Where I Left Her

by Amber Garza

  Whitney was glad she hadn’t read the journal. She hated thinking that Millie might have said mean things about her. They were best friends. They loved each other. That was what Whitney wanted to remember.

  Afterward, she went to her car, pulled out her phone.

  Notifications lit up the screen.

  Natalie.

  Dan.

  Her mom.

  McAvoy.

  They’d all been calling. Texting. Messaging.

  She called Natalie first.

  “Whitney! Oh, thank God. I was so worried. Where have you been?” Natalie’s words burst out the minute she answered.

  “I’m so sorry.” Whitney felt bad for worrying Natalie. It wasn’t her intention. “I just...well, I found her.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, and it was just like you thought.” Whitney worked hard to drum up the enthusiasm she should feel in this situation. Amelia was safe and alive. She’d found her. But it felt like she’d also lost her all over again. “She was just milking it. Stretching out her time with her friend.” Sister.

  A heavy exhale floated through the line. “God, she’ll probably be grounded the rest of her life, huh?”

  “You know it.” Whitney forced a tight laugh. She wasn’t quite ready to come clean with Natalie. Maybe she never would be. If Natalie knew the truth, would she still want to be Whitney’s friend? Business partner? She couldn’t be sure. “So, um...you can go now. You don’t want to wait for me.”

  “Right. You and Amelia probably need some alone time anyway,” Natalie said. “Well, give her a hug for me. She may be in big trouble, but I’m really glad she’s safe.”

  “I will. And, Natalie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks...for everything.”

  “Of course.”

  After hanging up, Whitney stared out the window, at the big houses and sprawling front yards. A couple walking along the sidewalk, a woman pushing a stroller on her run. Signs of life going on. Moving forward, even though her life seemed to be at a standstill. A purgatory. Waiting to see if Amelia would forgive her. If they could move past this.

  She thought about the way Amelia moved away from her, out of her reach. The wariness in her eyes. The distrust. It was like the truth had created a chasm between them. One Whitney couldn’t cross.

  But she couldn’t give up.

  Red jacket.

  Her daughter had thrown her a lifeline. She’d hold on to that.

  And, really, it made sense. Amelia knew Whitney. Knew her heart. Knew who she was at the very core of her being. Amelia had been the only person outside of Millie who did.

  When Amelia didn’t come home from Lauren’s, Whitney never even considered the possibility that it would be related to Millie and the swapped babies. She’d gotten complacent after Millie died, thinking the truth died with her. She’d never factored in Lauren.

  Everything she’d done was for the two people she’d loved most in this life—her two Millies. All she ever wanted was to keep them close. She did everything in her power to do that.

  She’d lost one Millie. There was no way around that.

  But she wouldn’t lose the other.

  Whitney reopened the Find My Friends app, and Amelia once again popped up on the screen. They were headed down the street, around the corner. Lauren may have thought she was creating distance between them, that she was taking Amelia away from Whitney. But she wasn’t. Whitney’s daughter was right here in the palm of her hand.

  She had a few things to take care of and then she’d follow the girls. And when Amelia was ready, she’d swoop in to rescue her the way she’d done a million times before.

  The way she always would.

  She almost felt bad for Lauren, believing that Amelia was blindly following her, leaving Whitney behind. Lauren had endured a lot. Whitney was an empathetic person. She understood the pain Lauren felt. She agreed with Lauren on some things. Like with Millie. Her life had ended too soon, and it wasn’t fair. But despite what Lauren believed, it wasn’t Whitney’s fault everything blew apart. It was Mitch’s. She’d told Millie from the beginning that he would destroy her. And he had.

  Whitney thought about it often over the years. The what-ifs. The could-have-beens.

  But it didn’t change anything. It didn’t bring Millie back. Nothing could do that. But Whitney still had a part of her in Amelia. And that was one thing she could control, keep safe. They were close. Tight. And nothing could change that.

  Clutching the lifeless baby in her arms, blindly stumbling down the eerily empty hallway, tears obscuring her vision.

  She sighed. Picked up her phone again. She knew she needed to call McAvoy. Tell him she’d found Amelia. But not quite yet. Dan’s turn was next. She’d stalled long enough. As badly as she wanted to continue to keep this from him, she knew that wasn’t an option. Now that Amelia knew, he’d one day find out. It wouldn’t be fair coming from Amelia. It had to come from Whitney.

  He answered on the first ring.

  “Did you find her?”

  “Yes,” Whitney said.

  “Where was she?”

  Whitney scratched her scalp, licked her lips. “Well, that’s actually what I need to talk to you about. Do you have some time?”

  When he said he did, she started back at the beginning. Went through the entire story, the same way she’d told it to Amelia. When she got to the part about their baby, she was startled to find herself crying. Tears that she’d kept locked tightly inside finally spilled out. She’d never been able to grieve with him. To share with him. For so many years, she’d done her best to repress the memory of the baby she’d birthed. She rewrote the narrative in her mind, tricking herself to believe that the Amelia she raised was the only one she’d ever had.

