Pinky Swear

by Danielle Girard

Genres: Thrillers; Domestic Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

From Danielle Girard, the USA TODAY bestselling author who “effortlessly ratchets up the tension” (J.T. Ellison, New York Times bestselling author), comes a pulse-pounding thriller about a young woman whose surrogate disappears just days before the baby’s due date, leading to a frantic search that uncovers dark truths and the power of a mother’s love.

Lexi thought she knew everything about Mara Vannatta. Best friends since middle school, they drifted apart after a tragedy derailed their senior year. But when Mara shows up on Lexi’s doorstep sixteen years later fleeing an abusive husband, Lexi takes her in without question. Lexi’s own marriage has been strained by her desire to have a baby, and when Mara offers to become her surrogate, their friendship feels stronger than ever.

But four days before the due date, Mara disappears.

Lexi is shocked but certain there must be something wrong—Mara would never willingly leave with her unborn child. Or would she? As she embarks on a perilous cross-country hunt for the truth, Lexi is forced to reconsider a friendship she thought she knew—and what really happened that terrible night their senior year. How many secrets lie in their shared past, waiting to be uncovered? And just how far will Lexi go to bring her child safely home?

Release date: February 24, 2026

Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

Prologue

The hand that holds the knife is mine but feels like a stranger’s.
Pinned between the soot-stained wall and a dumpster, its blue-painted exterior dented and
streaked, the man is on his knees, hands raised in surrender. The blade touches his neck where
the pale folds of his skin contrast with his tan face, like rings on a tree.
I am prepared to cut this man. To kill him. This is not me; I am not this person.
But here I am.
The smells of piss and garbage and stale alcohol mix with night air and the scent of rain.
My fingers are unfamiliar, nails black with grime, palms scraped and sore and soiled with
something that, in the dark, might be grease or dried blood.
I regain focus as the light of the caged bulb overhead flashes across the metal blade.
“Where is Mara?” I demand.
“I’m not lying, I swear. I don’t know where she is.”
I press harder and the tip of the knife dents his skin, its tension holding the blade on the
surface. Any harder, the knife will slice through.
“You don’t have to do this,” the man says. “This ain’t going to solve nothing.”
“Where would she go?”
“I haven’t seen her in years. I swear—” He starts to turn, twisting away from the blade.
“Don’t move,” I warn, shifting the long edge of the knife against his skin. “You knew
her.”

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“I did. But it’s been years since I seen her. Most peaceful years I ever spent.” He inches
farther from the blade, driving his shoulder into the dumpster.
“No,” I snap. That’s not Mara. My partner in the biggest undertaking of my life, Mara is
my oldest and most loyal friend. I would do anything for you, Lexi. From the start of our
friendship in middle school—the three of us. Together every lunch, huddled at the cafeteria table
we’d claimed junior year. Friday night sleepovers. The notebook we passed between us with
confessions about our crushes, dreaming of our futures. First drinks. Double dates. Whispered
plans to attend the same college, to be roommates in the dorms.
The knife slips and I clench it tighter, drawing the point into his skin. He cries out as
blood beads at the site, swelling into a fat droplet before rolling down his neck. I don’t recognize
myself, but I have no choice. Everything depends on finding her.
“Where did she work?” I ask.
“It’s been years since—”
“Where?” I interrupt.
“Mostly at bars—she had jobs six, sometimes seven days a week, on and off.” He
motions down the darkened alley, toward the street. “She’s worked at most of these places.”
I’m focused on my next question, calculating how to unlock a memory from this man that
will lead me to Mara when he grips my wrist and twists toward me, bending my arm until I cry
out and release the weapon. He snatches it off the ground and wields it like an expert.
“You want to know about Mara Vannatta? She’s a user. She used me like she used
everyone.” He talks so fast I can barely keep track of his words. The knife hovers in my face as
he fires anger like darts. That blade makes it impossible to focus, to hear his words.
“Whatever she took, you’re not getting it back.” Spittle sprays from his lips and strikes

