Reed woke up alone. Just because he and Ellery had spent the last two days together more naked than not didn’t mean she slept with him. When it came time for rest, she retreated to her own room. He smoothed the empty space where she had lain. Ellery might never be one for extended cuddling. Maybe this personality quirk was because of Coben, but maybe not. This was the issue, that they would never know who she would have been without him. But without him, Reed would never have known her, so he was determined to look forward this time, not back.
He rolled out of bed and took a quick shower, intending on making her breakfast, but Ellery was already up and dressed, reading a magazine as she sipped her mug of tea. “You’ve ruined my suave move,” he complained as he prepared coffee in the kitchenette. “I was going to bring you breakfast in bed.”
“I’m not allowed to eat anything,” she replied from her place on the sofa. “Not until afterward.”
“Oh. Right.” He left the coffee and came to sit with her. “How are you feeling?”
She took a steadying breath. “Okay. It will be over soon, at least.”
He reached over and took her hand, and they sat like that for a long time, saying nothing. When the time came, he drove their rental car to the hospital and she got checked in. Reed was allowed to hang out in her hospital room during the early part of the preparation. John Hathaway, by her request, stayed away, but a different Hathaway showed up instead. “Mom,” Ellery said, her eyes wide with shock as Caroline Hathaway entered the room. She carried a trio of balloons and a stack of magazines. “What are you doing here? When I told you I was doing this, that didn’t mean you had to come out here.”
“My baby’s in the hospital,” she replied as she began fussing around the room. She had a rodent-like nervous energy to her, her hands constantly in motion as she adjusted the angle of the blinds and tugged at the sheets on the bed. “Where else would I be?”
Reed kept his mouth shut on this one. He knew Ellery had not seen her mother in quite some time because her mother still lived in Chicago at the scene of Ellery’s attack. He had spoken to the woman only once, by phone years ago when he was doing research for the Coben book. As Caroline smoothed out her blanket, Reed noted with some irony that mother and daughter shared the same beautiful hands. In a different era, Coben might have plucked Caroline from the streets.
Ellery gritted her teeth and kicked off the blanket that Caroline had just added. “Thanks, Mom, but you didn’t need to drive all this way. I’m not going to be here that long.” She waved a hand to where Reed stood in the corner, trying to blend in with the medical equipment. “Mom, you remember Reed Markham, don’t you?”
Reed dutifully stepped forward to extend his hand, and Caroline took it. “Of course I remember. The man from the FBI.”
Reed smiled to himself, dropping his chin to his chest. The man from the FBI, he thought. Yes, he was. He was also a father, a brother, an ex-husband, and a son. He’d gone looking to his DNA to figure out who he was but had learned the answer somewhere else. “I’m not here because of the FBI,” he told her. “I’m here as the man who loves your daughter.”
“Oh! Oh my.” Caroline beamed at Ellery, who shrank down under the covers.
A nurse entered, brusque and efficient. “Okay, time to say goodbye for now. You can wait for her down the hall. The whole process should take just a few hours.”
“Already?” Caroline looked crushed. “I just got here.”
“I’ll see you when it’s over, Mom.”
As Caroline reluctantly left the room, Reed bent down low to kiss Ellery’s cheek. “Did you hear what I said?” he asked her, his voice teasing.
“I heard.”
“Good luck,” he whispered against her skin. “I’m sure you’ll do great.”
“Mmm.” She turned her head away, but when he went to withdraw, her fingers caught at the front of his shirt. “You’ll be here the whole time, right?”
He squeezed her. “The whole time.”
In the waiting room, he sat with Caroline and listened to her natter on about some disagreement with her neighbors over where the garbage cans should be stored, the bunion on her left foot that wouldn’t go away, and some complicated story involving a cousin who’d gone AWOL from rehab. Only when the woman went to get herself a snack did Reed get to enjoy the blessed silence. He leaned his head against the wall, his thoughts drifting from Ellery’s mother back to his own. He pictured the crime scene in his head, the puzzle that had failed so long to give up its secrets. After Amy’s arrest, he’d let it be, figuring there was nothing left to find there. He probed himself to see how he would feel if Amy ended up getting away with it. Sad, he decided. Sad. But maybe that would always be. There was no way to look at those pictures, to see a young woman murdered like that, and feel anything but regret.
