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“Who—” The people in uniforms stepping out of his front door move with brisk purpose, crossing through shadow and light. All the windows at the front of the house are lit, pouring bright pools onto the snow in the front lawn. “Who are all those people?”
“It took a team to sort through the tips that came in.” Leo’s eyes turn dark and unreadable. “Most of the callers just wanted the reward money.”
Just like Emerson’s father. My stomach turns. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“You were missing, sister mine. I would have hired more people and paid more reward money if that’s what it took.” He gets out, comes around the front of the car, and opens my door for me. My feet don’t feel steady meeting the ground. “Everyone is waiting inside.”
“Everyone? Even Dad?” I reach up and grab my collar before I know I’m doing it. My lips go numb. My toes next.
Leo glances down at my hand, and his expression shifts. Softens. Becomes something familiar and safe. “They’re relieved, Daphne. We’re all relieved. There’s not going to be a scene.”
I let go of my collar and straighten up. There’s not going to be a scene from me, either. I can do this.
Gerard steps out of the front doors as we climb the steps. “Hello, Daphne. I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to speak at the hospital.”
As heartbroken as I am about how this all turned out, I can’t help being happy to see Gerard, too. And not as part of a bunch of security people. I hug him around his waist.
“I should have let you know I was going. That’s part of our deal. In my defense, I didn’t know I’d get kidnapped.”
He laughs at my joke, but I can hear the stress behind it. Things can’t have been good at Leo’s house while I was gone.
“They’ve gathered in the formal living room,” he says to Leo, over my head.
“Good.” Leo takes my arm and steers me gently inside. Neither of us has a coat for Gerard to take. He’s busy again in a second, directing the flow of people out of Leo’s house. They’re disbanding the team. It’s over, now that I’m back.
It doesn’t feel over.
Leo’s formal living room—which is giant and beautiful and rarely used—is to the right. It would feel more normal to be going left, to the den.
I hear them before I see them.
My family.
Their voices, competing with each other for space. It sounds like a family dinner. A nice one, though. Not like some of the meals I’ve sat through.
Leo opens the door, and there they are. All of them. My parents and all my siblings. Elaine and Haley. Even Lizzy is here, back from boarding school.
“Holy shit.” Sophia’s voice rises above everyone else’s. “She’s really back.”
They descend on me, my mother moving in first. She pulls me into her arms in a way I don’t recognize. Desperate, maybe.
“Sweetheart,” she murmurs into my hair. “We were so worried.”
My father reaches over the crush of siblings and squeezes my shoulder.
“Never again, Daphne,” he warns, and it sends a shiver of memory through me. Except when I look into his face over my mom’s shoulder, his expression is more exhausted than anything else. When my mother finally releases me, the two of them share a look.
I can’t remember the last time they shared anything. I can’t remember the last time I saw my mother put her arm around my father’s waist and stand close. Not in private, anyway. She’s done it for the cameras at events. Not at home. Not in years.
After the quiet of Emerson’s house, their voices feel loud. Overwhelming. And my parents touching each other when they’re not being photographed, when no one can see except us—
It makes my balance feel off. Weak in the knees.
They thought I was dead.
They’re all here in Leo’s house, together. They’ve set aside the tensions that ebb and flow between all of us. They’ve set everything aside, because they thought one of us was gone.
That I was gone. Forever.
