by Jill Cox
Ian watched Pete for a long moment, then turned to Kate. “Go get the car,” he said sweetly, pointing down the sidewalk from us. “I’ll meet you in the loading zone down there.”
Kate nodded and hustled off to the parking garage without a second glance my way. When she was out of earshot, Ian grabbed his suitcase and parked it between us. “Listen, Fee, I know you inherited the Sullivan controlling gene, but this isn’t your decision to make. I’m a grown man. If I want to drive to Canada on the spur of the moment, I don’t need your permission. All I need is my passport.”
“I know that, Ian,” I said, my voice higher than usual. “But what about Mum? You haven’t seen her in weeks. Do you really want to risk her wrath by not waiting to say hello? Or hey, why can’t you guys drive from here to Seattle, take a nap for three or four hours, and head on from there?”
Ian shook his head. “Not possible. Drew’s staying at my place.”
“Drew… Sutton?”
“Yes.” Ian glanced at Pete. “He got this really cool internship at some swanky law firm downtown right before I left for Ireland, and it seemed ridiculous for him to pay rent somewhere when I needed someone to keep an eye on my place and get my mail.”
“And you waited all this time to tell me? You really suck right now, you know that?”
Ian looked like I’d just punched him. But Pete wrapped his hand around my elbow and squeezed. “Let him go, Sully. They’ll be fine.”
I turned my face to protest, but in his dark eyes, I read the truth: Pete was tired. Tired of Kate, tired of riding the waves of my brother’s sullen mood the last few days, maybe even a little tired of me. Not to mention whatever he must think about Drew Sutton holing up in my brother’s apartment the past few weeks.
So when I looked at Ian, all lit up like Christmas, I caved. “You’ll text Mum?”
“The second we get there.”
“You promise?”
Ian laughed and bro-hugged Pete. “Good luck,” he said, clapping him on the bicep. “Fee’s a peach coming down from jet lag.”
“I’m aware,” Pete smiled. “I’ve been saving all my best dad jokes for retaliation.”
Ian laughed again and gestured for me to hand back his messenger bag. After a few seconds of rummaging, he removed a floral envelope he must have swiped from Nana’s things. “Your earnings for the winning wager,” he said with a small bow, tucking the envelope into the front pocket of Pete’s shirt. “In US dollars, as requested.”
“Hey,” I barked, hands on my hips. “Where’s my half? I’m the one who wore a tutu.”
Ian grinned at Pete, then stepped toward me, pulling me in for a long hug. “I love you, Fee,” he said quietly in my ear. “You’re my best friend. I mean it.”
“You’d better love me,” I muttered into his shoulder. “Because you owe me big time.”
His laugh rumbled between us, and he squeezed me again. “Listen, dorkface, take revenge on me however you like, but don’t take it out on your boy here.”
“Why not?” I shot Pete a dirty look over Ian’s shoulder. “He’s a traitor, and he will pay. Starting with the fifty-percent commission he owes me. This tutu-wearing patsy doesn’t work for free.”
Ian laughed again, then kissed me on the forehead, tugging my topknot off-center. “See you soon, okay?”
Pete and I stood side-by-side as Ian’s long, easy stride carried him down to the passenger loading zone where Kate was waiting beside my brother’s sensible SUV. I felt Pete’s hand slide into the back pocket of my jeans. “Cheer up, Sully,” he said, kissing me on the side of my head. “You just picked the winning side of a battle you were bound to lose.”
“No, I didn’t. You did.”
By the time Ian reached the car, Kate was scooting her bags over to one side of the cargo hold. When she stood up straight again, my brother bent down and planted a sweet kiss on her smiling lips. For the first time in days, Ian looked like himself again, not the hollow shell he’d become since Dún Aonghasa. And after he’d loaded his bags, he tugged something out of the messenger bag.
The tiny black box.
Only this time, when he took it out of the box, he hovered his free hand below the tip of the heart, like a tall, dark, and handsome Vanna White. And when he slipped it on Kate’s right finger, he drew a pretend line from her finger, up her arm, and over to her heart.
