Chapter 13: Take Me Home

"It's in the garage," Pippa said. "On the shelf over his workbench, in a coffee can with a red lid."

The clock on the stove said twenty past nine.

"Under the screws?" Abraham asked.

"Under the screws. It plugs into the outlet for the door opener, so it never dies." She said it flatly.

"How do you know the passcode?"

"I watched his thumb for a month." Pippa almost smiled. "It's the year he opened the first lot."

I took her cold hands across the table and held them between mine.

"You are never doing this alone again," I said.

"I know. That's why I told you." She looked at the clock. "I have to go."

Abraham was already standing with the keys.

He parked a block from the house on Maple Court, with the lights off and the engine ticking.

Pippa climbed over my knees to the curb and hugged me through the window.

"Don't text me," she said. "Don't call. I'll find you."

"Pippa."

"I'm good at this, Mom." Her voice cracked on the last word. "I'm really good at this."

She ran up the dark side of the street and slipped through the garage side door.

A light came on upstairs.

A moment later, headlights swung around the corner behind us.

Abraham slid down in his seat and put his arm across the back of mine.

Connor's SUV passed within six feet of the truck, and Brynn laughed in the passenger seat at something he said.

They turned into the drive.

The garage door rose, and fell.

Neither of us breathed until the upstairs light went out.

"She made it," I whispered.

"She made it."

My whole body was shaking, and not from fear.

For nine days I had been a woman who had lost her child, and she had never been lost at all.