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my cheek. Lunging, he shoves me with his free hand and I land hard on my tailbone. I expect
him to turn away, but instead he swings around, swiping the blade at my chest, so close that I
lurch backward and slam into the dumpster. He grabs a fistful of my hair and throws me down on
the eroded asphalt, pebbles shredding my hands and knees. The impact expels the air from my
lungs and I struggle to inhale.
“Come to my club and fucking threaten me,” he sneers and kicks hard into my ribs. “Get
the fuck out of here.”
Curled on my side, I wait for the next blow.
It doesn’t come.
Something clatters to the ground, and I spot the discarded knife as the man slips back into
the club.
A line of scalding heat burns across my chest, my own panic alongside something else.
Still lying on the asphalt, I finger the damp fabric of my shirt, a tacky sensation. Blood. The
knife sliced the skin. Tenderly, I tug the neckline away to see how much blood has soaked into
the fabric.
I stretch to reach the knife, the motion sending a lancing pain where his shoe connected
with my ribs. With shallow breaths, I wipe the knife clean on my jeans and press the lever along
its ridge to close the blade. I will have to learn to be better with it. Or get another weapon.
I am going to find Mara Vannatta if it kills me.
I touch the bloody cotton of my shirt and wonder if it might.

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16 days before the due date

Chapter 1

That first step is like entering an airport hangar, a line of plane engines roaring in my
ears. I have to remind myself that it’s just a baby store. Albeit a giant one.
I’m stopped, mouth agape at the oceanic expanse of baby supplies while people stroll
past as though we’re in a Target. But the reality of a baby—my baby—has me paralyzed and
stunned to silence.
How long I’ve wanted this. How many times I’ve tried to be a mother and failed.
And now it’s happening. Because of Mara.
And then she is beside me, parking a cart in front of us. “We could start with bottles.”
“Bottles?”
She bumps my hip with hers. “You know, be like Tim Palmer and check out all the
different nipple shapes,” she says, referring to a boob-obsessed middle school classmate.
How she ever remembered his name is beyond me, and I can’t help but laugh as she lets
out a sigh.
“This place is huge.”
“Massive,” I agree. And a little scary. I meet the blue-button stares of two dozen teddy
bears on a shelf, all of them peering at me in a way that suggests I’m ill-prepared to be a mother.
They’re not wrong.
I’ve never been pregnant longer than eleven weeks, never changed a diaper, never so
much as held an infant— yet in two weeks’ time, I will be a mother. A single mother, the single

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twitching in my spine with the shame of a teen pregnancy, though I am thirty-five. Instead, it’s
my best friend who carries my baby, stepping in when my body has failed what, to me at least, is
its most crucial biological task.
Mara edges the shopping cart forward, the bulge of her pregnant belly— of my child—
almost touching the handle. “You drive,” she says, motioning to the cart.
I look around for something smaller, like a basket. The cart feels overwhelming. “Didn’t
you say all we need is a couple of outfits and some diapers?”
Mara laughs and links her arm through mine, shaking her head as though I’m making a
joke. But the laid-back reaction punctures the swell of my worry, deflating it, if only temporarily.
I won’t be alone, Mara’s presence reminds me. Mara has no plans to move out in the next few
months and even when she does, she’ll still be in Denver.
And there’s Henry… but my marriage is more complicated.
Mara has been urging me to come here, pick out onesies and bottles and pacifiers, but the
experience of losing my every pregnancy sprouted a paralyzing fear that it would happen to
Mara, too. Six times I allowed hope to plant its promise and grow, believing that I was on the
path to motherhood. Six times, hope died—miscarriage, IVF procedures that didn’t take, a
surrogate who changed her mind.
Even seeing Mara every day since her procedure, being in the bathroom (facing the wall
in terror) when she peed on the first stick, attending every appointment, still I can’t uproot the
worry that something will go wrong and we’ll lose the baby. We. As if we are pregnant. I used to
roll my eyes at would-be fathers who talked about a pregnancy in ways that suggested they,
along with their wives, carried their future child. One in particular, a young lawyer at the firm
where I worked in Seattle, prattled on endlessly about how, the pregnancy is giving us a bit of

