Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
The neighbor was no help. Shane hadn’t seen or heard from Noah since the day before, when they exchanged glances while taking their trash bins to the curb.
Lucy insisted on checking with a few other neighbors on the block, just to be sure, but that effort was also pointless.
Most people didn’t answer the door, and the few who did had no information for them.
Lucy’s heart was starting to pound the more time passed without answers. Cecilia seemed worried, too, although not nearly as much as Lucy.
“How long do we have to wait before we can file a missing person’s report?” she asked.
“According to the movies, it’s usually forty-eight hours, but I have no idea if that’s real. I’d call the hubby to ask—he probably knows—but he won’t answer right now. It’s the middle of the night where he is.”
Cecilia rarely discussed her husband in detail, other than that he was in the military and often overseas for long stretches.
Lucy quickly learned that mentioning her long-distance spouse was a surefire way to bring tears to Cecilia’s eyes.
He was expected to be home by the end of summer, but that was still more than three months away.
Furthermore, she couldn’t really talk about his work or where he was stationed.
It was all classified, and Lucy suspected that Cecilia herself might not even know the specifics of his assignments.
All she knew was that Cecilia planned to talk to her husband when he got back, asking him to try transferring to a department with less travel so she could maybe go back to school. Other than that, Lucy stayed quiet about the man.
“Well,” Lucy said. “Maybe we should go to the police station just in case?”
“It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours, so I doubt they’ll do anything. Especially since Noah is a grown man with no known health issues; he’s not the type of person they start looking for this early.”
Lucy stared at her, chest so tight she could hardly breathe. They were standing outside Noah’s house, by their respective vehicles, deciding what to do next.
“What if he was with a minor?” she asked in a low, almost inaudible tone.
Cecilia frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean, do you think the police would be quicker to launch a search for him if we knew that he was with a kid? That it’s not just him who’s missing.”
“I don’t know, but why are you asking me that? Noah’s not with a kid… Is he?”
Lucy looked down at her feet. It was time to tell the truth. “I can’t say for sure, but I do know that the last time I saw him, he was taking Megan home to his place. That was last night, after the three of us went to see a movie.”
Cecilia’s jaw dropped. “So you lied to me about Megan being with a sitter?”
She nodded. “Yeah… But that’s not all I lied to you about.”
Her friend rocked back on her heels, her expression hard to read. “Okay, it sounds like the two of us have a lot to talk about.”
“For sure. But you’ll want to be sitting for the rest of it.”
Cecilia nodded, seemingly torn between worry and intrigue, not knowing which emotion to give in to at the moment. “Okay, but first, just tell me if you think your niece is in danger. Like, do we need to go to the police right now?”
Lucy shook her head. “I don’t know what’s going on, but if you’re asking if Noah kidnapped Megan, no. I don’t think she’s in any real danger. At least, not in that sense. Also, she’s not my niece.”
“Wait. What?” Her eyes were the size of saucers. “All right, I need to hear this. You said I need to be sitting for this conversation, but it sounds to me like I might also need a drink in my hand. Come on. We’re going to the bar.”
Lucy’s brow furrowed. “I thought you were exhausted?”
Cecilia scoffed and took Lucy’s hand, pulling her toward her car. “Let’s just say I’m now wide awake. Let’s go.”
Lucy knew it would test Cecilia’s patience, perhaps to an unbearable degree.
Still, she needed to wait until they both had drinks in hand and were seated on the back patio of the pub before she could start explaining.
Her friend did her best not to seem too irritated, but by the time they were seated and Lucy had taken three sips of her drink, Cecilia couldn’t help but roll her eyes.
“How long are you going to make me wait?”
“Sorry.” Lucy placed her drink—a gin and tonic made extra strong by the bartender—on the table and folded her hands in her lap. “Okay, the first thing you should know is that Megan is not my niece. She’s not related to me at all.”
“You mean, like, she’s not even your cousin’s child or whatever?”
She shook her head. “Nope. I only just met her a few days ago.”
“What? Then who is she?”
“I wish I knew. But honestly, I don’t really understand the girl’s story or where she even came from.
Basically, she showed up at the diner the night of the party, claiming her mom had dropped her off.
She said her mother had sent her into the diner and told her to ask for her dad, a man named Edward McMillen. ”
“Edward McMillen,” Cecilia repeated, her brow furrowed. Lucy watched for any sign of recognition in her friend’s face, but there wasn’t any. “Who’s that?”
“You don’t know?”
The crease between Cecilia’s eyebrows deepened. “Why would I? Does he live in town?”
“Well…technically, yes.” Lucy rubbed her hands together anxiously. “I was just curious to know whether or not you’ve ever heard that name.”
“Not that I recall. What’s going on? Who are we talking about right now?”
“It’s a man… He does live in town, but he doesn’t go by that name. You would know him as Noah Hitching.”
Cecilia gawked, then quickly shook her head. “Wait, no. That’s not possible.” She laughed, but it sounded forced. “You’re not seriously about to tell me that Noah is a fake name!”
“It’s not the name he was given at birth,” Lucy said. “He told me he had to change it when he moved here, but he wouldn’t give me any more information about why. All I know is that a little girl came into the diner asking for Edward McMillen, which happens to be Noah’s real name.”
“And this is Megan? The girl you said was your niece?”
“Yes.”
She smiled, but the expression looked almost painful, as if she were trying to find humor in something Lucy was clearly not joking about. “This is insane.”
“Trust me, I know. But it’s the truth. The girl came in, asked for Edward, and just as I was about to start calling around to find out who she belonged to, Noah scooped her up and insisted on taking her to the police station.
