Chapter 1 Braedyn
brAEDYN
ONE YEAR LATER
My heart gave a stutter step, the kind that made me wonder if I’d developed a heart condition in the three hundred and seventy-two days Nova had been missing. Not one sign or sighting beyond things that were wishful thinking. So maybe it was a heart condition.
A broken heart.
My fingers tightened around the steering wheel as I fought against worst-case scenarios and nightmares that took root in my mind. I would not let the what-ifs win.
The used SUV I’d emptied my savings for had seen better days, but it hugged the road like a dream as the worn sign came into view: Welcome to Starlight Grove. The wood was weathered, but you could still make out the stars carved into its grain at the top and the ornate trees along either side.
It was rustic and charming, like the town itself.
But all I could feel were nerves. My stomach gave a jolting rumble as my gaze flicked to my wrist and the pink-purple-and-teal friendship bracelet Nova had made me during one of her crafty phases.
I hadn’t taken it off in the three hundred and seventy-two days she’d been missing, and it was starting to fray in places.
There were times when the bracelet felt like one of those hourglasses filled with sand—a marker of what was left. And time was running out. Those final grains swirling around and around, threatening to tell me I was out of options. And Nova was out of time.
“I’m not an idiot, right?” I whispered to no one. Not to Owen, who had his headphones on, glued to a show on his tablet. Not to my sweet, mischievous dog, Yeti, whose nose was pressed to the glass, dying to smell all the new scents.
Nova had always been the recipient of all my questions and doubts. The one I talked through every problem with. But now…I didn’t have a single soul. Not really.
As the road curved again, I sucked in breath but for a whole new reason. Mount Lupine sprang up over the fields and forests like a beacon guiding us home—to our new home, anyway.
Starlight Grove might hold shadows, but it also gleamed with unending beauty.
Every corner you turned, there was something new to discover.
Sagebrush and tall grass-filled meadows.
Ponderosa pine- and spruce-packed forests.
Countless bending rivers and streams. And that mountain as a backdrop to it all.
Yeti shoved her head between the front seats and licked my cheek at the sound of my intake of air. I couldn’t help the soft laugh that bubbled out of me. “You ready, girl?”
She barked as if to say, You’ve had my furry butt locked in this car for four hours. What do you think?
Owen brushed his headphones off, and I heard the faint sounds of that robot show he loved emanating from them. He shoved his glasses-clad face through the opening between the seats, too.
A more full-bodied laugh left me at the sight of the two of them in my rearview mirror.
Owen and Yeti had become besties since I brought her home from the shelter a little over a year ago.
A mix of Labrador, Saint Bernard, coonhound, and pit bull, she carried traits of all four.
But most importantly, she had the nose of the first three, making her an excellent search dog and a pretty dang good guard dog to boot.
“Are we here?” Owen asked, bouncing in his seat as much as his seat belt would allow.
“Just about. What do you think?”
My eight-year-old cocked his head to the side, examining the landscape in front of him. “It’s big.”
My mouth curved, and I held on to the way it felt.
The lingering tendrils of warmth from the laugh he and Yeti had created.
After Nova went missing, I’d had to fake every laugh and smile for months.
For Owen. So he wouldn’t know the truth of what had happened.
So he’d believe the story that Nova had been forced to return home to help her family. That she’d try to come back.
But one day, Owen had been painting on his activity table and accidentally exploded the blue paint all over his face. His glasses had blocked the worst of it from getting into his eyes, but he’d looked like a blue burglar.
I’d laughed for real for the first time and knew then that you could find humor amid pain, and joy amid agony. And I’d vowed to hold on to every sprinkle I could get.
“Mountains tend to be big, kiddo.”
“I knoooooow, bruh,” Owen said in that voice that was eight going on eighteen. The bruh thing was new. I hadn’t been Mommy in years, but I’d hoped to hold on to Mom for a little longer. Now, I was bro or bruh more often than not.
“All right, bruh.” I reached back and tickled his neck, making him squeal in a tone that was still 100 percent little boy. And I clung to that, too.
Yeti let out another bark and licked Owen, sensing some sort of game being played.
“Gross, Yeti! You’re a slobberfest.”
I chuckled as I made the turn into downtown Starlight Grove.
I braced, waiting for the memories to hit—the handful I had of Nova and me here.
The Grove Griddle, the diner where we’d had some incredible French toast. Barrel & Branch, the wine bar where we’d sampled local creations.
The adorable little B&B where we’d stayed.
But because I’d braced, the memories didn’t hit as hard. They liked to surprise—a sucker punch of grief when you least expected it.
“It looks like one of those old movies you love,” Owen remarked, taking in the downtown.
It did look like a set from an old Western, with not a single stoplight in sight, so opposite from our life in Oakland. But I guessed you didn’t need lights when you went from a population of almost half a million to just over a thousand.
The downtown area’s aesthetic was rustic with endless character—the kind of thing stores in urban areas paid a whole lot of money to look like. Sort of shabby chic. Some stuck with the Old West vibe, others had brick facades and antique glass windows. Still more had an old-farmhouse feel.
Planters adorned just about every storefront, erupting with color.
The bakery had a sign that read: Order your Fourth of July pies!
in artsy script. An aged wood building, so dark it was almost black, read The Boot and looked like an honest-to-goodness saloon.
I spotted the bookstore, craft shop, and plenty of little tourist shops before my GPS told me we’d arrived.
I snagged an empty parking spot and marveled at the fact that there were no meters to pay. At least I’d be saving money there—and on the rental I was about to pick up the keys for. But I was also jobless.