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heartburn. And, our feet are swollen. We’ve had to get new shoes. How ridiculous he sounded.
Sixteen days until the baby’s due date and I’m finally daring to buy supplies. It isn’t that I
haven’t planned. On the wall of the nursery, which is painted a light mossy green, hangs a three-
foot-long needlepoint of animals that has taken me months to complete, squinting hunch-backed
on the couch with a needle and a dozen colors of thread, trying to follow the pattern to
perfection. In the center of the room is a round floral rug, where the baby and I will play. There
is a rocking chair where I will hold her and inhale her sweet, milky scent. When she’s older, we
will stick glow-in-the-dark constellations on her ceiling. A small stack of books lines one shelf
with my favorite on top—Owl Babies, the first story I remember loving as a child myself, the
one I checked out from the kindergarten library and read until its pages frayed. While the little
things are ready, I still haven’t purchased a car seat to take her home from the hospital.
Every time I imagine the nursery filled with baby toys and clothes and diapers, I
remember my brother Simon. I can still smell his room beside mine, fresh paint and wood
shavings. The mobile over his crib, painted black and white after my parents researched what
would best stimulate his young brain. Even at five years old, I sensed the shift in attention away
from me and toward the baby growing inside my mom. Dinner conversations revolved around
articles about brain development in a baby’s first year, ways to help a child foster a calm
demeanor. Words exchanged over my head but with the occasional glance in my direction,
divulging their meaning; the next baby would be superior to their first.
One Saturday, my parents invited me to go to the baby store and I pictured rows of cribs
with babies to choose from. Go put on your nice clothes, my mother had said, shooing me up the
stairs. I donned my blue holiday dress, the nicest thing I owned, ready to make a good first
impression on my baby brother. As I crept down the stairs, I heard my mother’s voice.

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“He’s going to be perfect, Gil.”
“He will,” my dad agreed. “He’ll be everything we wanted, our fresh start.”
Every little girl dreams of being someone else—a princess or a rockstar, an actress or her
favorite teacher—but never was that desire so fierce and unwieldy as the moment I longed to be
Simon.
Now, standing under the yellow glare of the big box store lights, I can’t remember going
to the baby store with my parents to shop for Simon. It’s possible that I went, but just as likely
that I’d broken down and cried, the very thing my parents most despised. A little girl unable to
control my emotions, as my parents celebrated a child who would be a better version of me.
When my mom went into labor, I stayed with Mrs. Lewis, a stooped, hooked-nosed neighbor.
The way my dad swung mom’s little gray suitcase, holding her elbow with the other hand, they
might have been going on vacation.
My parents returned home a day later. My dad rounded the car, red-eyed and exhausted,
and helped my mother onto the curb. Stony-faced and grim, she was tucked under his arm as the
two struggled up the walkway, the suitcase like an anvil in his hand. With a firm palm on my
shoulder, Mrs. Lewis stopped me from running to them. You don’t mention your brother, she
whispered. Not ever.
“Come on, this is going to be fun,” Mara says now, giving me another little hip bump.
She leads and I follow, marveling at her determined optimism. In our trio of friends,
she’d always been the dreamer, the one who could imagine the best outcome to any situation.
With no children of her own, Mara is as clueless about this as I am, but she doesn’t seem the
least bit nervous.
I work to inject my own thoughts with the same energy by reminding myself how much

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I’ve learned as a stepmother—though Henry’s boys were eight and ten when we met. We pass a
couple in an aisle lined with highchairs and bouncy seats, the man at his wife’s side while she
asks Siri to recommend the best baby swing. Her husband is focused, his hand protective on her
lower back. His gaze radiates reverence, and she glows with an unearthly light. His awe is
obvious, the miracle of her body nothing short of magic. I share his awe, though it comes with
the bitter aftertaste of envy.
Henry would know what to make of this place, how to navigate it, what to choose. At this
moment, he is surely in his office, studying some spreadsheet. I could call; he would come.
My next inhale catches in my throat. I miss my husband.
A matronly woman, wearing slacks and a pink sweater, approaches as I take hold of the
cart and inch it forward.
“Welcome to Everything Babies,” the woman says. “Are you looking for something in
particular?”
“Literally, we’re here for everything babies,” Mara responds with a chuckle.
My palm grows damp on the cart’s plastic handle as I eye the immense store and imagine
how many things I need, how much it will all cost. Six months after moving out, Henry still pays
the bills, but I’m not sure how he’ll react to purchases made for a child that isn’t his. I have my
inheritance. My parents were planners and what they left will tide me over while the baby is little
and I figure out what to do next.
“Is this your first?” the woman asks.
Can she tell I’m unprepared? I have no idea how to answer the simple question. Yes,
Mara and I were best friends in high school and she’s agreed to carry the baby because I can’t,
but it isn’t actually my husband’s sperm because he has two grown boys and didn’t want more