We both thought she was lost. I wanted to go with them, but I was too drunk to keep up, and he ran out of there so quickly.
Flash forward to the next day, and he’s begging me not to tell anyone what happened because he needed to figure some stuff out. ”
“I should think so!” Cecilia scoffed. “His daughter showed up out of the blue! Did he even know she existed?”
“That’s the thing,” Lucy said. “She’s not really his daughter. At least, not biologically.”
“This is getting stranger by the second.”
“Tell me about it.” She took another sip, needing a moment before delving into the rest. “It turns out she was adopted by some woman a few months ago, who somehow filled out the paperwork listing Noah as the adoptive father. The leading theory is that this is all just a huge clerical error, but there’s an open investigation right now, and a search is underway for the woman who dropped off the girl at the diner. ”
“How is that even possible? How could someone list another person as an adoptive parent without that person having any knowledge of it?” Cecilia shook her head, clearly having trouble accepting the story.
“Wouldn’t he have to go in front of a judge to adopt a kid?
How would the paperwork even be signed off without seeing the man in person? ”
“Well, that’s why we are thinking someone messed up when filing the paperwork,” Lucy said. “Like, there must be another Edward McMillen who really is this girl’s adoptive father, and whoever dropped her off at the diner assumed Noah was that Edward.”
“But another Edward McMillen living in the small town of Northampton?” She scrunched her face up with doubt. “That makes even less sense.”
“I’m not suggesting the real Edward lives around here.
The woman probably found the first person with that name and assumed he was the right guy and…
well, here we are.” Lucy shrugged. “Anyway, it’s just a theory.
We don’t really have much to go on at the moment.
And with Noah missing, I now have even less to go on. ”
Cecilia took a long sip from her drink, then smacked her lips together a few times. “Noah wouldn’t tell you anything about why he changed his name?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“That’s really strange. Do you think he told the police anything about that?”
“I have no idea. Why?”
“Because it’s probably relevant, or at least it might be. If Noah really wanted to find the girl’s mother, you’d think he’d want to share all the information he had.”
“I’m sure he told them whatever he thought was important,” Lucy said, though now that Cecilia had mentioned it, she was starting to feel a little less certain. Maybe she should’ve pushed Noah a little harder to tell her the truth. Maybe she shouldn’t have let him get away with being so evasive.
“I hope so.” Cecilia stirred her drink with her straw a few times.
“You’ve been telling me since day one that Noah’s a good guy, now you’re acting like he’s capable of lying to the police even when there’s the fate of a lost little girl on the line? Which one is it?”
“I don’t know!” Cecilia huffed. “Everything you’re saying right now is so crazy I can’t figure out what to think of it.
I don’t want to believe Noah would lie to the police about something like this, but there’s so much we clearly don’t know about him.
I’m realizing I didn’t even know his real name before today! How can I trust someone like that?”
Lucy let Cecilia’s words sink in, and after a moment, she said, “For the record, Noah’s been nothing but kind to Megan.
He’s caring for her really well, which makes me think he’d do anything to help reunite her with her mother if that’s what everyone agrees is in her best interest.” She took the straw from her drink and started chewing on it. “I just wish I knew where they were.”
“Now I’m thinking we maybe should go to the police.”
“And I was just thinking the opposite.”
Cecilia gawked at her. “Really?”
“Well, yeah…think about it. On paper, this all looks really bad for Noah. If we go to the police and tell them that he’s been living under a false name and has now disappeared with this little girl, we could end up getting him into a lot of trouble.”
“Trouble he brought upon himself,” Cecilia noted.
“I suppose.” She shrugged. “But I can’t ignore what I’ve seen the past couple of days. She was sick, and he freaked out. He rushed her to my house for help because he didn’t know what to do. Then he went out and bought her a bunch of stuff, like clothes and toiletries.”
“Well, I guess you’d know more than me, so I’ll leave this one up to you.”
“Oh, great.” She scoffed. “You’re going to make me take the fall if everything goes wrong.”
“If you ask me, everything has already gone wrong,” Cecilia said.
“I just don’t want to do anything rash. Let’s give him a little more time.
Who knows? Maybe the police contacted him because they found the girl’s mother, and Noah is on his way to bring them back together as we speak.
” She nodded. “Yeah, I’ll bet that’s exactly what’s going on.
We probably have nothing to worry about. ”
Cecilia narrowed her gaze and pursed her lips.
“Oh, come on. You’ve been friends with him for ten years,” Lucy said, not expecting so much desperation to seep into her voice. “He’s done nothing to make you think he was dangerous or suspicious, right?”
“No, never.”
“All right then. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for now.
Let’s assume he’s a good guy doing the right thing because that’s the kind of person he’s shown us to be.
You shouldn’t throw away a decade’s worth of good interactions and kindness because of something we’re not even remotely sure of. ”
Cecilia moved her mouth side to side, as if she were swishing around her thoughts before speaking them aloud. Lucy knew she needed to process everything that had been said. It was a lot to take in.
“I’ll get us another round.” Lucy slid out of her chair and grabbed her wallet. “We don’t have to decide what to do right now. Let’s just relax and see if any other ideas come to us.”
“Yeah, I’m sure more alcohol will help us come up with more ideas.”
“At this point, I don’t think it’ll hurt,” Lucy said. “But really, I could use another drink. If you want to switch to soda, though, I won’t judge you.”
“No, no. I need another drink, too. In fact, I’ll need more than that after this conversation.”
“And to think, you didn’t even quit your long-term job today like I did.”
Cecilia’s eyes widened. “What?”
Laughing, Lucy spun on her heel and said, “Hang on. I’ll fill you in on all of that when I’m back. First things first, we need booze.”