen.”
Reed folded his arms. “There must be an impulsive streak in the family.”
“Ha, ha. Funny.” She resumed her pacing. “I have to get in touch with my father, but I’m kind of enjoying the fact that he doesn’t know where his kid is. That’s terrible, right? Hell, maybe he doesn’t even care. He didn’t give a rat’s ass where I was for twenty years.”
“It’s not terrible.” John Hathaway had hared off for twenty years, leaving a wife and two devastated children. He hadn’t returned when his daughter was abducted by a serial killer. He hadn’t returned when his only son died of cancer. He hadn’t known about any of it because he hadn’t cared to know. “But you’ll still have to tell him soon. Or have her do it. Otherwise, we’re going to end up on the wrong end of a missing child investigation.” He imagined another version of themselves in Michigan, a cop and an FBI agent starting the search for a lost child. “Tula and I can clear out of here and give you two some space.”
Ellery looked alarmed. “You can’t leave me alone with her. I don’t know anything about kids.”
The first baby Reed had ever held was his own. “No one does at first,” he said with sympathy. “It gets better with practice.”