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kids. The only people who know the situation in its entirety are me, Mara, Henry, and the doctor
who implanted the sperm-bank fertilized eggs.
“It is,” Mara says, grinning as she leans over to kiss my cheek. “This is our first baby.”
Mara has always had a mischievous side, saying things for shock value or as a joke to
laugh about later. “We met in high school, if you can believe it,” she goes on, tucking a loose
strand of hair behind my ear. “It was love at first sight.”
I smile and shake my head at the antics. There’s no stopping her; it’s best to play along.
The woman claps her hands and grips them together as though in prayer. “Wonderful.
And do you know what you’re having?”
“A girl,” Mara exclaims.
“You absolutely are,” the woman says. “Look how high you’re carrying. I know the first
can be quite overwhelming—by the second, you’ll be an old pro.” She touches Mara’s arm and
adds, with a wink: “I’ve got four.” Then, as though to banish the thought she has just planted, she
waves a hand in the air and laughs. “No need to get ahead of ourselves,” she continues, walking
to the first checkout lane. “We have a starter list; it can be helpful to see the basics written out.”
The woman ducks behind a register and returns with a trifold pamphlet in a cheery,
gender-neutral yellow.
“First up, cribs. A lot of people start with something like this,” she says, leading us to the
aisle where a dozen cribs are set up and pausing at a blue net playpen. “This has a bassinet
feature,” she explains, stooping down to lift the base of the crib and clicking it in place below the
top rail. “You can use it by the bed when the baby is brand-new and then, as she grows, it’s a
travel crib and a playpen.” She waves with a flourish, like a magician completing a trick. “I’ll
leave you to it. Just holler if you need help.”

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Mara reaches out a hand as the saleswoman steps away. “Give me your phone.”
“Who are you calling?” I ask.
“I’m taking your picture, Lexi. Stand next to it. Or better, pretend you’re putting Goose
down.”
“Don’t let people hear you calling the baby Goose,” I whisper. “They’ll think we’re
nuts.”
“Come on,” she says. “It’s a cute nickname.” She waves her hands at her massive bulge.
“Here I am—the Goose Oven—at your service.”
“I think I prefer Mother Goose,” I say.
“I still like the original—Womb Auntie—though I’m happy to call her by her real name if
you’d tell me what that is,” Mara says, hiking up her eyebrows.
“I don’t know her name yet,” I insist. It’s partially true. My parents called my brother
Simon from the moment they knew he was a boy. Maybe it’s superstitious, but I won’t call my
baby by her name until she’s safely in this world. “I don’t need a picture with a playpen.”
“You don’t have to post it. Save it for her baby book; it’s a memory!”
I stand with one hand on the playpen and offer a barely-tolerant smile. Mara isn’t on
social media, one of the things she abandoned when she left her abusive husband back in
Philadelphia. From the moment she showed up on my front porch fifteen months ago, Mara has
been vigilant about keeping her name and location out of the public domain. Even more so since
the pregnancy. She rarely speaks about her marriage anymore, but whatever inconveniences she’s
suffered from staying off social media are surely a small price to pay for her safety.
Henry was hesitant to welcome her into our home; after all, she was a stranger to him.
Though I’d told him about Mara, I rarely talked about high school, the period before I left home

