Page 44 of The Magic We Made

I’d been lying when I told Ash I couldn’t have dinner with him because I’m going to a party. The last thing I want to do is go to an engagement party, even the engagement party of someone as nice as Jessica Gold. This is why I’d sent my regrets.

Besides, no one needs a bitter old divorcée like me at their festive pre-wedding celebration.

Ash doesn’t know I sent Jessica my regrets. Things might get awkward if he notices my car hasn’t left the driveway, but I can always make up an excuse if he asks why I didn’t leave my house. Food poisoning is my favorite. No one ever questions you when you say you had food poisoning.

And what do I even care if Ash Merit wonders why I lied to him? It’s not that I don’t have sympathy for him, or for his boss or the Bridles or Meg or any of the other missing girls and their families.

I just don’t have any time to spare for anyone but my own patients... and Daisy.

I’m planning on taking the cat to the walk-in clinic in Bridgeport after my appointments. Traffic will be a nightmare, but it will be worth it to find out if she truly is a stray, or, more importantly, pregnant, and what, if anything, I need to do to help her along her journey as a new cat mom.

But just as I’m telling my last patient of the day that we’re out of time and will take up his chronic overspending on skins and other gaming microtransactions next week, there’s a knock at my door.

At first I think it must be Ash.

“I wonder who’s found him now, Daisy.” I’m still saying her name a lot, so she’ll recognize it. She doesn’t look impressed. “Maybe Amelia Earhart?”

But when I tug open the door, it isn’t Ash standing on my front porch. It’s my sister Angie, pulling a wheelie bag behind her and panting a little from the exertion.

“Oh, great, you’re home. I came as soon as I heard,” she says.

I stare at her in shock. “You already heard?” I know the gossip mill in West Harbor churns pretty fast. But this was unprecedented. “How?”

“It’s all over the Internet.” Angie pushes past me, rolling her wheeled makeup bag behind her (even though—or perhaps because—Richard used to ask her not to, fearing scuff marks on his hardwood floors). It isn’t until she casually throws a shopping bag from Enchantments—Jessica Gold’s clothing boutique—onto my couch that she notices Daisy for the first time.

“Oh my God,” she cries. “You finally caught her?”

“Yes,” I say. She doesn’t need to know that it was Ash, not me, who caught Daisy.

“Are you sure she’s a stray?” Angie has already stopped at the mirror I have hanging on the wall near the front door and is checking her hair. “She looks too fat not to have an owner... though I know you’ve been feeding her tuna.”

“She isn’t fat, she’s with child.”

Angie’s eyes widen as she turns to stare at me. “You adopted apregnantcat?”

“I don’t know for sure. I haven’t had a chance to take her to the vet. I’ve been a little busy.”

“What haveyoubeen busy doing?” Angie has now knelt down beside her roller bag and opened it to unload things onto my dining room table: wide tooth comb, hair clips, foil, boxes of what looks like hair dye. I don’t ask why she’s unpacking these things. I don’t want to know.

“Isn’t that what you heard?” I ask instead. “I’ve been busy dealing with one of the missing girls. She showed up at my neighbor’s house this morning.”

“Get out!” Angie looks stunned... and excited. “Where was she? Is she okay? Did she know where the other girls are?”

“Probably, but she was in no shape to tell. I thought you knew all this.” I watch as Angie goes to my hall closet and pulls out one of my beach towels. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

She turns to stare at me, her eyes wide. “You mean you don’t know? You haven’t heard?”

“About what? What are you talking about?”

Angie heaves a sigh, then lays down the towel and walks over to me, putting her hands on either of my shoulders and tilting herchin to look up at me. I’m the tallest of my siblings—including Mark—and have always relished this fact.

Until now, because I can look right down the low-cut, sequined shirt Angie is wearing and see that she has on her best black-lace push-up bra. Something is up, and it isn’t only my sister’s tits.

“This is going to be hard to hear,” she says, and I know instantly that whatever it is, she can’t wait to tell me. She’s loving that she’s the person who gets to tell me, even if she’s pretending she doesn’t want to. “But I want you to know, I think it’s amazing news.”

There are only two things that it could possibly be: either someone has contacted my sister claiming to be Daisy’s long-lost owner and asked her to come over to take her away from me, or they’ve found Emma Bridle. They’ve found Emma Bridle, and she’s fine, and Ash can stop looking for her and go back to the city, and my life can finally return to normal.

That’s what it is. Ithasto be—