Teresa looked down at Chloe’s face and brushed away the last of her tears. “Yes,” she said with wonderment. “I’m her mother. Okay, a doctor. But one can come to our house to see her. I am not bringing her anywhere but home.” She ushered Chloe to Ellery’s SUV, and Ellery turned to see Tyreek watching the whole exchange from his stoop. She limped over to him and he gave her a wary look.
“I’m not busted?”
“You’ll probably get a medal from the mayor before it’s all done,” Ellery said.
He waved her off with both hands. “No, thanks. I’m just glad she’s okay.”
Ellery looked at the tinted windows of her car, imagining the girl on the other side. “She’s safe now. It may be some time before she’s okay.”
Ty looked uncomfortable. “How’d you know she was here with me?”
“Bobby Frick told me, in so many words. He said she looked happiest when she was with you.” She smiled at him. “You’ve been a good friend to her.”
He shrugged, embarrassed. “I don’t know. I didn’t do much, man. I have no idea what to say to her now.”
Here Ellery had a hard-won answer. “Just be the same. Be the person who treats her the same. Because she’s not going to get that anywhere else.”
He nodded, sober. “Okay. Okay, I’ll try.”
She joined Teresa and Chloe in the SUV, and Reed drove them back toward the Lockhart house. Chloe promptly passed out in Teresa’s lap, the dog curled up with her. As they neared their destination, he said, “You may wish to cover Chloe with a coat for added privacy,” and Dorie produced a Boston PD windbreaker from the way back. Reed steered through the gathered throngs, into the Lockharts’ driveway and around toward the back of the house. “There,” he said with satisfaction as he cut the engine. “Home at last.”
Teresa’s eyes were wet. “Thank you.” She didn’t move to get out of the car. “You know the most ironic part of all of this? I didn’t call Carol Frick to our house that day. I was in back-to-back surgeries that entire afternoon and well into the evening. It must have been Ethan who asked her to come. Of course, it’s the mother who gets the blame, right?”
“Did you tell the police that at the time?” Reed turned in his seat to look at her.
“I don’t know. I’m sure I didn’t think it mattered.” She stroked Chloe’s shoulder. “I never dreamed we’d end up here.” She nudged her daughter. “Wake up, darling. We’re home.”
Dorie followed them up the path, but Reed and Ellery remained in the car. “Where to now?” he asked her.
Ellery watched as Martin Lockhart emerged from the back entrance, his face crumbling at the sight of his wife and daughter. “Home sounds plenty good to me.”
32
Reed awoke to a strange sensation of cognitive dissonance. He had been sleeping soundly, yet daylight streamed in around the edges of the window shade. Outside the room, the voices that had awoken him were achingly familiar: his wife and daughter, chatting happily about a topic he could not discern. The cadence of their words, their musical back-and-forth rhythm with Tula’s giggle as a bubbly grace note, transported him instantly back to his old home. Meanwhile, he had Ellery asleep next to him, her body curled into his with her injured arm cradled protectively between them. He knew it was the drugs that had created this complete surrender in her, but he allowed himself a few minutes to enjoy the feel of her bony knees against his hairy leg and her warm breath fanning across his arm.
When his phone buzzed on the nightstand, he reached over to check it and found he had fifty-seven new messages. Time to get up. He eased out of the bed without waking Ellery from her dead sleep, took a quick shower, and went in search of the voices from the other side of the door. The smell of chocolate hit him the moment he opened it, and he discovered Tula and Ashley frosting a crooked cake at the kitchen island. Bump’s long nose reared up to snuffle dangerously close to the edge, but no one else seemed to notice a giant hound on the prowl. “Down, boy,” Reed ordered, and they all turned to look at him. The dog ambled over to lick his bare feet.
“It lives,” Sarit remarked dryly.
“Sorry.”
“It’s no bother. The girls baked you and Ellery a cake as a congratulations on solving your case. Of course, they only had me and the internet for instruction, so there you have it.” She waved at the lopsided confection.
Reed dropped a kiss on Tula’s head. “I love it,” he declared.
Ashley frowned at her attempt to make a pink rose. “Do you think Ellery will like it?”
“Ellery will devour it whole.”
Pleased, the girls returned to finishing up their work while Reed and Sarit had a side conversation in the living room. “It’s all over the news,” she told him. “Chloe’s parents made an appearance outside their home so the world knows the truth. It’s an incredible story, Reed. You saved that girl.”
“Ellery did. With maybe an assist from a seventeen-year-old acrobat.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Never mind.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Thank you for staying with the girls.”
“I see it now. It’s the victories that keep you coming back, no? Chloe’s home. She’s okay. Her parents must think you all are miracle workers.”
He wondered if this was a side dig at his relationship with Ellery. “It matters even when they don’t come home alive.” Coben likely had other victims they didn’t know about, girls he’d disappeared and carved up and refused to say where they were now. As long as he kept them secret, the dead belonged to him.
“Speaking of home, I need to get back there. So does Tula, as her school starts up again next week.”
“Yes, I know. We have tickets to fly back tomorrow.”
She bit her lip, hesitant. “If you’d like, I can take her back with me tonight. This way you could stay here longer with Ellery. It seems like she might need someone to help her until her shoulder heals up.”
Reed widened his eyes with surprise. “That would be kind of you—presuming you take Tula only as far as Virginia.”
“God, Reed, I’m not planning to kidnap her.” She gave a small shudder. “Don’t even joke about such a thing.”
“I’m sorry. You have to understand that it’s not a joke to me, Sarit. I won’t let you move her half a country away from me without a fight.” He kept his voice low, but his intent was serious.
“Yes, yes, message received,” she replied, her palms up, and he decided that would have to be good enough for now. He heard the bedroom door open and close and Ellery appeared from around the corner, her hair a hopeless tangle and the triangular imprint of a pillow corner on her flushed cheek.
“Do I smell cake?” she asked.
“Yes!” Tula cried, thrusting her butter knife in the air. “Now we can eat it!”
Reed served them each a piece, congratulating the girls on an admirable first effort. “It’s not as good as the ones Daddy bakes,” Tula confided to Ellery. “He made me one shaped like a volcano for my last birthday, with red lava running down the side and everything.”