  It felt good to remember the baby she’d lost.

  “She had so much black hair,” she found herself saying, picturing it in her mind. “And the longest fingers, like yours.” She remembered staring at them, touching them, running her fingertips over the wrinkled skin.

  “Wait...I don’t understand...” Dan murmured. “My daughter. Our daughter...” His voice, thick with emotion, trailed off. “Oh, God, it all makes sense now. The way you were acting. How sad you were. The weird things you kept saying...and sometimes...you looked at Amelia like she was a stranger.” It was almost like he was talking to himself. Whitney didn’t know what to say. Wasn’t sure he was even looking for an answer from her. “I just... God, I don’t...understand. You never said anything.” Another pause. A heavy breath. “I don’t get how you could lose our baby and then just take somebody else’s.”

  Whitney sniffed, wiped her eyes. “I didn’t just take her. Millie offered.”

  “You want me to believe that your friend gave you her baby? And none of it was your idea? She just came into your room and then came up with this crazy plan?” he asked.

  Whitney hurrying down the hallway in her socked feet, clutching the baby to her chest. Rounding the corner, she slipped into the hospital room. Millie was lying in the bed, dead asleep, bruises blooming on her skin. Machines beeped. An unnatural green light illuminated the room. A baby lay in a clear plastic bassinet next to Millie’s bed, her chest rising and falling. The child in Whitney’s arms was still.

  Whitney blinked, shaking away the unexpected, confusing memory.

  “Whitney?”

  “Um...” Whitney swallowed hard. “Yes. That’s how it happened. You remember Millie, Dan. How messed up she was. Are you really surprised?”

  “Even if that’s true, how could you go through with it? All these years, passing someone else’s child off as your own?”

  “We’ve given Amelia a good life. We saved her. Do you have any idea what her life would’ve been like if I’d left her with Millie?”

  “But she wasn’t yours to take
.”

  “Our baby was gone, Dan. There was nothing I could do to bring her back,” Whitney said. “But Amelia needed a home. A family. Do you really wish I hadn’t taken Millie up on her offer? Do you wish Amelia had never been a part of our lives? That she was Mitch’s instead?”

  Silence rang out. Whitney’s heart pounded in her chest. So much was riding on his answer. Lauren would always be a loose cannon, ready to fire off at any moment. But she needed to know that Dan would be her rock. Someone she could count on. Someone who would defend her decision. Believe in it.

  The dark eyes of Millie’s baby blinking in the dark.

  “No,” he finally said in a voice so quiet, Whitney barely picked it up. His brokenness could be felt through the phone, like a tangible thing. Whitney had had years to mourn the baby she’d lost. For Dan, it was fresh. And no one knew better than Whitney how awful that felt.

  Quietly, so as not to wake Millie, she moved fast. Her entire body trembled as if she were struck with a case of the chills as she set her own, unmoving baby into the crib beside Millie’s. With damp, shaky fingers she switched their tags. Then she scooped up the living baby, savoring its warmth.

  “Hello, my sweet girl,” she whispered as she scurried out of the room and down the darkened hallway. “Amelia.” She tried out the name, allowing it to coat her tongue. It tasted sour. Wrong. But she knew in time it would be sweet again.

  The tears flowed freely now, her shoulders shaking. “I’m so sorry, Dan.”

  The dead can’t speak. They can’t give confessions. Share their version of events. No one but Whitney knew what really happened that night. So, it was up to her to tell the truth.

  Millie sat in the middle of her hospital bed, crying into her open palms, her shoulders shaking. Whitney stood at the edge of the doorway, her insides knotting. She swallowed hard, but her mouth was still cotton dry.

  “Millie?” she stepped inside.

  When Millie’s head popped up, the whites of her eyes were strawberry red, the circles around them a sickly shade of gray, as if she’d been repeatedly punched. Sticky tears coated her skin.

  “It’s Bethany,” she choked out the words between sobs. “She’s...she’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Dead.” The word was like a vacuum, sucking out all the air in the room.

  “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry.” Whitney placed an icy, trembling hand on Millie’s arm. “How?”

  “They’re saying SIDs, but that just means they have no idea.” She leaned in close. “They think I’m trash.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The nurses.” Her eyes were wild. “They know about my past, and it’s like they’re not taking me seriously at all.”

  “I don’t think that’s...that can’t be.” A nurse passed by the room, glanced in warily, then looked away. Whitney blinked. “I’m sorry.” Dan had finally made it back to town. He’d come to take Amelia and Whitney home. They were just waiting on discharge papers. Amelia had been sleeping on his chest when Whitney left the room. She told him she needed to walk around, get blood flowing to her legs. But she couldn’t be gone long.

