Amber had just reinforced the sleep spell on Francine, who lay peacefully on her bed, when Amber’s cell phone started to ring. It was coming from the front entryway, given how distant it sounded. Francine had been taunting Amber with it before the scuffle. Had it rolled under something?
Muttering a quick locator spell, she was tugged forward. She followed the sensation through Francine’s bedroom, past a bathroom, and through a small library-like room before Kim had a chance to catch up with her.
“Oh!” Kim chirped from behind her. “This is like when you found Chloe’s phone isn’t it?”
“Locator spell,” Amber said as she darted into the entryway. The contents of Amber’s purse lay strewn on the floor, along with the bag of Francine’s mud-caked shoes. Amber’s magic helped guide her hand under the bench seat, and she did her best not to slice open her knees on the scattered shards of broken glass vases; the large box Francine had brought Amber lay on its side in the middle of the entryway.
Amber pulled out her phone just as the screen went black. She immediately called the chief back. “Hi?” she said breathlessly.
“We’ve got her,” he said.
Amber slumped to the floor in relief, forgetting all about the glass. “Is she—”
“She’s fine. Shaken up, but just fine,” he said. “Sean Merrill was arrested at his job at the gas station roughly twenty minutes ago. It’ll still be an hour at least before we can head back, but she’s safe and she’s coming home.”
Amber started to cry.
Kim dropped to her knees in front of Amber. “Oh no. Are these happy tears or sad tears?”
“Happy!” Amber said, laughing and crying at the same time.
“Oh thank God!” Kim said, throwing her arms around Amber.
“Oh, and chief?” Amber said, once Kim had unhanded her. “You’re going to want to talk to Francine Robins. She unknowingly is how Sean was able to get his guy into Edgehill and out again without being seen. Sean has been working a long con on Francine—also pretending to be Johnny with her—and slowly pumped her for information. I have no idea if she did anything criminal here, but she did try to choke me half to death.”
“What?”
“She also saw me use my magic and was starting to freak out so I put her to sleep.”
He went silent.
“Chief?”
“Put her to sleep like a dog or put her to sleep or …” he whispered.
“How dare you even ask me that!”
“Call the station and have someone come out to grab her for questioning,” he said. “We’ll deal with the rest later.”
Nodding, she said, “I’m so happy you found her.”
She could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “Me too.”
Later that day, when the chief had texted Amber that they would be in Edgehill within twenty minutes, Amber, Kim, Ann Marie, Nathan, Jolene, Bobby, and Betty had piled into Ann Marie’s minivan with the signs they’d hastily made, and hauled tail to the mayor’s house. Somehow, news of Chloe’s impending arrival had spread even further than Amber’s group, and people were already swarming the sidewalk and lawn in front of the house, as well as across the street. Ann Marie had to park two blocks away.
As Amber’s group of eight made their way up the sidewalk, Amber saw that a parking spot was being held at the curb by Bethany Williams and several of her friends directly in front of the house.
Armed with their “Welcome Home!” signs, Amber’s group stood on the only open space on the front lawn they could find and chatted anxiously amongst themselves. Bethany turned to Amber several times, waving at her over her shoulder.
When the chief’s cruiser pulled up, Bethany and her friends hurried onto the grass. The group of four girls stood in a chain, their hands clasped.
And then Chloe was out of the car and running toward her friends. She collided with Bethany so hard, she almost knocked her friend off her feet. Chloe was then enveloped by the rest of the girls, all five of them crying. The crowd collected outside the mayoral home cheered and clapped and waved their signs.
The front door opened a few moments later and the pained cry of “Chloe?” hushed the crowd. The crying girls let Chloe go and she turned toward her house. Frank, looking no better now than he did the last time Amber saw him, staggered forward a few steps as if waking from a dream. The crowd amassed on the lawn and front path parted, allowing father and daughter to finally see each other.
“Dad!” Chloe cried.
They ran for each other, slamming into a tight embrace in the middle of the pathway. They were both crying and saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry” over and over. Kim burst into tears. Amber wrapped an arm around her waist from one side, and Ann Marie did so from the other.
When Frank and Chloe pulled apart, he had his hands on either side of her face. “I should have talked to you. I should have told you about your mom and Sean instead of trying to protect you from everything.”
“I should have talked to you, too,” she said. “I’m sorry I snuck out. I just—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’re back now and you’re safe. That’s all I care about.” He pulled her into another tight hug as they both dissolved into tears again.
Onlookers diverted their gaze, sniffled, and leaned on one another.
Chloe was the one who broke the embrace this time and stared up at her father. “I’m really glad to see you and everything, Dad, but oh my God, you stink!”
While the Here and Meow Committee ran through their rehearsal gala dinner on Friday night with the scores of volunteers, clothing models, stand-up acts, and actors, Francine Robins was on house arrest until the chief could figure out what to do with her. Amber decided not to press charges for the attack, but the mayor hadn’t decided if he wanted to pursue legal action against her for withholding information from the police. The chief didn’t think Frank would have much of a case, as very little—if any—of the conversations Sean had with Francine on Scuttle would have been logged by Scuttle itself. It was the nature of the app to be discreet, and Sean had done a great job of covering his tracks online.
