Little Broken Things

by Nicole Baart

  “She’s not exactly missing,” Walker reminded everyone. “She’s with her mother.”

  “And a man,” Liz cut in. “But he’s not her father.”

  Nora wasn’t ready to go there yet. “We think she’s in danger,” she said before her mother could proclaim JJ the father and complicate things further.

  “What kind of danger?”

  Nora hesitated. It was the point of no return. If she admitted what she knew, Everlee would likely be taken away from Tiffany. And hadn’t she spent the past seven years of her life doing everything in her power to prevent exactly that? Nora had given up so much to fight for Tiff and Everlee, to give them a chance at a life together. Even when Tiffany screwed up, when she failed, when they both struggled to make it work, Nora had believed in their little family. In the hope that everyone deserved a chance to be the person they were always meant to be. What if everything she had fought for fell apart?

  Another thought struck her: If Everlee was removed from Tiffany’s custody, where would she go? JJ knew nothing about his daughter. And Nora had no idea if he would deny everything and refuse contact or if he would embrace this unexpected development with open arms. No, Nora knew her brother. There would be no open arms. There would be nowhere for Everlee to land.

  “They should have run away.” Nora didn’t realize she had said it out loud until Bennet pushed her.

  “What do you mean?”

  Nora had nothing to lose. “We had a plan,” she said, picking at the hem of her shirt as she blinked back tears. “They were going to get out together. Start over.”

  Ethan’s hand found the small of her back. He pressed gently. “It’s not over yet,” he whispered.

  “Why?” Bennet asked. “Why would Tiffany need to run?”

  “Her boyfriend is not a good man.”

  “I’m going to need more than that, Nora.”

  She faltered. “Drugs,” she said. “Distribution. He’s been charged before, but the allegations didn’t stick.”

  “And?”

  “The sexual abuse of a minor.”

  All the air went out of the room.

  “And you feel certain she’s in danger?” Bennet demanded.

  “Absolutely. I’ll testify. I’ve seen … things.”

  Something snapped in Bennet. “I need names, last known address, and any aliases. Nora, come with me. The rest of you, I want you to compile a description of the child and her mother. Do you have any recent photographs?”

  Nora nodded, grabbing her own phone as she followed Bennet toward the front door.

  But Liz stopped them. “Wait! I can tell you the license plate of the car he was driving if it would be helpful.”

  Bennet froze. “You memorized the license plate?”

  “Of course.” Liz looked affronted. “It’s only six characters. It’s not that hard to remember.”

  “Yes,” Bennet said, and in spite of the situation, Nora could see that he had to bite back a grin, “that would be very helpful.”

  While her mother rattled off the letters and numbers, Nora went to stand in the yard. She needed air, space, and she wanted to go through her pictures alone. Nora flipped through her camera roll to find all the photos she could of Tiffany and Everlee. She had saved some old favorites, one of the three of them at a lake beach when Everlee was just two years old. Her legs were little sausages, rolls of skin between wrinkles that were so deep it looked as if someone had snapped rubber bands on her ankles and around her knees. She was breathtaking.

  There was another picture of just Tiff and Everlee, sitting on the top step of the farmhouse porch, a litter of new kittens crawling in and around their laps. Another was slightly blurry, a still life of them spread on the couch watching something on TV. And here they were at the park. But the picture that Nora settled on had been taken only a week ago. She and Tiffany had just picked up the fake driver’s license and the new birth certificates that transformed Nora’s best friend and beloved niece into strangers. Miranda and Lucy Smith. There were over eighty-one million hits for Miranda Smith on Google. They had looked. Miranda Smith was every color, shape, and size. She lived in every state and every Canadian province. She was everyone. And no one.

  “How will you ever find us?” Tiffany had said when they first hatched their plan, talking late into the night while Everlee was asleep and Donovan was at the bar.

  “It’ll take some time. You’ll have to give me hints.” Nora smiled. “It’ll be like a game. Where do you want to go?”

  “Washington,” Tiff said dreamily. “I want to live in the shadow of a mountain. Or New York. Like Sex and the City.”

  “Except you have a little girl and aren’t a freewheeling bachelorette,” Nora reminded her. “Anywhere else?”

