Chapter 54 Caro
CARO
WE brOKE, CARO THINKS, our friendship broke, and she wants to cry.
Ash left her after they descended from the viewpoint of Seraph’s Perch.
“I’m going the rest of the way down on my own,” she told Caro.
“I didn’t want to leave you up there in case you had another panic attack.
Are you okay now?” Ash looked at Caro, but she clearly wanted to be away, gone.
And even though Caro felt it too, it hurt.
“Do you think you’re going to have another attack? ”
“No,” Caro said. “Ash.”
“What?” Ash asked.
But then Caro didn’t know what to say.
Caro came the rest of the way down the trail without hurrying. She returned to Sonnet without knowing if it’s where she wants to be. She tries not to think about the texts she got at the top of Seraph’s Perch, or about Hope, but she can’t think of anything else.
What the hell happens next?
She stands in front of the main tent of Sonnet, uncertain. It’s past lunchtime. She should eat. She should sleep. She should look for Hope. She should text Owen Nelson back. She should call Dan. She should check on her dad.
In the midst of her indecision, she hears sounds that take her a moment to place. Then she realizes they’re coming from the direction of the drive-in theater. It’s people talking, music playing. A movie? Right now? But it’s afternoon, not even close to evening.
Caro walks toward the theater. The soundtrack to the movie isn’t only coming from the cars. It’s also coming from the speakers that have been set up throughout the viewing area so that people sitting on the bleachers or on blankets under the trees can hear, too.
And there on the screen, larger than life, is Hope Hanover.
In Undeniable, her most recent movie. She’d walked the red carpet for that one in a rose-gold dress they’d given their opinions on over an emergency group call.
It had been between the rose-gold dress and a blue one.
Caro had secretly preferred the blue. “Next time I have a premiere,” Hope had said, “I’ll fly the two of you out to walk the red carpet with me. ”
Now, Caro stares, heart thudding, mouth dry, at the movie screen. “What the hell?” she says out loud.
“I know,” someone says behind her.
Caro spins around. It takes her brain a few seconds to place the tiny, dark-haired woman. Hope’s agent. Raye.
“Caro, isn’t it?” Raye says, holding out her hand. “Can I buy you a late lunch?”
The food truck is closed, and they end up in the restaurant. Caro hasn’t been inside it before, and she doesn’t want anything to eat, but she doesn’t have anything or anyplace else to suggest.
“Was showing Hope’s films your idea?” she asks Raye as they take their seats.
The place is almost empty, but Caro keeps her voice low.
The waitstaff are casting interested glances at them.
Of course they know who Caro and Raye are.
Caro lifts up her napkin and sets it in her lap.
Her hands are still shaky and it slides to the floor. She doesn’t bother picking it up.
“Absolutely not.” Raye pushes her utensils aside. Her mouth is set in a firm line, and her eyes are bright but weary. “I’d never let them do this without paying us a pile of money.”
“Do you have any idea where Hope is?” Caro asks.
“No.” Raye’s sunglasses are perched on top of her head, and she’s dressed all in black.
Somehow even in the heat, even in the desert, she doesn’t seem out of place.
She owns every room she walks into. What would that be like?
Caro wonders. She used to be so confident in who she was—a doctor, Dan’s wife, Henry’s daughter, and, most of all, herself.
“Do you?” Raye asks.
“No.”
“Well, we’ve gotten that out of the way,” Raye says. “Something is wrong. Hope doesn’t disappear like this.”
“Do you think it’s one of us?” Caro asks. “Me or Ash?”
“I think one of you might be the link,” Raye says. “I don’t know that I suspect either of you personally. Do you suspect me?”
“I don’t know,” Caro says honestly. She doesn’t, not really. But Raye is so absolutely competent that it’s hard to rule out her doing… well, anything.
“I’m the executor of Hope’s will,” Raye says.
“And, the last I heard, I do get some money if she dies. But she’s worth a lot more to me alive.
” The server arrives, bearing a small carved wooden bowl full of chips and a little ceramic saucer full of salsa for them to start with.
“Do we need more time, ladies?” he asks, and they both nod without looking at him.
Are we really going to eat? Caro can’t imagine being hungry ever again.
“I don’t know if that makes you trust me more or less.
” Raye looks Caro dead in the eyes. “Please understand that this is not information I would share in other circumstances. But Hope has been gone for three days now, and I am very, very worried. I want to find her.” She takes a chip, dips it in the salsa.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “For whatever reason, I’m very hungry. ”
“It’s fine.”
“She loves the two of you, you know,” Raye says. “Hope does. I’ve been her agent since she was twenty-three years old, and you are the best friends she’s had.”
“She loves you, too,” Caro says.
“I know.” Raye leans forward, her elbows on the table. Caro does, too, feeling drawn in in spite of herself. “She’s left each of you two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in her will,” Raye says. “Did you know that?”
Caro sits back, shocked. “No,” she says. “I had no idea.”
“I’ll have to trust you on that,” Raye says. “Do you think Ash knows about the will?”
“I don’t think so.” Caro feels like that would have changed things among them, that there would have been some kind of shift in the relationship if they knew Hope was leaving them that much money—any money, really—in her will.
But who is Caro to say there hasn’t been a change, one she didn’t catch until now?
They let Hope talk them into this crazy plan, they thought it would work, and now look at what’s happened—
“If Hope didn’t tell us,” Caro says, “are you supposed to be saying this now?”
“She trusted me to handle her affairs,” Raye says.
“I’m hoping you can trust me, too.” She holds up a hand.
“I know,” she says before Caro can speak.
“That’s not very likely.” She gives Caro a long look, and Caro feels horribly, terribly stripped down under that gaze.
“You don’t even trust each other,” she says.
She’s right, Caro knows. We did, but it’s gone.
It vanished with Hope.