Then he clasped her hand in both of his, pressing it against his heart as he muttered something that made Kate squeal. She threw her arms around him and kissed him so obnoxiously that I half expected the transit cops to show up.
“Oh sure,” I muttered to myself. “Now you’re cool with stealing my ring, Boho Barbie.”
I watched in resignation as Kate handed Ian the car keys and let herself in on the passenger side while he ran around to the driver’s side. Just before he slipped into the driver’s seat, he stood on the running board so we could see him waving like a maniac. “Hey, Fee! One more thing?”
“What?”
The grin on his face was as wide as Texas. “Tell Mum and Dad I love them big!”
I pretended to salute, which made Ian laugh. And when they pulled away from the curb, I told my insides to take their jitterbugging on the road, because I was too exhausted to play along anymore. At least not until tomorrow.
Something hard nudged my arm, and when I glanced down, I found the fiberglass Irish step dance shoes tapping against my sleeve.
“What the –”
“Check out this sidewalk, huh?” With his free hand, Pete gestured down like an automobile show spokesmodel. “Municipal concrete. Perfect for tapping away to your Irish heart’s content.”
I shoved the shoes away. “You brought these through customs in your carry-on?”
“Hey, you’re the one who opened the floodgates, Sully. I’m gonna need proof you’ve got dancing skills on both sides of the Pond.”
I blinked at Pete for a minute, then I pulled out my phone and entered the screen lock code.
“Is that your mom calling?”
“Nope,” I smiled to myself as I logged in to the airport’s free Wi-Fi. “I think it’s time to gift my social media followers with some Ducky Shincrackers footage I found on YouTube.”
FIVE
The next morning I was awake before anyone else in the house, just like every other time I’d come home from Ireland. And just like every other time, I pulled on my running shoes, crept out the front door, and pounded my feet against the Pacific sand until the previous day’s pent-up plane energy was gone and my lungs were full of fresh, ocean-kissed air.
There was not a single cloud in the early morning sky.
I walked in through the backyard gate instead of re-entering the house through the front and stood below the giant Bradford pear tree that I’d loved ever since we moved to Lincoln City eighteen years ago. It had been a while since I’d seen a clear sunrise here on the coast. My skin prickled as a sunbeam crossed over the roof, and I smiled as I glanced down at my phone.
No text from Ian. No worries.
When I walked through the back door into the kitchen, the clock above the refrigerator read 7:49 a.m. That was, what, nearly 4 p.m. Doolin time? No wonder I was wide awake.
Pete stood in the middle of the blue and white kitchen, his fingers curved above his head like horns, imitating the devil bull of Doolin. First my dad laughed, and then Mum. The color was high in Dad’s cheeks, and from the looks of it, he’d gone down at least two clothing sizes since the last time I was home.
Three and a half months. That meant more than a hundred days had passed since Pete and I had flown home together from Paris. So much had happened in that time.
Drew and I broke up.
My dad survived his open-heart surgery.
Gigi died.
So much had changed, and yet, as I watched Pete win over my parents on his own charming merits, I couldn’t help but smile. Gigi would have loved seeing him like this.
“Hey Sully,” Pete grinned when he finally noticed
me, hopping over to the coffee maker to pour me a cup like this was his home. I scooted in next to my mom on the bench seat and slipped my arm through hers, pretending to listen to Pete’s story as I tapped in the lock screen code on her phone.
Nothing new from Ian since nine-ish last night.
Pete yammered on while I checked Kate’s Instagram. Ian never posted anything until a month after it happened, but Kate? She never went more than a couple of hours without posting a new selfie, an inspirational quote, or a highly filtered shot of her Hashtag Blessed açai bowl.
Nope. Nothing since just before midnight.
Late night gas station iced coffee!
#RoadTripWithMyLove #BrainFuel #WhistlerBound
I checked my mom’s phone again, only this time, I scanned her call log. No calls from Ian since the 26th around seven in the morning Pacific Time. That was midafternoon in Ireland, probably just after we’d discovered Kate missing from Nana’s cottage. I clicked on the tiny information dot and read the details. They’d talked for seven minutes.