  “Why don’t I go get you a soda. Pepsi still your favorite?”

  “Oh, I don’t need caffeine right now,” Millie said.

  “Orange juice, then? That might be good. Get something in your system?”

  “Actually, a Pepsi sounds good.”

  “Okay.” Whitney patted her friend’s arm. “I’ll be right back.”

  Whitney took an empty plastic cup from Millie’s room, got a soda from the vending machine. In a nearby bathroom, she filled the cup with the brown liquid. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out the bottle of codeine, Whitney’s name prominent on the white sticker. A little over a year ago, she’d had a root canal and her dentist had prescribed this. She only took one. It made her throw up. But she was terrible about cleaning out her purse, and this bottle had been sitting at the bottom of it ever since.

  With the blunt side of a lipstick, she crushed the pills, thinking about how she was doing Millie a favor. Her friend had suffered so much. Her life was tragic, really. And there didn’t seem to be any hope of it getting better. Now, with the loss of her daughter, Whitney was positive Millie would spiral even further downward. She’d never been able to save Millie before. Maybe now she could. Maybe this was the only way. She dumped the powdered pills inside the soda, then used a lip liner to stir.

  “Here you go.” Upon returning to Millie’s room, Whitney handed her the drink.

  Millie sipped it greedily.

  “Look, I’m so sorry. I wish I could stay, but I...I have to go.” Whitney’s gaze flickered to the hallway.

  “No, I understand.”

  “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Millie started crying again, and Whitney scurried out of her room, never looking back.

  Whitney shook the memory away. It didn’t even feel true anymore. After all these years, all that was left were her memories. Her version.

  It was her story now, and she was sticking to it.

  * * *

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing a book during a pandemic is especially challenging. While working on Where I Left Her, I dealt with self-doubt, crippling writer’s block, and a fair amount of anxiety. If it weren’t for the following people, this book never would’ve seen the light of day.

  First, as always, my incredible literary agent, Ellen Coughtrey. Thank you for spending hours on the phone, taking apart my messy rough draft and helping me shape it into something we both could be proud of. You always have a knack for identifying the issues on the page, and drawing out the story I had initially wanted to write. To Will Roberts, Rebecca Gardner, Anna Worrall, Caspian Dennis and the entire team at Gernert, you are all so efficient, kind and helpful. I’m grateful to work with each and every one of you.

  Second, my awesome editor, April Osborn. I’m grateful for your editorial skills and insight. It’s always amazing to me how even little tweaks can change so much, and you have an eye for knowing what tweaks need to be made. And to Lindsey Reeder, Ashley Macdonald, Lucille Miranda, Lia Ferron and Roxanne Jones and the entire team at MIRA—thank you for all of your marketing and publicity efforts, and expertise. You are all so fun and helpful. I love working with you.

  To Cal Kenny and the entire team at Sphere, thank you for your belief in me.

  Megan Squires, my long-time friend and beta reader, I can’t thank you enough for reading early drafts and giving honest feedback. Also: writing days with you, whether at a coffee shop or, more recently, in the barn loft, are my favorite.

  Chris Sherman, thank you for your police expertise. I appreciate you taking the time to talk through procedure with me, patiently answering my questions, and reading through the police scenes for accuracy. Also, Melissa Sherman, for making it happen.

  To Samantha Downing, Karen Cleveland, Sandie Jones, Samantha Bailey, Christina McDonald and Mindy Mejia, for reading When I Was You and sending in such kind reviews. As a fan of yours, it means so much to me.

  Thank you to Abby at Crime by the Book, Jessica at the Towering TBR, Sonica at The Reading Beauty and all of the other bookstagrammers and bloggers who have shared about my books. There are too many to list but know that I’m so grateful to you. Also, to Stacy Gould at Ruby’s Books, Tina Ferguson at Face in a Book, and Stephanie Rose at Books Around the Corner for your support.

  To all the book clubs who have reached out to me, I’m so honored that you’ve chosen to read my work and include me in your gatherings.

  To my friends and family, your ongoing encouragement and support keeps me going. I love you all.

  Andrew, thank you for the space, time and freedom to create and pursue my dream. Eli, I’m grateful that you always lend me an ear to talk over plot issues and brainstorm ideas. And to Kayleen, I’m so glad our r
elationship is nothing like Whitney and Amelia’s (now please let me follow your Finsta). To Luna, the newest addition to our family, thanks for being the best pandemic pet ever and for making this quarantine suck a lot less.

  And most importantly, to God—everything I do is for you.

  Also by Amber Garza

  When I Was You

  ISBN-13: 9780369704856

  Where I Left Her

  Copyright © 2021 by Amber Garza

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  For questions and comments about the quality of this book, please contact us at CustomerService@Harlequin.com.

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