His mind turned to the happier pictures, Cammie’s snapshots of her life before and after he was born. Cammie and Angie, dressed up to hit the town, smiling for the camera. Cammie sitting on the steps, holding him in her lap. The three women, Cammie, Angie, and Wanda, friends with their whole lives ahead of them. He recalled the snapshot in which Cammie was dressed in the blouse she’d been murdered in, the one with the green diamonds. Reed could picture it as it was later, soaked with blood. He saw in his mind’s eye Cammie’s writing on the back of the photo: Angie, Wanda, and me.
Reed sat up. “‘Angie, Wanda, and me,’” he repeated, ticking them off on his fingers. Then the other way, so the order was mirrored. “‘Me, Wanda, and Angie.’” How many times had he looked at that picture? He said the names again inside his head. Jesus, if he was right … well, he couldn’t allow himself to think that far. He got to his feet and rushed for the door, nearly knocking Caroline over in his haste to get out the door.
“Where are you going? She’s not done yet!”
“I’m not leaving the hospital,” he called back over his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.” As he sprinted down the corridor, he called up his boss. “It’s me,” he said, breathless when she answered. “I need to run one more DNA test.”
“Okay, but why won’t you at least give me a hint?” Ellery needled him again from the other side of the car. He’d gone total California with the rental this time: they had a red convertible, and he was enjoying the way the wind played with her hair as they drove. At least until the hound shoved his snout in from the back. “Bump, let Reed drive, okay?” Ellery pushed him rearward, and the fur beast put his paws up on the door, ears in the wind.
“He could have stayed home, you know,” Reed groused at her without any rancor. “We’re going to have to hose down the whole car to get the slobber off.”
“He’s with me, which means he is home,” she replied, reaching back to give the animal an affectionate pat. She’d come through the bone marrow procedure with no complications other than a lingering fatigue that had required her to spend more time in bed. For his part, Reed had been entirely too happy to join her. “I don’t think you’re in any position to be dictating rules, considering I agreed to come all the way out here without knowing where exactly you’re taking me and why.”
“We’re almost there,” he told her as he took the exit for Pasadena. His hands tightened on the wheel. “Just hang on a little longer.”
He wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or himself. All these years of waiting, of wondering, and now he was just a few minutes away. He navigated through the hilly streets with no help from the GPS, while Ellery watched the scenery with keen interest, trying to discern any clues.
“This is Angie Rivera’s neighborhood,” she said, turning to him.
“Yes, it is.” He rounded the last corner and glided the car to a stop in front of the little green house.
Ellery stared at it and then back at him. “That’s Angie Rivera’s house.”
“Right again,” he told her cheerfully. He got out of the car and went around to open the door for her. Moving up and down still was a bit painful for Ellery, so he reached out to help her.
She took his hand and eased to her feet, reaching back afterward to clip on Bump’s leash. “Then I don’t understand. Who is it that you want me to meet?”
“All will be explained shortly,” he said, keeping her hand in his. “Come with me.”
His pulse quickened as they went up the walk, but he felt time slowing down, stretching like taffy as he zeroed in on her front door. Forty years packed into a last few steps. He’d told Angie they were coming, but he had not explained why. She’d apparently been watching and waiting for them, because the front door flung open before he could knock. “Reed,” she said, smiling hard enough to crinkle her eyes. “It’s wonderful to see you again. And you brought Ellery, too. Oh, and the Speed Bump!”
Bump surged forward, wagging and woofing at the new person in front of him. “I can stay outside with him,” Ellery said. “I know Zsa-Zsa probably wouldn’t approve of a guest.”
“Oh, he’s darling.” Angie crouched to greet Bump, who wriggled his sturdy body as close as possible to her. “Zsa-Zsa’s napping in the bedroom, so I’ll just go shut the door.” She returned a moment later, still smiling. “Please, come inside. I had no idea you’d be back so soon, but I’m glad you’re here. Has there been a development on the case?”
“Yes,” Reed said. “A big one.”
Both women turned to him in surprise. Reed took a deep breath and a strange calm came over him. “Ellery,” he said, watching Angie’s face. “I’d like you to meet my mother, Camilla Flores.”