  Tiff shook her head. “Arizona? Detroit, maybe? Anywhere but here.”

  When Nora snapped her last photo of Tiffany and Everlee, Tiff was clutching the manila envelope that contained their hopes for a new life. It was innocuous enough in the picture, just a big square of brown paper held shut with a brass clasp. But the look in Tiffany’s eyes was transcendent, luminous with wishes that seemed to reach right out of Nora’s iPhone screen and grab her by the throat. You did this to me, Tiffany seemed to say. You made me believe. Thank you. And Everlee, safe in the circle of her mother’s arms, was looking up at Tiffany, smiling so big her eyes were all but winked closed.

  “I’ve put out an APB for the license plate your mom gave me,” Bennet said, joining Nora outside. He gave his head a little, admiring shake. “Props to Elizabeth Sanford for that one.”

  “Yeah, she’s something all right.”

  “She is, Nora.” Bennet gave her a sideways look. “Always has been. She’s a strong lady; you’re lucky to have her.”

  Nora wasn’t sure what to say.

  “What now?” Ethan came to stand beside Nora. “Do we wait?”

  “No, let’s go,” Bennet said. “I don’t have my cruiser and I’m not officially on duty, but we can drive around. Check out a few spots you think Tiffany might turn up at.”

  “Her grandparents’ place?” Nora suggested.

  “I was thinking of that, too.”

  “What are we supposed to do?” Quinn had come to stand in the doorway, her eyes shielded from the sun with a slender hand. “You can’t expect us to just sit around and wait.”

  “That’s exactly what I want you to do,” Bennet said. “Write up those profiles and then stay put. What if they come back? What if she calls or texts?”

  “Her phone!” Nora didn’t mean to shout, but she couldn’t believe that she hadn’t realized it sooner.

  Ethan caught on instantly. “Donovan had her phone,” he said. “He had her. But how did Donovan know that she was in Key Lake? How did he find her?”

  The truth clicked into place. “She found him.” It was so obvious it hurt. “She called him. She had to. How else would he have known where she was hiding?”

  “I don’t know,” Bennet said, “but if we’re lucky we’ll get the chance to ask her. Nora, I want you to text her. Call her. See if she answers.”

  “I can do better than that. We installed friend trackers on our phones. I’m sure it’s how Donovan found us at Malcolm’s. My phone must have pinged in the location.”

  Nora’s fingers shook a little as she tapped into the app. But Tiffany’s icon was still dark.

  “No problem,” Bennet said. “Try calling.”

  Tiffany’s name was right at the top of Nora’s call history, the photo next to her information as familiar as Nora’s own reflection in the mirror. She held her breath as she hit Call.

  It rang. Once, twice, a half-dozen times. It rang and rang, but it didn’t go directly to voicemail. In fact, it didn’t go to voicemail at all—even after Nora let it ring for thirty seconds, more.

  “It’s on, but she’s not answering.”

  “Maybe she can’t,” Liz said.

  The thought filled Nora with a blind horror.

&nb
sp; “Okay,” Bennet said, stepping into the fray before Nora could completely lose her mind. “Let’s go. You can keep trying. In the meantime, I’m sure someone will pick them up, thanks to Mrs. Sanford.”

  Liz made a dismissive sound in the back of her throat.

  “Unless they’ve changed the plates,” Nora said. That was another thing they had included in the envelope—a set of license plates so Tiffany could change hers before she traded in the car she was driving for a new one. They had thought of everything, or at least tried to. New papers, a little cash, a forged recommendation letter from a nonexistent landlord.

  “That’ll make it harder,” Bennet agreed. “But I’m hopeful. We’ll pick them up soon. They couldn’t have gotten too far.”

  But Nora worried that they wouldn’t have to go far to achieve Donovan’s purpose. She hadn’t even told Bennet about Tiffany’s inheritance, the will. The money that Tiff had taken from Donovan and the way that she knew he would never let her go—would never let either of them go—without a fight. She almost said something, almost told Bennet that there was even more to the story than she had already shared, but tucked deep in her pocket, her cell phone buzzed with an incoming text.

  Saturday

  5:21 p.m.

