“I always thought she was going back to where she grew up. She said it was a poor area. A lot of Native Americans.”

“The Lumbee,” I said. “She grew up in Robeson County.” Was that where she went? Had she told us that or did we all just assume it? She’d always stayed in touch with us by email or cell phone, but I didn’t think we’d ever had an actual street address for her.

“Well, listen.” Suzanne sniffed the sage again. “I’m going to walk through the house and think about how my furniture will fit, all right?”

“Absolutely,” Emerson said. “Holler if you have a question.”

We watched her walk back to the house, then turned to each other.

“We’re idiots,” I said. “Are the months when she was away in her record books?”

“I don’t think so. I think I would have noticed addresses outside this area. I bet that’s when it happened.”

“You’re right.” But then I remembered the article about Anna Knightly and shook my head. “Maybe not, though. Anna Knightly’s baby was taken from a Wilmington hospital,” I reminded her. “Robeson County’s, what—an hour and a half away?”

Emerson put her hands on the sides of her head and looked like she wanted to scream. “I’m going to figure this out if it’s the last thing I do,” she said.

My cell phone rang, electronic strains of “All That Jazz” filling Noelle’s backyard. I dug the phone from the purse slung over my shoulder and glanced at the caller ID. Ian.

“Hey, Ian,” I said.

“Where are you?” He sounded almost curt, and I frowned.

“Emerson and I are at Noelle’s. Suzanne is here looking at the—”

“Can the two of you come to my office right now?” he asked.

“Right now?” I looked at Emerson. “We’ve got things we need to do for the party tomorrow.”

“It’s important,” Ian said. “I figured out when Noelle had a baby.”

29

Noelle

Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina

September 1992

This is the most despicable, most insane thing you’ve ever done, she told herself as she walked through the quiet, dimly lit hallway of the Blockade Runner. It was two in the morning and Wrightsville Beach had been sleeping when she pulled into the parking lot of the massive oceanfront hotel. She wanted privacy. She wanted everyone to be sleeping. There was only one other person she wanted to be awake.

She walked into the empty foyer. A huge sign greeted her. Welcome LSAS! She had no idea what the letters stood for. The L was either legal or law. It didn’t matter. She didn’t care about the conference. She turned left and started walking down the hall.

Her life was very full these days, and she was grateful. She was finally doing what she’d longed to do since she was twelve years old—practicing midwifery. She lived ten minutes from Emerson and her new husband, Ted, renting the little Sunset Park house Ted had lived in before he and Emerson were married. Sunset Park was exactly the type of neighborhood Noelle loved: diverse, utterly unpretentious, with a growing sense of community. Emerson was already pregnant and very happy, and when Emerson was happy Noelle was happy.

It seemed ironic that Ted and Emerson, who’d known each other less than a year, were already married while Tara and Sam still were not—although that was about to change. Their wedding was only two weeks away. Tara would have been delighted to get married the day after she graduated from UNC, if not before, but Sam had taken things at a slower pace. He wanted everything in place before he got married, he’d said. He wanted the bar exam behind him and his law practice set up before he took on a wife and family. Now, things were as in place as they were going to get. Tara was in her first year of teaching and Sam had sailed through the bar exam and joined an already established attorney, Ian Cutler, in his practice. Sam could stall no longer. That was the way Noelle had come to view his reluctance to plan the wedding. He was having his doubts, and although he never said as much, she felt certain she was the cause. How could he marry one woman when he had feelings for another? She couldn’t let him. Not without a fight. As full as her life felt, there was one thing missing and that was Sam. His wedding date now loomed on her calendar like a death.

She found his room easily. First floor, oceanfront. They could leave the sliding glass doors open and listen to the sea. She’d gotten the number from Tara, telling her she needed to talk to him about a midwifery case. She hated lying to Tara about why she wanted Sam’s room number. Somehow the lie felt even worse than what she was doing now. But Tara, ever trusting, bought her excuse. It wouldn’t be the first time Noelle had consulted with Sam about one of her patients. He was focusing on health law, which pleased her, and she liked to think she had something to do with his choice since she was always bending his ear with her concerns about child and maternal health. When the five of them got together, she and Sam often wound up talking shop while everyone else discussed wedding plans or the real-estate market. She felt closer to him than ever. He was the only person who knew that she was Emerson’s sister, the only person she could ever talk to about how that relationship gave her both joy and pain.

She knocked on the door to his room, then waited in the silence. Nothing. She knocked again, harder.

Sam pulled the door open and she knew she’d awakened him. His dark hair was tousled, his jeans unsnapped, his chest bare. His eyes widened when he saw her, his lashes so long that they cast shadows on his cheeks from the hallway lights.

“What’s wrong?” he said. “Is Tara all right?”

“Everyone’s fine,” she said. “I just wanted to see you.”

He hesitated a moment, and she knew he was trying to make sense of what she’d said. What she was doing here at two in the morning, two weeks before his wedding.

Reaching for her wrist, he drew her into the room. She walked straight to the unmade side of his bed and sat down on the edge. She felt the light from the night table pool over her and wondered what he saw in her face.

He looked at her, hands on his hips, and for the briefest of moments, neither of them spoke.

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