Angie/Camilla let out a soft cry of shock, and Ellery’s hands flew to her mouth. Reed stood between the two women, awkward now that the truth was out. Camilla had tears in her eyes. She stretched out one hand to his face, her fingers trembling, but she dropped away before she made contact. “So many times,” she whispered. “So many times, I wanted to tell you. First, when I found out where you were, that your father had taken you … I thought I could go to where you lived and tell you the truth. Then when you came here and found me, I thought it was a sign. But you had come to ask me about Angie’s murder, and I…” She stopped and closed her eyes. “It had been so long. I couldn’t find the words.”
“Maybe we should sit down?” Reed asked. They were still standing in the entryway.
“Of course,” she said, stepping back out of the way. “Let me get the cake.” She stopped and wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron.
Camilla cut them all a slice of pound cake, which sat untouched on pretty flowered plates as they stared at each other in the living room. Looking at her, he wasn’t sure how he had missed it the first time—they had the same-shaped brown eyes, the same pointed chin. “How did you learn the truth?” she asked him finally. “At the beginning, I worried so much that someone would figure out the switch, but after forty-four years passed, I didn’t think this day would ever come.”
Reed took out the picture, the one with the three friends, and showed it to her. “You labeled the back,” he explained. “I just read the names in the wrong order. You’re the one on the left, and Angie is the one wearing the blouse with the diamonds on it, the same one she wore the day of the attack. That was my first real clue, but once I realized it, other things that had been bothering me started to make sense. Like the shopping bags.”
“What about them?” Camilla asked, holding the picture like it was a rare treasure.
“You can correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but I figure the story you told the police was basically true. You used the windfall from my father’s money to go out shopping. Angie stayed home to babysit in your apartment. When you returned, you found her murdered in your living room. You grabbed me and ran next door to her place to call for help.”
Camilla nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s right. That’s exactly what happened.”
“I thought it was unusual that you would send Angie out on a shopping spree before you’d spent any money on yourself.”
“I would have,” Camilla whispered, her gaze falling on the picture. “I would have shared the money with her. I didn’t get the chance.”
“Once I developed the theory of what had really happened that day, I had my DNA tested against the sample recorded as Camilla Flores. Needless to say, it didn’t match.” He paused and waited a few moments. This was the ugly part, the part she probably didn’t want him to say. “It was you who used the horse head to hit Angie’s face, wasn’t it?” He said it as gently as he could. “You wanted the police and everyone else to think it was you who had died.”
Tears leaked out of Camilla’s eyes and she nodded mutely.
“And you took the money,” Reed continued.
Her chin rose. “It was mine to take.”
“I know it was.”
She swiped at her cheeks with both hands. “She was already dead. You have to believe me.”
Reed had seen the awful violence in the pictures. “I know she was.”
“I—I didn’t know what to think. Either someone killed her thinking she was me or someone killed Angie on purpose and I could be next.”
“Someone,” Reed repeated. “You mean Billy Thorndike.”
“Him or one of his buddies, yes. He used to get me and Angie confused all the time. Lots of people did. We were mistaken for sisters. I thought he would realize soon that he killed the wrong girl and come after me again. I did the only thing I could think of—I ran. If Billy thought Camilla was dead, maybe he wouldn’t come after me. Maybe then he wouldn’t come after you.” She gave him a mournful look. “It was the worst part, leaving you. I cried and cried. The social worker told me how you’d be adopted by a nice family, how you wouldn’t even remember what had happened.” She sniffed several times. “And look, it came true.”
Reed tried to smile for her. “It did.”
“I saw in the paper what happened. You arrested that woman, that cop. The story said that she killed Angie. Is that really true?”
“I believe it is,” Reed answered.
“But why? We didn’t even know her, Angie or me. Why would she want to do that?”
“You never met her?” Reed asked carefully. “You’re sure?”
“Not once,” Camilla replied resolutely. “I would remember. Everything from those days, it’s like it doesn’t go away. I’ve got it all right here.” She tapped the side of her head.
“Amy Owens says she came to dinner at your apartment, her and David. That she helped cook, and that’s how her blood got on your knife.”
“Never happened,” Camilla said flatly. “She’s lying.”
“If you’d be willing to testify to that, then she goes to prison,” Reed told her.
Camilla looked from Reed to Ellery and back again. “Testify? That means everything comes out, right? The whole story?”
“Well, yes,” Reed conceded. “But Angie would have her rightful name again, and you would have yours. Your involvement would explain the newfound fingerprint on the horse head, which means Amy would finally pay for what she did.”
