If You're Out There(65)

Logan looks worried. “Wait, the guy was here?” I nod. “So . . . what? The man is tracking Ben now?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe.”

“Why?” I shake my head. Shrug. “That’s a long drive from California,” he says after a moment.

“Yeah, well . . .” I sigh out. “The lady told us they never moved in. Maybe they didn’t make it far at all.”

Logan frowns. “Is there any other place they’d be likely to stay? Somewhere driving distance from here? . . . An investment property? Or . . . a vacation home the family uses to get together?”

“There is no family,” I say. “Just them. Well, except . . .”

My mind jumps to the ZZ email. The sender was The Grissoms. As in more than one Grissom. As in a wife, maybe, and a late husband. My mouth falls open, my ears ringing, and all at once, a tidal wave of stupid fucking posts comes rushing to the forefront of my brain.

Stars can’t shine without darkness. . . .

Look through rain to see the rainbow. . . .

Everything happens for a reason. . . .

They’re Bed Bath & Beyond words. Pseudo-Buddhist language.

The kind that comes in whimsical fonts.

“Indiana,” I murmur.

“What?” says Logan.

“Oh my God.” I run a hand through my wet hair, pacing. “Oh my God. In the ZZ email. It was sent from the Grissoms! Plural. And, and . . .” Logan seems lost but I can’t explain it any better yet. A thought is bubbling to the surface. “Logan . . .” I stop and stare at him. “Think about it. In the message, it said ‘Welcome way in,’ right? What if it was an address? As in Welcome Way, Indiana?”

Frowning, Logan pulls out his phone and types quickly. My heart pounds against my ribs. His eyes meet mine, a little stunned. “There’s a Welcome Way in Green Plains, Indiana.”

He holds out the screen and an image of the neighborhood pops up with the map. The houses all look the same, but I’m certain I’ve been in one of them. “Holy shit,” I breathe. “I know where she is.”

The ride takes an eternity, though Google says an hour. I don’t speak the whole way there, eyes glazed, cars weaving all around us. Logan doesn’t speak either, just drives. Our clothes are still damp. Once in a while, he covers my hand with his own in the space between us.

The gliding treetops start to slow as we pull up to the open gates, the words Green Plains chiseled into vine-covered stone. In a sea of garages, there’s no way our car will go unnoticed, so we park along the low brick wall that separates the village from the road.

Logan turns off the ignition, a quiet coming over us. “The grandma’s house,” he says. “You’re sure.”

“Stepgrandma,” I say. “I only visited once, but the street looked exactly like what came up on Google.”

“A lot of streets look like this.”

“I’m telling you. It can’t be a coincidence. And all those Bed Bath and Beyond inspirational quotes? It’s a long-standing joke. She was telling me the whole time.”

“Telling you what?”

“Well . . .” I waver. “That I don’t know. To come here, at least. I think.”

Birds chirp above us as we walk, shrill against the low rumble of a distant roadway. There aren’t even sidewalks here. Just curbs. I jump when my phone rings. But it’s only Mom, wondering when I’m coming home. I text that I’m hanging at Logan’s for a while and switch the ringer off.

“So what do you think of the babe magnet?”

I come up from my thoughts. “The what?”

Logan smiles. “The car.”

“If you’re referring to the taupe Volvo station wagon with the Eat More Kale bumper sticker on it, you may want to reassess your terminology.”

“Hey,” he says. “You were sitting in it, weren’t you?”

I think he’s trying to ease my stress, but it isn’t working. He pulls my hand from my mouth. I’m doing it again. My nails are practically gone.

“You remember which one it is?” he asks as we come upon the street sign for Welcome Way. There are maybe thirty houses on the little bend before it ends, without explanation, and turns into burnt grass. There’s no storm here. No signs there ever was. It’s somehow fitting for this tidy place.

“Not really,” I say. “They’re like . . . identical.” The houses are spaced far apart with yards of grass or gravel, with only slight variations here and there. Most of the garages are closed, and I can’t see how we’ll tell the difference without Ben’s Prius.

A woman drives by with a neighborly wave, so I do the same. The sun has begun to set, the sky unfurling into brilliant sheets of gold and grapefruit pink.

Logan gives me a look like, So . . .

“Stay there,” I say, crunching across the gravel to sneak into a side yard. Through a first-floor window, I see a little girl sitting cross-legged while chatting with a teddy bear. Her eyes go wide when she sees me, but I shake my head—shhh—and duck out of view before she can say a word.

“Okay, nope, not that one,” I say when I come back.

“So one at a time,” says Logan. “That’s the plan?”

“Do you have another suggestion?”