  Tiffany

  The corner of 338th and Goldfinch.

  Nora

  What? Is that where you are?

  Tiffany

  Come quick.

  Nora

  Are you okay?

  Tiffany

  Bye, Nora. Everlee is all I ever wanted. Take care of her.

  Nora

  Tiffany?

  Tiff?

  We’re coming.

  LIZ

  NORA AND BENNET were gone in a squeal of tires and a fine cloud of gravel dust. It settled over Liz in a gritty film that coated her skin, her tongue, and tasted exactly like despair. She had wanted to go along—they all did. But Bennet had been professional, removed. He refused point-blank. No cushioning it in niceties or trying to spare their already raw feelings. It was simple, straightforward, devastating: No.

  “Now what?” Quinn asked, voicing the helplessness they all felt. They made a reluctant quartet—Ethan, Walker, Quinn, and Liz—the tenuous thread connecting them taut and quivering like a plucked string. This concern for a little girl they barely knew was deep and sonorous, engulfing. Liz felt herself shrink before it, her shoulders caving in as if she wasn’t just helpless, she was hopeless.

  The texts Tiffany exchanged with Nora were nothing short of terrifying. Nora had leaned out the car window and let Liz read them while Bennet gave Walker last-minute instructions. They made her heart flutter weakly in her chest.

  Bye, Nora.

  “You need to talk to JJ,” Walker said, surprising Liz with a hand on her shoulder. It was gentle, protective, and she was suddenly undone. Or, nearly.

  “I do,” she managed. But those two words were heavy as baggage, one in each hand, weighing her down.

  “Are you crazy?” Quinn spat.

  Liz very deliberately closed her eyes, shutting out the sight of her daughter and the desperation etched across her face. “He’s right.”

  “What?”

  “We have to talk to JJ.”

  “But—”

  “Your brother has a right to know,” Liz interrupted. Walker’s hand was still on her and she drew strength from the unexpected connection. Who was this young man who presumed to know her? To touch her? But when she looked at him, the unraveling hem of the old T-shirt he was wearing and the beginning of a beard on his proud jaw, she was surprised by tenderness. Thank you, she wanted to tell him.

  “I’ll take you,” he said. And suddenly he was more than all the fragments she had collected over the years. Skin smooth and dark as mahogany, hair wild, teeth white. The hands of an artist and the scent of a stranger. But here he was: whole. Walker.

  “Yes,” Liz said.

  Ethan stayed so that there would be someone at the cabin should Nora and Bennet return. (With Lucy? Liz seized that hope and held it fast.) And Liz gave Walker the keys to her Cadillac and climbed into the back seat so that Quinn could sit beside him in the front.

  “Should we call?” Quinn asked.

  “I don’t think so.” There was purpose in this and Liz was clinging to it. Drawing herself up and buttressing the walls of her resolve. “There’s no way to soften the blow of something like this, Quinn.”

  “What about Amelia?”

  What about Amelia, indeed? JJ’s obsession with Tiffany had only overlapped his relationship with Amelia a little—at least, as far as Liz could tell. The happy couple had met in college and fallen in love over the stacks in the library, or so the story went. Liz suspected their love story had much more to do with frat parties and beer pong—she wasn’t naive when it came to the pretend purity of her slightly playboy son—but she went along with their narrative anyway.

  Sadly, she couldn’t feign ignorance about the fact that JJ and Amelia were definitely together the night of that Everly dance. Nora had just graduated, and Amelia had accompanied JJ to Key Lake for the celebration. If Liz remembered correctly—and the night was slowly beginning to take shape in her mind—Amelia had stayed home with Liz and Jack Sr. the night of the post-grad dance. It had something to do with “townies,” and the term was not used fondly.

  It fit. Everything was starting to fall into place like the tumblers in a padlock. And then what? Liz wished that some secrets could remain hidden.

  “She’s going to be devastated,” Quinn whispered from the front seat.

  But Amelia’s hurt was unavoidable. And just the tip of the iceberg.

  They were turning into JJ’s subdivision—a shiny new neighborhood that flanked the golf course—when Quinn’s phone rang.

  From the back seat, Liz could see her daughter startle at the sound. Quinn groped for her phone and accepted the call, holding the device with two hands tight against her ear.