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for Seattle. How to even explain the bizarre bond between teenage girls, the inseparability of me
and Mara and Cate all those years ago. In the most general terms, Henry knew that I’d had two
best friends in high school, and that Mara needed help.
His boys were grown and the furnished coach house in the back sat empty. In a rare
moment of persistence, I pushed and Henry conceded.
“This thing is a great idea,” Mara tells me. “It’s a playpen, a crib and a changing table all
in one, and it’s a hundred bucks.” She points to a beautiful wooden crib a few feet away. “That
one is twelve hundred.”
Reading my expression, she drapes an arm over my shoulder. “Goose doesn’t need much.
It’s not like our mothers had all this stuff. Can you imagine? I probably slept on the floor for the
first three years. I can’t remember even seeing a picture of a crib.”
“I’m sure you had one,” I say, recalling a single photograph of me in a crib, my hands
clenched on the top rail, my face crumpled. I was crying. You cried all the time, my mother once
said when she found me looking at the few pictures she’d put in an album.
Mara and I load the pack n’ play box onto the cart, and the squeaking wheels take me
back to high school trips to Walmart, where the three of us spent hours in the aisles horsing
around, sharing a soft-serve ice cream or French fries, the store preferable to any of our houses.
Hers, small and crowded when her parents were fighting, which was often; mine, cavernous and
dismal; and Cate never wanted to be at her house, blaming it mostly on her younger twin sisters.
“Crib, check,” Mara says, leaning across the handle of the cart to run her finger down the
list. “Next is a car seat, then we definitely need one of those front pack things, so you can carry
her around and still have your hands free.”
Mara, rubbing her belly, admires a pink car seat with a leopard print cover.

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“Navy,” I say, fighting the flare of envy as she strokes her baby bump. Ashamed of my
reaction, I lift the navy car seat, averting my gaze. “It’s much more practical.”
“Screw practical,” Mara says. “You’re having a sweet baby girl. Let’s spoil her.” As I
push the stroller down the aisle, Mara picks up a small stuffed tiger on a plastic clip and attaches
it to the handle of the car seat. “From me,” she says and I know we’re both thinking of Cate.
I sense Mara is about to say something when a little girl with blond curls runs up to the
leopard-print car seat on display. “Mom, can we get this one? Please.”
“We already have a car seat for the baby, Elsie, remember? It’s the same one that you
used,” her mother says, taking her hand. “Come on.”
As I watch her go, I imagine Goose as a toddler, chubby hand in mine as little feet
stumble awkwardly across a floor in her new Mary Janes. Then, as a four or five-year-old,
tongue held between her teeth, as she focuses on putting a wooden puzzle piece in place. Five
years old, gripping my hand tightly, tears brimming in big brown eyes, on the first day of school.
There is so much unknown ahead, and so much to look forward to.

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4 days before the due date

Chapter 2

Outside the bedroom, the ink ebbs from the sky, a bright magenta. Never a particularly
sound sleeper, I wake four or five times a night now, flipping from one side to the other,
swapping out pillows, unable to get comfortable—as though I am the pregnant one.
From the day we got word of Mara’s pregnancy, the joy of this dream coming true has
been shadowed by a shame that cloaks me like a second skin. When I was so fixated on finding a
way to have a baby, I didn’t allow myself to dwell on my own body’s failure. But now, watching
Mara’s belly grow is a constant reminder of my defect. There is guilt, too—that I asked so much
of my friend, fear that it was my desperation that made her agree to be my surrogate. If she
resents me for it.
In recent months, the preoccupation around the pregnancy itself has absorbed the guilt;
jealousy is a frequent visitor. But the shame never leaves. Shame that I couldn’t get pregnant, but
also shame for how I feel now: that I am not simply flooded with gratitude both for Mara’s
ability and her willingness to do this for me. Shame for feeling shame, like Russian dolls, each
nesting an emotion uglier than the last.
With Henry gone, the house is quiet and I often wake to the haunting silence of the
bedroom. The absence of his purring snore, the white noise he plays at night. When I can’t sleep,
I watch videos of labor and birth on YouTube. First, the natural births—in homes, in baths, in the
forest. Women split open with pain one moment, joyfully cradling an infant the next. Then, the
hospital videos.