After Pete had gone to bed Tuesday night, I’d given my mom a quick highlight reel of our time in Ireland. Like how Kate had sucked the energy out of every day. How she’d manipulated Ian over and over again, especially at the airport.
And Mum? She’d cursed Kate Maher’s name under her breath – something I’d only heard her do a handful of times in my life. If Molly Sullivan didn’t like you, you either had a bad character or you’d hurt one of her children. Kate qualified on both counts.
“Has Ian called?” I whispered to Mum.
She shook her head. “You know your brother. He’ll call us when he’s good and ready.”
I scowled, because no, that was not like him. Ever since he could drive, Ian had kept my parents in the loop. During those nine months he’d traveled the globe, he’d called our house every Wednesday and Sunday at six a.m. Pacific Time, no matter what. Even now, at the grand old age of twenty-seven, he checked in every evening on his way home from work, and if he couldn’t he let Mum and Dad know way in advance.
My phone began to vibrate on the table and I jumped. I looked at the screen to find a 604 area code, and even though I didn’t recognize it, I picked up. “Hello?”
“Hello, Meredith? This is Greg Neumann. Your brother works for me.”
“Oh. Yes, hello, Greg.” I looked at my mom. “How are you?”
“Good, good,” he said, and I had to smile, because I would have recognized that North Dakota accent anywhere from all the years of watching his weekly travel show. “Say, I’m sorry to bother you so early in the morning, but this was the number Ian gave me when your dad was in the hospital. Are you home with your parents?”
“Yes. Here, let me put you on speaker phone.” My stomach flipped as I lowered the phone to the table. “Okay, we can all hear you now.”
“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan,” Greg said, and for the first time, I noticed his voice sounded a little higher than usual. “Listen, I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation for this, but I decided to go ahead and call you because Kate and Ian should have arrived by now. Neither of them have answered my calls, so I just thought… well, I thought maybe they’d called you?”
“No, Greg,” my dad replied as Pete’s eyes went wide. “We haven’t heard from Ian since last night.”
“I see. Well, that’s… strange.” Greg’s words came out rapid-fire, like a pinball machine. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll call the Washington State Police. Maybe they had car trouble somewhere outside cell phone range?”
My dad nodded, his expression unreadable. “Yes, that’s a great idea. Thank you, Greg. We’ll see if we can reach him from our phones.”
Before I’d even clicked off the call, Pete had opened the map app on his own phone, displaying it on the table between the four of us. “Kate and Ian left the airport around seven. Could they have stopped in Seattle on their way north?”
“Maybe.” I remembered Kate’s Instagram photo and checked the geotag. “But they were in Bellingham around midnight. How far away is that from Whistler?”
Pete tapped furiously at his phone. “Maybe two and a half hours? Depends on traffic at the border.”
My dad stood and pulled a chair out, motioning for Pete to sit. “Everyone calm down and breathe while I brew another pot of coffee. Meredith, can you gather everyone’s mugs for me?”
I did as I was told, and when I reached the kitchen sink, I looked out to the backyard at the giant Bradford pear tree again. The day Ian had climbed that tree, my five-year-old self had been standing at the bottom, crying and begging him to come down while simultaneously kicking each of his buddies in the shin for egging him on. And when he fell – when he landed so hard he broke both his radius and his ulna in half – those cretins scattered from our back yard and left me to call 911 by myself.
And because I’d been so terrified, I’d spent the next five minutes lecturing my poor, wailing brother for being such a terrible babysitter instead of comforting him. When he finally called us today, I would make five-year-old me look like a saint.
When the house phone rang, I was standing closest to the kitchen handset. “Ian?”
“Mrs. Sullivan?” A lady responded.
“This is her daughter.”
A short pause followed. Then the woman spoke again. “Yes ma’am, this is the Washington State Highway Patrol. Could I please speak to Mr. or Mrs. James Sullivan?”