My gig as an office manager at a tiny accounting firm had been about as exciting as watching paint dry, but at least the paycheck had been steady and they’d allowed me to work only the hours Owen was in school. I wasn’t sure I’d be as lucky here.
But the Starlight Grove school system had an excellent rating, despite the town’s small size. The articles I’d read praised it for being highly supported by the community, with a low student-to-teacher ratio. It also had what looked like an amazing after-school program if I needed it.
We’d make it work. I gripped the wheel a little harder as if to cement that promise to myself.
Turning off the engine, I twisted around in my seat. “How about you pack up your backpack with your tablet, headphones, and water bottle? I’m not sure how long the paperwork will take.”
Owen groaned. “More sitting.”
He had a point. “Looks like there’s a park down the block. Why don’t we walk Yeti first and get out the wiggles. Then, after we get the keys, burgers and milkshakes?”
I didn’t tell him we’d also have to get groceries. That could wait until my boy had been fed. Just like Nova, you didn’t want to mess with him when he was hangry.
“Chocolate milkshakes?” Owen asked, hedging.
I gave him a comically exasperated expression. “Do I look like an idiot? Of course, chocolate.”
Owen started doing a shimmy shake in his seat, singing some made-up song resembling the cha-cha tune. “Cho-co-late shake, yeah! Cho-co-late shake, yeah!”
Much to my amusement, Yeti started copying Owen’s shaking movements. A laugh forced its way out of me, and I held on to the warm vibrations. “All right, dance king. Pack up your bag so it’s ready.”
As he started what I knew would be at least a ten-minute process, I reached for my phone. There were no text messages. No missed calls.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. Nova and I never went anywhere without checking in with each other half a dozen times. But I didn’t have that anymore.
Shoving all those feelings down, I toggled over to my photo-sharing app and waited for the interface to load. The moment it did, I tapped my profile.
SearchingForSunrise.
The account was dedicated to Yeti and me and followed our journey since I’d brought her home from the shelter.
I’d had guidance from an amazing woman up in Cedar Ridge, Washington, who was involved in training dogs for search-and-rescue operations.
When I told her why I wanted to train a search dog, Maddie had helped me for free.
That was just the kind of generous soul she was.
It hadn’t been easy, but the training had given me a place to focus all my angry, sad, hopeless energy. And so had getting plugged into the missing-persons community.
Until a loved one went missing, you had no idea just how many people disappeared every single year. Over six hundred thousand in the United States alone. And so often, people weren’t searched for.
I knew damn well I was the only one looking for Nova.
The sheriff’s department headquartered in Starlight Grove had put in a mixed effort. There were officers I could tell truly cared, and others who were phoning it in at best. The sheriff himself wasn’t exactly my favorite person.
It had taken begging and pleading for them to involve Juniper County Search and Rescue two days after Nova’s disappearance, but with a rainstorm that week, they hadn’t found a thing.
Neither had the state police when they joined the investigation.
And Sheriff Miller certainly hadn’t been thrilled with how often I called to check on the case.
But the nail in the coffin had been his call to me a few weeks ago.
“Nova’s case is cold, and I’m reassigning the officers on it. You have to stop grasping at straws and wasting taxpayer dollars when they could be spent on cases where they might actually do some good. There’s nothing left to find. It’s time for you to move on.”
Sheriff Miller thought Nova had slipped and fallen into the river or been attacked by a wild animal, possibly one of the cougars who roamed the woods. But I knew in my bones that wasn’t true. Just like I knew Nova was out there somewhere, waiting for me to find her.
A couple of the officers had gone above and beyond, two of them continuing to keep the case on their desks, but there wasn’t much they could do when the sheriff wanted them focused on cases with real leads.
I fought the scowl that wanted to rise, inhaling deeply. If you hadn’t gone through losing someone this way, you’d never understand the brutal blow that was “There’s nothing left to find.” And I refused to believe it.
I clicked on the image I’d uploaded before we left that morning: a shot of Yeti in the redwoods after a search exercise. I never posted places I’d been until after I left, and I never showed my face on the feed—safety precautions I’d learned from getting involved in the missing-persons community.
The caption of the image read: Yeti loves new adventures.
There were about ninety-eight comments. A few familiar names of people I knew from the missing world.
TheGamerGirl13: Yeti is the goodest girl! All the bones for you!
PDustan88: What did you have her searching for this time? I tried the sock exercise yesterday and it took Bingo three tries but he got it and his peanut butter reward.
DogLuverX8: What kind of pupper? I’m in love with that face.
That drooly face, I thought to myself. As I caught the next comment, my blood chilled.
V.Fabes911: New adventures, huh? I wonder where…
It wasn’t threatening. Not exactly. But I still clicked the profile.
Private. No profile photo. Just like always.
Every time, it was a different incarnation of Vincent Faber’s name.
It was like he got some sick pleasure out of my knowing that, even though he hadn’t wanted us, he was still keeping tabs.
I hit block and locked my phone. He didn’t get to steal this from me like he’d stolen so many other things. I wouldn’t make my profile private to keep him out because he didn’t get to keep me from the community I’d built. He didn’t get to win.
Vincent had been letting me know he’d been watching since the moment I left. Anonymous emails. Even texts until I changed my number. And now, this.
It wasn’t exactly a shock. He’d always had a petulant side, the kind of personality that meant he just had to have the last word. When we started dating, I’d found it amusing, even adorable. But that was before I saw the other side of it.
I shoved all my anger and hurt down into the same cavern I kept my Nova emotions in. Locked away where they couldn’t take over. Where they wouldn’t affect me or Owen or the new life we were building. Because we were going to build something beautiful.
And I would find Nova. So she could share in the beauty with us.