“I don’t know.” She twisted her hands together in her lap. “I’d have to say about hitting Angie. I’d have to say where I got that money. Your father…”
“Will live with the consequences,” Reed said firmly. “Whatever they are. He’ll be fine; I promise you. So will I.” He reached over and took her hand. “So will you.” He looked from her uncertain eyes to the home she’d built around her, overflowing with plants and paintings and pictures of tiny ballerinas. The kitchen beyond held the air of fresh-baked cake and strong coffee. Here, at last, was his answer to what might have been—another warm, loving home, different with its joys and pains but built on the same sense of family, and he knew he could have been happy here. And yet. Whatever twinge of hurt, whatever longing he felt for the years lost with her, he could also admit he wouldn’t trade the outcome. Cammie had given him his father back, and with Angus he’d also received a second mother and three sisters. Love, it seemed, really did multiply.
Cammie squeezed his hand almost painfully. “I—I’ll think about it.” She patted him. “You grew up so good. I guess I have your father to thank for that.” She hesitated and then let him go. “And your mother. What you must think of me now, huh? A coward who ran away and left you.”
“I’m not angry,” he said, and meant it. His near death and resurrection had caused him to shift his thinking. His heart had much work left to do. He didn’t want to weigh it down with anger—not for her, nor any of his family.
“You should be angry,” she said, her eyebrows drawn together in pain. “I left you. I’ve been angry about it all these years, what I did. I was scared. I’d screwed up everything. The only thing I did right was you, and then you were stuck with me, a lousy mother. I did nothing to deserve you.”
Reed thought of all the times when he was a child that he’d wished his absent mother were someone famous or extraordinary, someone who made him special just by her very existence. His origin was instead sad and desperate, filled with rash decisions and poor choices. But he no longer felt like this ugliness had to define him, so maybe it was time to tell his mother: it didn’t define her, either.
He took her hand. “What a world it would be,” he said, “if we all got what we deserved.” She sniffed and looked up at him with wet brown eyes.
“I never stopped loving you.”
He squeezed her. “Nor I you.”
Later, when they said their goodbyes at the door, Camilla stretched up on her tiptoes to hug him tight. “My big strong boy. I dreamed so long for this day. Please come back to see me again.”
“I will,” he promised her.
Outside, the sun dazzled in a bright blue sky. In the car, Ellery turned to him, her eyebrows raised. “That’s a hell of a secret.”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“Hers, not yours.”
“Ah,” he agreed. “Yes.” The hot sun beat down on them, but Reed didn’t start the car. For the first time in a long time, he had nowhere in particular to go. “My guess is she’ll testify,” he said as he glanced at Camilla’s house. “She’ll do it for Angie.”
“Or for you,” Ellery said softly. She graced him with one of her rare, slow smiles, the kind that made him want to lean over and bite her neck.
His own smile faded as he sighed. “I guess that’s it then. It’s finally over.”
“Not quite. There’s still Giselle Hardiman’s murder.”
“Oh, that’s right. You were working on that code from her day planner. Did you ever crack it?”
“Nope.” She took out her sunglasses and put them on. “But I found someone who’s eager to take on the case. Someone who loves a good crime story and knows the Las Vegas scene inside and out. Someone who’s always hungry for the next big scoop.”
“Don’t tell me—your reporter buddy.”
“Bruce Carr. He’s on it like a dog on a free leg.”
On cue, Bump stuck his head between them, long tongue hanging out one side of his enormous mouth. He licked Reed’s face and Reed howled his protest, wiping off the slobber with his sleeve. “Thanks to a plethora of medical bills, my leg is now damned expensive, so tell the hound to back off.”
Ellery giggled as he started the engine. “So where are we going now?” she asked as the breeze picked up, swirling her hair.
“I don’t know. Home, I guess.”
“My home or your home?”
She kept the question casual, but he felt the weight of it nonetheless—his place, her place, and the six hundred miles that separated them. She had a job again in Boston. He had a daughter in Virginia. Eventually, they were going to have to go back to their separate lives. He merged onto the freeway, where they blended in with a dizzying number of other cars streaming along. The City of Angels had 4 million people in it, too many even to contemplate. He pointed the car to the south where the Pacific Ocean waited, cold and blue and endless. “Right now,” he said as Ellery tilted her face to the sun, “we’re going to the beach.”