SIX
For the rest of the morning, my brain refused to accept the holes in the story. Like how in the world did Kate Instagram her coffee if her phone was in the far back of the car?
That’s where the police found it, safe inside her purse. Ian’s was there, too – not with his camera gear or messenger bag, which weren’t listed among the highway patrol’s inventory. According to their spokesperson, several people working the scene reported both phones ringing over and over again. But answering phone calls wasn’t high up on the accident crew’s priority list. At least not until the ambulances had wailed their way back to Bellingham, and the crew finally jimmied open the back of Ian’s SUV.
Both passports, both phones, Kate’s insurance card, and both driver’s licenses – every single identifier lay nestled together in her designer handbag, perfectly intact and out of harm’s way.
And why had they taken the scenic route in the middle of the night? Even if Kate were directionally-challenged, Ian was not. So why were they on a rural road headed north instead of Interstate 5, the fastest route to Vancouver?
Had they started fighting? Did Kate fall asleep, or get distracted by the radio?
As far as local authorities could tell, there were no other cars involved. No skid marks. But somehow Ian’s car had flipped on a curve of some rural farm road near Deming, Washington. For no apparent reason, Ian and Kate had driven thirty miles north and east of the Bellingham gas station where Kate’s Instagram photo geotagged them at 11:49 p.m.
According to the highway patrol spokeswoman, it hadn’t rained in the area for days. The roads would have been dry and clear. And yet, for some reason, with Kate behind the wheel, Ian’s car had flipped over and over again into the forest beside the highway, completely invisible from the road when it finally landed sixty feet away in a small copse of trees.
A farmer spotted their mangled car at first light. But by the time he reported the accident, and the police arrived, Kate was dead, and Ian’s pulse was close to nonexistent. He died en route to the Bellingham hospital.
What if someone had found them earlier? Would they have survived?
The landline never stopped ringing the rest of the morning as word spread out, out, out, like concentric ripples in a rainy-day puddle. We had just finished packing up my mom’s car for the drive to Bellingham when the phone rang again.
“Hello, Mr. Sullivan,” a steady voice said on the other end of the line. “This is Greg Neumann again. After we spoke earlier, I decided to start driving south, so when your daughter’s friend P
eter called to let me know about the accident, I decided to come to Bellingham to see if I could help in any way. I asked if I could identify them on behalf of the families since you’re both so far away. I’m sure they broke several laws, but the medical examiner recognized me from my show, and since both Kate and Ian were wearing Greg’s Guidebook employee clothing…”
“Oh,” my dad said into the speakerphone, his eyes brimming with tears. “So you’re… er, you’re saying we don’t need to…”
“No, sir. I didn’t want any of you to see them…” he paused for a long time, clearing his throat every few seconds. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Sullivan. Ian looked peaceful, like he was asleep.”
Without a word, I ran out of the kitchen and out the back door, sprinting back down to the ocean, where I turned north and ran all the way to Road’s End – the northernmost beach in Lincoln City.
Four hours later, once I finally returned to my neighborhood beach entrance, I spotted a hooded figure shaped like Pete Russell perched on a boulder, elbows resting on his knees, his face resting in his hands, like he was praying. As I drew near him, Pete lifted his head, his eyes puffy in the dazzling white of the afternoon sun.
I crawled up the boulder and curled myself into the empty space between his knees. “Hey,” he said, kissing my shoulder as he wrapped his arms around me from behind. “How come you don’t smell bad when you run? I always smell like a warthog.”
“I think your smeller’s broken,” I said, hiccupping on a sob. “I guess that’s the price you pay the Illuminati for having such perfect curls.”
Pete slid his sleeve along my neck to wipe away the sweat and tears gathered there. We sat there for a long time, his arms holding me upright as I buried my face in his sleeve. I wanted to ask him how he’d survived. How he’d muscled past the hundred million questions that parade through your mind. But the longer we sat there together, the more I feared he didn’t have the answers. That he’d survived all these years simply because he’d had no other choice.