  “Nora?”

  And then: “What? Yes. Okay. Okay. We’re on our way.

  “Turn around,” Quinn told Walker, a quiver in her voice.

  “What?”

  “We’re meeting Nora at the hospital.”

  “The hospital?”

  Liz froze, fear crackling and snapping through her veins like ice forming. “Is she … ?”

  “They have Lucy,” Quinn said. “They’re bringing her to the hospital. That’s all I know.”

  JJ would have to wait.

  If Walker had taken a somber pace en route to JJ and Amelia’s house, he drove like a man possessed toward the Key Lake Hospital. Liz would have nagged him from the back seat if she wasn’t so heartsick, so afraid of what they would find when they arrived. She counted the blocks by praying, one word over and over again: Please. Please, please, please.

  Key Lake Hospital wasn’t large, and the parking lot beside the ER was all but empty. Walker pulled haphazardly into a spot and slammed on the brakes. He tossed the transmission into park and turned off the vehicle in one quick motion. Then they were all falling out of the doors, hurrying toward the entrance lit garish red by the glowing Emergency Room sign.

  Nora was waiting there.

  Hair tangled, cheeks bright and flushed. She had been crying but either wasn’t aware of the dusty tracks along her skin or didn’t care. Liz suspected the latter. The sight of her daughter dislodged something inside, and Liz threw her arms around those slight, rounded shoulders.

  “What?” Liz snapped. “What happened?”

  Nora pressed her face into her mother’s shirt and said the sweetest words they could have possibly heard: “She’s okay.”

  “Lucy?”

  “Everlee.” Nora pushed away. “We found her in the ditch near the corner of 338th and Goldfinch. Not far from Lorelei’s farm.” She shook her head. “The old Barnes place, I mean.”

  “In the ditch?” Quinn repeated. “I don’t understand.”

  “She was wrapped in a car blanket. We think …” No
ra stammered. Stopped. “We think Tiffany threw her from the car while it was moving.”

  “Oh no.” Liz gasped.

  “She’s okay. We think she’s okay. The paramedics just want to make sure.”

  “And Tiffany?” Liz hardly dared to ask.

  “There’s been an accident,” Nora said, her mouth in a razor-thin line. She was trying to keep her lips from trembling.

  Liz reached for a hand, any hand. Walker was beside her and his strong fingers engulfed her own. He had Quinn on one side, Liz on the other. He linked them all together.

  “Bennet’s there now.” Nora drew a shaky breath. “He’s going to …”

  She didn’t have to finish.

  “Can we see her?” Hope made Quinn’s words tangible. Liz felt like she could have plucked them from the air and tucked them in her pocket. The truth that the opportunity existed, that Everlee could in fact be seen, was precious as gold.

  “Yes, you can.” Dr. Welch came around the corner wearing a pair of blue scrubs and a half smile. He had delivered both Nora and Quinn, and he reached out in turn to take all their hands in his own warm grasp. His presence was the perfect mix of familiar and reassuring, and Liz found comfort in the arch of his pale, bushy eyebrows as he told them that Everlee was going to be just fine. “She rolled,” he said. “Just like a little sausage in that car blanket. There’s not a scratch on her.”

  “How fast was the car going?” Walker asked.

  “I don’t think they know that yet.” Dr. Welch shook his head and a shock of white hair flopped across his forehead.

  “But the car …”

  Dr. Welch’s eyes flashed briefly to the ambulance bay. It was quiet. Apparently they were waiting for a second ambulance. How long had it been? Liz felt a shiver tremble across her skin. If they weren’t racing to save a life …

  “Come on, she shouldn’t be alone.” Dr. Welch motioned for them to follow, an invitation but also a distraction. The good news of Everlee’s well-being was a buffer against all the things they didn’t yet know.

  “Go,” Liz said, waving them on. “She doesn’t know me.”

  “I’ll stay with you,” Walker said. “Nora, Quinn, she knows you best.”

  Liz nodded, encouraging them to go, and her daughters complied. They walked shoulder to shoulder behind Dr. Welch, and Liz was glad that Everlee had such strong women on her side. Aunties. They were her family.