Halfway through the rehearsal gala, Chloe had arrived, sneaking in the back so she could see what progress the committee had made in the two weeks she’d been gone. Someone spotted her and pulled her out into the rehearsal and the event turned into a celebration of Chloe’s return. There was music, dancing, and Nathan and Jolene snuck off to order a dozen pizzas.
Amber knew that Kim was truly going to be okay when, instead of flipping out that the rehearsal had been derailed, was out in the middle of the makeshift dance floor with the kids, dancing and singing along to the music as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
After so many nights of terrible sleep over the last few weeks, Amber couldn’t muster up the energy to join in on the dancing. She supposed, too, that she’d been wound so tight over her worry about Chloe, that now that the girl was safe, exhaustion was truly kicking in. She sat at one of the round tables scattered throughout the room. The tablecloths were piled in a back room.
“Make them leave me alone,” someone hissed in her ear then plopped down into the creaky chair beside her.
Amber grinned over at Chloe. “I’m honestly impressed you’re out and about at all.”
Chloe rested her forearms on the edge of the table and picked at her cuticles. The nail polish had all been scraped off by now. “After being cooped up in a place with no windows for two weeks, it’s hard for me to even be in my room right now. Being around people helps. It gets a little scary in my head when I’m alone for too long or it’s too quiet.”
Amber turned more fully in her chair to examine Chloe’s profile. “Oh, Chloe. Maybe you should see someone … a professional, I mean.”
“My dad already set up an appointment for me this week,” she said. “I know I haven’t really processed everything yet. I mean, I’ve told the police—both here and in Portland—the story a billion times already, but I haven’t really just sat with it myself, you know?” She finally looked at Amber then.
Bags lined the girl’s eyes, her skin was paler than usual, and she had a haunted energy to her that definitely hadn’t been there two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, she had been a normal seventeen-year-old girl who had a crush on a boy. Now she knew things about her parents—all of them—that she’d likely rather not know.
“I’m here, too, you know,” Amber said. “Anything you need.”
Chloe nodded. “I know. I heard you turned into a detective trying to find me.” Her smile was small, but rueful. “Thanks.”
“Of course,” Amber said. “I was beating myself up over it. If it’s not me being too nosy … what happened that night between you and your dad that made you sneak off?”
Chloe wrinkled her nose. “Dad’s got a temper … I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. It’s kind of scary. I’ve seen him go from happy and joking to furious in a second—over someone taking a parking spot he’d been waiting for, or someone getting his order wrong at a restaurant … little stuff. But he’s never, ever gotten mad at me like that. Until that night. I told him about Johnny and he just … lost it. Screamed at me about breaking his one rule and that I didn’t know this guy well enough to meet him alone.” She said all this to her fingers still picking at the loose bits of skin around her nail beds. “He said some mean stuff, too; he said I was reckless just like my mom. I got mad too and asked why he never talked about her and said I wished I had her around instead of him because all his rules were going to drown me.”
“Yikes.”
Chloe wrinkled her nose again. “Yeah, it was pretty bad. I eventually just started saying whatever he wanted to hear to get him to calm down. Then I went into my room to ‘change,’ gave it a few minutes, then went out the window.” She angled her tired face toward Amber. “I’d never been scared of my dad until that night. It was a really awful feeling. I left mostly because I didn’t know how to deal. Plus, all that stuff I found on the ancestry site … I don’t know. I just had to get out of there. And then Johnny ended up not even being who he said he was. God, Amber, I told him so much personal stuff. I’m more embarrassed than mad. I fell for all his crap so easily.”
“You’re not the only one,” Amber said. “It sounds like Sean does this to everyone. He’s a garbage human being. Don’t feel bad for trusting someone. It’s great that you were able to be that open with ‘Johnny’ … even if he wasn’t truthful with you. Being open is a good thing.”
Chloe rose an eyebrow at her. “You know I love you, Amber, but you’re like the most secretive person I know.”
Amber laughed. “Yeah, well, I’m working on taking my own advice. And I love you too, kid.” She reached out and ruffled Chloe’s hair, just like Amber used to do when Chloe was younger.
Chloe laughed and playfully swatted away Amber’s hand.
“Have you been in contact with your aunt at all?”
Chloe smiled wider. “Yeah. It was a really awkward conversation because neither one of us could stop crying for very long. But she and her husband … my uncle—gosh, that’s weird to say—are going to come to my graduation. She said she’s going to bring some pictures of my mom from when she was my age.”
Amber’s eyes welled up. “I’m glad you’re going to meet more of your family.”
Chloe sniffed. “Me too.” Then she turned fully in her seat and faced Amber, arms wide. “Thanks for not giving up on trying to find me.”
Amber threw her arms around her. “Never.”
When the next song came blasting through the speakers, the dwindling crowd in the community center cheered.
“Oh, you gotta dance to this one,” Chloe said, pulling Amber to her feet. “Let loose, woman!”
I’m working on taking my own advice echoed in her head as she let herself be dragged out into the group.
And Amber danced.