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One night, I searched for caesarean sections and held my breath as the surgeon made her
initial incision across the pinkish globe of the woman’s belly, the skin stained yellow from
antiseptic. I studied the path of the scalpel as it sliced, cutting deeper. The doctor lifted a small
power tool that began to whir, tiny wisps of smoke rising from its tip. I reversed the video and
rewatched as the tool cauterized the small vessels bleeding along the line of the incision. I was
mesmerized by the surgery, the calm efficiency with which the doctor worked, how the team
answered her curt directives, an artful choreography. I cried as the nurses used retractors to hold
open the uterus and the doctor pulled the baby’s head free, her movements strong and assured.
This fascination is not something I share with Mara. Nor do I tell her that, alone in my
bedroom, I sometimes talk to Goose as though she can hear me—as though Goose’s soul is
residing within me, even if her body is not. I make promises. I promise that I will be strong so
she can fall apart when she needs to. And I promise to be better, to practice my mantras and calm
my brain, so that my child can see what it means to overcome.
I shift in the bed to look at the clock where the numbers bleed a fuzzy blue. Seven
twenty-nine. We have an ultrasound today, where we will get to hear Goose’s rapid little mouse
heartbeat, count her fingers and toes. Almost fully baked, the doctor told us last time.
Our appointment isn’t until nine, but I can’t go back to sleep so I decide to surprise Mara
with some grapefruit juice, her favorite, and a scone. There are still a few left over from the low-
sugar batch I made over the weekend.
In the kitchen, I start the coffee maker, thinking of how Henry would wake first and bring
a cup of coffee to me in bed. He always predicted what I would like most off a restaurant menu.
He supported us wholly, happy for me to work at the flower shop because I enjoyed it, despite
the abysmal pay. We have plenty of money, he always said.

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All things I took for granted.
At twenty-four to Henry’s thirty-eight, I entered our relationship an anxious, overgrown
adolescent, a half-step beyond the panic-ridden child I’d once been. Henry’s confidence, his utter
calm, made the transition easy. He was safe, protective. The introduction to his kids, the way he
coordinated the move of my things from Seattle to Denver upon our engagement— everything
was designed to make my life stress-free. Like a new book on a shelf, Henry slid me into his life.
After all, he had the career, the house, the kids. All I had was a secretarial job, working for a
lawyer who had a temper that was his least likable quality aside from his wretched breath, and a
tiny studio apartment I could hardly afford with mold that crawled along the baseboard like a
slow-moving infestation.
Arriving in Denver, I was happy to assimilate into Henry’s life. Most of our friends are
closer to Henry’s age than mine. The couples we socialize with had their children young, and the
kids—theirs and Henry’s—were way past the diaper stage when I arrived. There were no baby
showers to attend, no infants to hold. I said I didn’t need children; Henry’s were enough.
And they were. Until they weren’t.
When I first brought up my desire to have a baby—almost five years ago now—Henry
told me that he didn’t want more children. Kyle and Nolan were his life. I understood. At the
same time, I hoped—even expected—that he would change his mind. That loving me would
mean being open to what I wanted, to sharing the experience of adding to the beautiful family we
had with his sons.
I was wrong.
But Goose will be my future now. She will be Olivia or Emma, Oliver or Thomas (I can’t
help but prepare for the possibility of a boy, despite the doctors’ confirmation of her gender.) A

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nickname is one thing, but choosing Goose’s permanent name is something I don’t want to share
with Mara. I’ve already been forced to share so much.
As the coffee brews, I pour the juice and heat a scone in the toaster oven, cutting it open
and placing a thin pat of butter on the steaming pastry before carrying the plate out to the
backyard. Down the stone path to the back of the property, the coach house is dark. Maybe Mara
had trouble sleeping, too. She experienced a fair amount of nausea early on in the pregnancy, but
things seemed easier after the first trimester. While she doesn’t complain about aches or pains,
she must feel them. Even as a kid, Mara slept like the dead, but I can tell she hasn’t been sleeping
well. Especially this last week. When I ask about it, she swears she’s fine, but there are dark
circles under her eyes and she lays down to nap every afternoon.
The coach house door is unlocked, which is strange. When Mara moved in, we installed
an interior latch so that even with a key, no one could enter. Our neighborhood is safe, but after
what she’d been through, it was no surprise that she’d want extra security. She must have
forgotten to lock up last night. Balancing the plate and glass in one hand, I enter the darkened
living room. An undercounter light in the kitchen flashes on and off, reminding me of the electric
fly traps Mara’s dad used to hang in their yard. The little flash and zap as a fly struck the live
wire.
“Mara?”
No answer.
Leaving the food on the counter, I go to her bedroom and listen at the door. It’s silent and
I imagine her sound asleep, splayed across the bed like a starfish, the same way she’s slept since
we were kids. There’s no good reason to wake her so early, so I let myself out and return to my
own kitchen where I pour coffee into an Oberlin mug, the crest of Nolan’s alma mater faded

