Natalie still stood there frozen. Chess handed her a helmet, too.
“You’re not worried about getting your friend Megan or her mom in trouble?” Chess asked. “You know, if we’re . . . gone for a while?”
He wasn’t going to let his voice just trail off. He wasn’t going to acknowledge any danger except delays.
“I tried your mom’s trick, and set up automatic texts that will go to my dad over the next week, if we’re gone that long,” Natalie said. “It’s all excuses until the last one. And the last one will . . . explain.”
Chess wanted to say, Do you really think explanations help? Did we miss our mother any less, knowing why she left?
But just then, Natalie gifted him with a dazzling smile.
“And don’t worry about me getting anybody else in trouble,” she added. “I don’t have any friends named Megan.”
And then she snapped on her helmet, threw her leg over the bicycle, and pushed off, leading all of them out into the early-morning darkness, toward her mother’s house.
Thirteen
Finn
Finn had never been allowed to ride his bike in the dark before, and he loved it.
Of course, he had Natalie and Emma ahead of him and Chess behind him, so he felt perfectly safe and in no danger of getting lost. He could just savor the fact that the route from Mr. Mayhew’s house to Ms. Morales’s neighborhood was downhill. The first mile or so, he barely had to pedal.
Then there was a straightaway for a while, where they all pedaled hard.
We’re finally going back to get Mom! Finn wanted to shout at everyone they passed—the joggers and the other cyclists and the cars inching around them, making room. The words sang in his head, working into the rhythm of his pedaling. He hadn’t felt this happy in weeks.
They turned into Ms. Morales’s neighborhood, which was full of even bigger mansions than Mr. Mayhew’s neighborhood, and even bigger yards, too. It took Finn at least five times of saying, We’re finally going back to get Mom! to get past each house. And then Ms. Morales’s house lay right ahead and above them, just as the sun broke over the horizon.
Natalie screeched to a halt.
“What?” she exclaimed. “Is that—?”
Just as abruptly as she’d stopped, she hopped back on her bike and started pedaling furiously toward her mother’s house.
Finn pulled up beside Emma, who was still stopped and peering off after Natalie.
“What happened?” Finn asked. “What got into her?”
Emma squinted into the distance. She shaded her eyes with her hand to block the glare of the rising sun.
“I think . . . ,” she began. “I think . . . Finn, why would there be a For Sale sign in Ms. Morales’s yard?”
Fourteen
Emma
By the time Emma, Finn, and Chess caught up with Natalie, she’d yanked the Realtor’s sign out of her mother’s yard and stomped it down flat on the grass.
“I hate him!” she shouted. “He didn’t even tell me! How could Dad put Mom’s house on the market—Mom’s and my house on the market—and not—not—”
“I was wrong. That sign actually just says ‘Coming Soon,’ not ‘For Sale,’” Emma said, squinting down at the sign. “That’s not as bad, is it?”
“And why do you think it was your dad who did this?” Chess asked. “Your parents are divorced. So wouldn’t your mom have had arrangements for someone else to—”
“Who cares?” Natalie said, jumping up and down on the sign. “Somebody gave up on Mom ever coming back. Somebody thinks she’s dead, and Dad didn’t even have the courage to tell me what . . . what . . .”
Natalie’s long, dark hair flew out in all directions as she jumped and screamed. The part of Emma’s mind that always analyzed things scientifically thought it was a beautiful demonstration of kinetic energy.
The part of Emma’s brain that felt angry all the time wanted to join Natalie in stomping on the sign.
“Natalie,” Chess said softly. “We wanted to sneak into your mom’s house without anyone seeing or hearing us.”
Natalie ignored him.
“Maybe you’d feel better throwing that sign into the trash?” Emma asked.
“Good idea,” Natalie said. She lifted the sign from the ground and stomped over to punch in the garage code on the side of the house. Before the garage door was even halfway up, she ducked under it and slammed the sign down into the trash can in the garage. Then she kicked the can.
The three Greystones dashed after her into the garage. Chess hit the control pad to shut the door from the inside, hiding all four of them.
“Natalie, nobody would have changed anything in your mom’s office, right?” Emma asked. “It’s still soundproof, isn’t it?”
“How would I know?” Natalie growled. “Nobody tells me anything!”
“Let’s go check,” Emma said.
She and Natalie raced toward Ms. Morales’s office. Emma shut the door behind them, pausing only to tell Chess and Finn, “You two stay outside. Knock on the door if you hear anything.” Then Emma turned to Natalie and told her, “Scream as loud as you want. Say bad words if you have to.”
“AHHHH!” Natalie shrieked.
Emma put her hands over her ears to keep from being deafened. But she could still hear Natalie shouting: “Nobody should give up on my mom! She can take care of herself! She’s fine! She’s still alive! And we’re going to rescue her! It’s not going to be like Grandma. . . .”
Natalie suddenly went silent.
“Wait, what?” Emma asked, taking the hands off her ears. “‘Like Grandma’—what does that mean? You’ve never told us about any grandma.”
Natalie’s face quivered.
“She died,” Natalie said. “A year ago. She was my favorite person in the whole world, and . . . I don’t talk about it. I can’t talk about it, not when Mom’s missing, and Dad . . . and Mom . . . I hate how people say, ‘I’m sorry,’ and it doesn’t mean anything. . . .”
Emma knew what that was like.
“You can keep screaming if you want,” she offered.
Natalie screeched even louder than the first time. Emma joined in, yelling at the top of her lungs, “Natalie’s so right! Nobody else is going to die!”
Ms. Morales was a Realtor herself, and she had half a dozen signs with her face on them stacked behind her enormous desk.
“That woman is still alive!” Emma shouted, pointing at the signs. “My mom is still alive, too! They’re both fine! So’s Joe!”
Natalie and Emma stopped screaming at the exact same time. Natalie blinked in the unexpected quiet.
“Emma . . . that really helped,” she said, sounding surprised. “How did you know? Is there some scientific study you read somewhere, about how screaming can make you feel better?”
“Nope,” Emma said. “It’s just what I would want to do, if I were you. It’s . . . what I’ve wanted to do for the past two weeks.”