Kylie was sitting in the SUV holding the iPad at arm’s length, her heartbeat pounding in her temples.
She had heard the Russian guy Anatoly Ostrovsky say her mother’s name, Sofia Melnik.
He’d even known her mother’s middle name was Maximovna.
When Micah had turned around and his video feed had swung with him, panning over the office space within the warehouse, Kylie had seen her mother’s neck and face.
Like her life flashing before her eyes, images of her mother in Kylie’s life crashed around her like breaking dishes.
Her mother sitting on the beach with Kylie and Rachele, laughing at them as they played in the waves while smoking a cigarette.
Kylie tapped the microphone icon on her phone’s screen to dictate a text to Micah. “You found her. You found her.”
Her mother speaking another language into the phone, a language Kylie and Rachele weren’t allowed to learn because they had to learn Italian and Sicilian.
She dictated into the phone, “You found my mom. That’s my mom.”
Her mother sending Kylie off to school that morning after a stupid fight about whether the shirt Kylie was wearing was too tight, waving but not looking as Kylie had left their small house.
She dictated, “Tell her I’m here. Tell her I’m coming.”
Her mother was standing right there with Micah in that warehouse, her blond hair loose and curling around her shoulders, not at all like the tight ballet buns Kylie remembered from four years before.
Her mother was standing right there, being introduced by her maiden name as if her life of being Joseph Merlino’s wife and Kylie’s mother had never happened.
Time stuttered sideways.
Her mother was standing right there like she hadn’t left her underaged teenage daughter alone in Atlantic City.
Kylie begged, “Tell her not to leave. Tell her I’m coming.”
The iPad was falling out of Kylie’s hands and her hands were scrabbling toward the SUV’s door and she was stumbling across the gravel parking lot, yanking open the door, and falling inside and crying as she ran, “Mom! Mom!”
Inside the warehouse, the shelves all looked the same. Kylie darted to the left and then the right, trying to find the office.
A door in the long wall looked like it might have an office behind it, so Kylie sprinted over and yanked it open. “Mom?”
Inside was not the multi-person rabbit warren of cubicles Kylie had seen on Micah’s video feed.
Instead, it was a single office with a manager’s desk in the middle and a smaller desk against the wall.
A teenage girl with light brown hair who was sitting at the desk twisted herself around as Kylie opened the door.
School books were stacked messily on the desk, their titles in French.
The girl looked startled, but her hazel eyes widened. “Chiarina?”
Shock slapped Kylie. “Rachele?”
And then Rachele vaulted at Kylie, grabbing her around the neck and sobbing and kissing her face. “We thought you were dead. Mom said that they had killed you, the same as Daddy. Chiarina, I can’t believe you’re okay. It’s like seeing a ghost. It’s like if Daddy walked in. Where did you go? How did you survive?”
Kylie grabbed Rachele, hugging the stuffing out of her and holding on because she couldn’t believe she’d found her sister. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I came home from school, and you and Mom were gone. I’ve been looking for you ever since.”
Rachele leaned back but didn’t let go of Kylie. “Mom picked me up from school at lunchtime. Mom had our suitcases. We went to the airport and waited for you, but you never came. She said we had to go. We got on a plane that afternoon and went and stayed with Mom’s relatives in Moscow, and then she told me when we got there that you had died. Did you know she was going to Russia all those times she visited her mother?”
Kylie shook her head. “She told me she was going to Indiana.”
“It was never Indiana. Her mother lives in Moscow. We were there for a few months before we came here.”
Regret and loss pummeled Kylie. “My high school must not have given me the message. The front desk was shit for things like that. I would have come. I would have come with you. I’ve lived in Atlantic City alone all these years.”
Rachele’s eyes squeezed closed, and her arms gripped Kylie’s neck. “You live in Atlantic City? Like, you have an apartment or something?”
“It’s a slum. I mean, it’s really awful,” Kylie admitted.
Rachele’s crying turned to sobbing. “Take me with you. Let’s go someplace else, anyplace else. Like California or something. Get me out of here before Mom finds us.”