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from too many washings. The mug is Henry’s favorite, a Christmas gift from Nolan five years
ago when he came home from his first semester, and holding it makes me feel a little closer to
my husband. Now graduated and working in Chicago, Nolan is in town for a long weekend and
he and Henry came for dinner last night. I was strangely nervous about having my stepson for
dinner in his own home while his dad is living in a corporate apartment, so I made Nolan’s
favorite, a chicken cacciatore, and Mara baked a raspberry crisp.
In the end, the evening was lovely. Nolan asked about the baby and entertained us with
stories of spending his days standing in pouring rain on his latest engineering project and the
highlights of a corporate outing to a Bulls game. Henry and I mostly stayed quiet at dinner, but
he helped me clear the table and, as I was standing at the sink, he leaned in behind me, the way
he used to. “I miss you,” he said and kissed my cheek, then turned and left before I could
respond.
When I returned to the living room, Nolan was seated beside Mara, his palm on the flat of
her pregnant belly, his head dipped close. A moment later, he jumped. “Wow, I totally felt her!
That’s crazy.”
Mara laughed like it was a party trick and, from the ottoman across the table, Henry
leaned in as though he would have liked to feel the baby, too. Mara caught it. “Henry?”
But he shook his head. “I’m good.” He stood and Nolan gave Mara a hug, following his
dad into the entryway. “I can’t wait to meet her,” Nolan said, embracing me. “Dad said he’ll get
me a ticket to come home once she’s here and settled in.”
Henry’s gaze flicked to mine with a flash of uncertainty, but I nodded. “Of course. You
have to come. Kyle, too.”
Nolan released me and Henry gave me a one-armed hug like I was an old friend, but

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before he left he grabbed my hand and held it an extra beat.
As the sky outside grows bright, I top off my coffee and settle onto the couch, pushing
thoughts of Henry from my mind. Book in my lap, I read a few pages, grateful for the escape as I
keep one eye on the clock. Mara is almost always awake by seven-thirty, so when the clock
shows eight-fifteen, I go to check on her.
The north-facing coach house remains dark.
Her bedroom is still quiet, so I give a perfunctory knock before letting myself in. The bed
is unmade. Empty.
“Mara?”
The coach house is only one bedroom and bath plus a living/dining area and a small
laundry room, so it takes no time at all to confirm she’s not here. We did talk about the doctor’s
appointment last night, but it’s possible she forgot. She’s been complaining about pregnancy
brain… My phone shows no missed calls or texts, so I dial Mara and listen as it rings once and
goes straight to voicemail.
The doctor’s office is only a ten-minute drive away, so technically we still have time. I
return to the house and pour a fresh cup of coffee, but I can’t focus and the bitter smell is
nauseating.
I check my phone again, dial Mara’s number even though it’s only been a few minutes.
Again, voicemail. It strikes me that the message is not Mara’s voice but the generic computerized
one. The sound of the automated message makes me cold. Unnerved, I return to the bedroom.
When I step inside, I notice a black cord dangling from an outlet behind the bedside table.
On my knees, I tug it free from the wall and stare at the unfamiliar metal tip, an adapter
for something I can’t identify. I look around the room, scanning for some other electronic device

