PART 3 – My youngest son, who works as a commercial airline pilot, called me out of the blue. “Mom,

“Tell her I’m sorry.”

“She knows.”

“No. Tell her.”

“I will.”

The call dropped.

For a while, Tessa and I sat in that room without saying much. I asked how long she’d been there. She said she’d come over at 8:18, after Chloe had left for the airport with Ray. Tessa had entered through the side door with the spare key Chloe kept in a flowerpot.

“I told you she was in the shower,” I said.

“You heard me say it.”

“I believed it.”

Tessa nodded. “That was the point.”

I hated her for saying it, even though she wasn’t wrong.

She took the sweater off and folded it over the chair. Under it, she wore a black T-shirt. Nothing about her looked like Chloe now, not even a little. I wondered how I had missed the difference. Then I remembered that I hadn’t looked closely. I’d been unloading the dishwasher and thinking about what I would make for lunch.

“What happens when David comes home?” I asked.

“He’ll know she left.”

“He doesn’t know she’s on the plane.”

“He will.”

I looked at the clock on the nightstand. It was 9:47.

“Can you stay until he gets back?”

“I can’t. Chloe asked me to leave before that.”

“So I’m alone with this.”

Tessa stood up. “You’re not alone. You’re just the one who has to tell him.”

I wanted to say that she had no idea what my family was like. Then I remembered she had probably heard more from Chloe than I ever had.

Tessa walked downstairs ahead of me. At the side door, she turned back.

“She didn’t want you to be the one who found out,” she said.

“But I did.”

“Yes.”

Then she left.

I locked the door behind her. It was a small thing. A practical thing. I checked it twice.

David called at 10:36. He said he was leaving the office early because Chloe wasn’t answering her phone. I asked if anything was wrong.

He said, “Did she tell you something?”

I could have lied. I could have said I knew nothing. For half a second, I thought about doing exactly that.

Then I heard Chloe say, “You were helping him.”

So I said, “She went to the airport.”

The pause on the other end was longer than Lucas’s had been.

“What do you mean?”

“She’s on Lucas’s flight to Rome.”

“Who told you that?”

“Lucas.”

David swore under his breath. Then he asked if Toby was at school. I told him yes.

“Did she take anything?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did she take Toby’s passport?”

“I don’t know.”

He was already moving toward a list of things he might lose. I could hear his car turn signal clicking in the background.

“David,” I said.

“What?”

“She told me she was scared you’d keep Toby from her.”

He didn’t answer.

I hadn’t meant to bring it up. It came out anyway.

Then he said, “You promised you wouldn’t repeat that.”

I had not promised. That was the sort of detail David could make sound settled just by saying it with enough confidence.

“I’m not going to talk about this on the phone,” I said.

“Mom, I needto know where she is,” David said. “I’m not telling you anything else,” I said, and ended the call. I didn’t know if it was the right thing. I only knew I’d already made one choice for Chloe, and I wasn’t making it again.

The drawer beside my bed held a folded note. Chloe had written it in blue pen. “Toby asked if Grandma tells Dad everything. I said no.”

I sat on the edge of the bed with the note in my hand. The plane was already gone.