He nodded curtly and put the car back in drive without another word.
Well, at least there wasn't any more crying. Guess I'd fixed that.
She lied. She freaking lied about the light. Did Alona have no limits? No moral boundaries? Jesus.
I focused on the road, all too aware of the silence between us. Even though I hadn't done anything wrong, I got the distinct sense that Alona was upset with me, which was rich. It was never her fault, always somebody else's. In this case, maybe the light was to blame because she hadn't received specific directions and had felt forced to make something up. Whatever.
I shook my head in disgust.
And yet, in spite of myself, I couldn't help imagining what it must have been like for her to find herself back here that first morning, without any information, any guidance on why or what to do next.
Anyone would have been terrified, wondering if they'd done something wrong or if there'd been a mistake or if this was some kind of punishment from on high. After all, who gets sent back from the light ever, let alone after almost a month?
And Alona, always with control issues, would have been even worse. She'd spent most of her living years trying to contain everything, to keep her life — her mother's condition and her father's complete lack of willingness to get involved — from imploding. Variables that were beyond her ability to influence ate at her, worried her until she'd done everything she could to manage them and create contingency plans. I knew this girl, probably better than she knew herself.
Still, that didn't make what she'd done right.
In fact, it made it sting more. She'd been lying to me, not just when she'd met up with me after graduation on her bench, but also when we were kissing outside the Gibley Mansion last month, and when she'd held my hand in the car yesterday. She'd been lying, if only by omission, that whole time. I didn't know what to do with that. She couldn't have found another time, an early point in our… whatever it was we had… to tell me the truth? Had she really not trusted me until today?
Don't get me wrong: I knew, logically speaking, that she'd had plenty of reasons not to trust me, and that it was a significant change for her to tell me a truth she found personally humiliating, even now, when she knew I'd probably be angry.
But I guess I just thought we were well past that point. And it hurt and made me feel a little off balance to learn I was wrong.
I pulled into the parking lot of Krekel's and found a space.
Alona cleared her throat. “So, what's the plan?” She was trying to sound normal.
“We'll take a look around, talk to some people.” I shrugged, avoiding her gaze. “See if they've seen her.” My fear was that even if Erin had actually come here, she was already long gone and no one would remember anything.
“I'll handle the looking, you take the talking,” Alona said with a nod.
“You think?” I muttered. Given that no one else could hear her, it was the only option that made any kind of sense. And no, it wasn't the most mature response ever. Sue me. I was still struggling with the bomb she'd just dropped on me.
She stiffened. “Hey, you know what? I said I'm sorry, and if that's not good enough—”
“Actually, you didn't,” I said, biting off the words.
She stopped, frowning, her head cocked to one side as if she were mentally replaying our earlier conversation. “No, I'm pretty sure I—”
I just looked at her.
“Oh.” She stared down at her hands for a long moment before glancing up at me. “Okay, well… I'm sorry,” she said defiantly, chin jutting out in challenge, daring me to… what, gloat? Like that was at all what I felt like doing in this situation.
“Fine, whatever. Let's just do this.” I reached for the door handle.
“It's not… I wouldn't do the same thing now, okay?” she said quietly. “I just—”
“Didn't trust me,” I said, my mouth tight.
“Didn't know you,” she corrected. “And now I do.” She met my gaze without flinching.
The steadiness in her clear green eyes reassured me that she meant what she said, and some of the anger and uncertainty bubbling in my chest melted away. But not all of it. How was I supposed to know if we were really on the same page? That she wouldn't, at some point, reveal some new level of duplicity? Maybe it was my turn not to trust.
I sighed and shoved open the door. “Let's focus on one thing at a time for now.”
She nodded and followed me out, but not before I caught the flash of hurt in her expression. I supposed she probably wanted something more for one of her rare apologies, and maybe she had a point, but this was as much as I could manage at the moment.
“Be subtle,” I said as we started for the restaurant. “Remember, if you could see her, she can probably see you, and she'll know what you're after.”
Alona nodded, but I got the sense her mind wasn't entirely focused on the task at hand.
“And if you start to feel…” I hesitated, not sure what to say.
“Less than myself?” she asked, her lips twisting into a wry smile.
“Don't even talk to her, just come find me.”
She nodded again.
I felt my heart pounding harder than normal as we walked into Krekel's, which was packed with the late lunch/early, early dinner crowd, and past a family that seemed to consist solely of screaming children and some people our age that I didn't recognize. They were just out living their normal lives, blissfully unaware of everything happening beneath the surface.
It took only about ten minutes to determine what I'd feared was reality. Erin/Lily wasn't here, and no one seemed to have seen her. So she hadn't come here, or she'd slipped in and out without anyone noticing. Either way, we had no way of knowing where she was now or even where to start looking.
“They have security cameras,” Alona pointed out, once we were back in the parking lot heading toward the car.
“Yeah, and how do we explain why we need to see what's on them, without getting the police involved?” I wanted to avoid that for as long as possible. If I could get things back to some semblance of normality before the Turners found out something was amiss, all the better. “And even if we could, the cameras won't tell us where she went from here.”
“So now what?” she asked. “Check every tattoo parlor, strip club, and doughnut shop between here and the Indiana border?”
I stopped in the process of pulling my keys from my pocket and stared at her. “Strip clubs? Really?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Closest thing to a party at two in the afternoon, probably, right?”
“I have no idea.” I tilted my head to one side, regarding her with curiosity. “Do you?”
“You wish,” she snapped, clearly offended.
In spite of everything, I almost smiled. “We're going to Malachi's,” I said, unlocking the car.
Alona made a face. “That place is so gross,” she muttered. “Seriously, a few hundred bucks more a month and he could have a place that doesn't look like a front for a Russian mail-order-bride service.”
“Better office space isn't exactly his top priority,” I said, opening the driver's-side door for her to scoot across the seat. She could have opened her door, but with all the people in the parking lot, it didn't seem like a good idea. I hoped she wouldn't fight me on it.
“What does that mean?” she asked with a frown, climbing in without complaint.
I followed her in and slammed the door shut. “It means Malachi has other ways of attracting business.”
I waited until I'd backed out of the space in the crowded lot and got us on the road to Malachi's before sharing everything he'd told me about his sister's death, my dad's visit, and their unusual method for obtaining new customers.