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this cord might charge, but all I can think is that it’s for another phone.
But that’s impossible.
Mara had told me that Lance, her ex-husband, had been known to track her, showing up
when she least expected him or interrogating her about the places she’d gone. To protect herself,
Mara had disposed of her cell phone when she left Philadelphia. I’d given her an old iPhone of
mine and we set her up with a new number in my name.
The charger must be for something else, but the cord has set off a spark and I’m
bombarded by tiny explosions of fear. Looking around again, the space seems so wrong. So un-
Mara.
Over the months Mara has lived here, I’d come to think of the coach house as hers, and
while she added some personal touches to the main room, the bedroom is unchanged. The same
beige damask duvet cover with matching shams, the same throw pillows—one with a
needlepoint pheasant, one a mallard.
I retrieve the juice and scone I left earlier and am turning to leave when I notice that the
framed photograph on the side table, the one of Mara and Cate and me, is lying face down. The
photograph was one of the few things Mara brought with her, the frame something she picked up
at a flea market one weekend. Even without seeing the sun-faded image, I can picture our grins,
recall the day with surprising clarity—the three of us arm in arm in arm at the homecoming
football game our junior year. I have long since gotten rid of anything from that time. For months
after Mara’s arrival, the sight of this photograph, framed on the table, was like catching tender
skin against rough wood. It left little splinters.
Now that Mara is back in my life, Cate’s death feels closer too. The memory of that night
in my parents’ kitchen brushes my skin, like walking through a strand of spider silk. The solid

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surface of the dining chair, legs folded beneath me, a cloth napkin under my ankle to pad the
bone from the hard wood. The table a little too high to work at comfortably, I sat hunched over a
handwritten draft of my senior paper for AP History. I had a desk in my room, but some nights I
worked in the kitchen while Mom was doing dishes just for the sound of someone else’s
presence. Our phone rarely rang and, when it did, my parents acted like it was an unnecessary
interruption. Mom’s face had tightened into a series of lines as she listened to the caller—her
brow and lips horizontal, eyes narrowed, the three lines between them straight as soldiers. Then
she pivoted toward me, the receiver hanging off her hand like she considered throwing it in the
trash.
“It’s for you, Lexi. Mara is hysterical. I can’t understand a word she is saying.”
I grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”
“Lexi,” Mara had sobbed. “It’s Cate. Cate is dead.”
Unable to speak, I’d turned for my mother, but she was gone. I was alone in the kitchen.
“How?” It came out as a wail.
I sank onto the kitchen floor and lowered my head onto bent knees. An image of the
Vannattas’ hot tub, usually filled with Caleb and his rowdy buddies, flashed in my head as Mara
described finding Cate, the stain of blood on the fiberglass where our best friend had slipped and
hit her head, the waxy texture of her skin as Mara dragged her out of the water. When she hung
up, I was paralyzed on the linoleum floor, fighting to stave off a panic attack by focusing on the
items that surrounded me—my parents’ wine glasses, spotless and drying upside down beside the
sink. The coffee maker put away for the night, the tiled counter immaculate. A single magnet in
the shape of a flower—a gift I’d given my mother for her last birthday—stuck to the corner of
the refrigerator. I’d imagined she might use it for a picture of me, but the only thing I’d seen

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hung there was a grocery list.
Collapsed on the floor of my parents’ sterile kitchen, I clawed at my T-shirt and
surrendered to the panic rolling over me. I had never felt so alone.
Mara and I handled the loss of Cate very differently—while she celebrated her, kept her
out in the open, I hid her away. There are so many things that Mara and I handle differently. Her
optimism, her confidence. Even after what she went through in her marriage, Mara has remained
steady, a beacon.
As I set the photograph upright, the back falls open, exposing the card stock behind the
photo. There’s a dent in the paper, as though something was pressed into it. When I remove the
picture to take a closer look, something else falls free. A folded piece of newspaper. The paper
trembles as I unfold the brittle yellow page, but I already know what it is.
The article from the Cleveland paper, about Cate’s accident. I have read these words so
many times, I used to dream them at night, my imagination creating a vivid picture of Cate lying
in a pool of her own blood.
I refold the paper and study the imprint in the frame’s cardboard, recognizing the jagged
teeth of a key.
I remember the day Mara bought the frame, just a week or two after her arrival. I can’t
imagine why she’s kept a key hidden here, what it unlocks.
But I also can’t imagine why it’s missing. ...