Chapter 12
The dining room table had vanished beneath an avalanche of crepe paper, ribbon spools, and balloon bags that had seemed much more manageable in the dollar store cart than they did spread across every surface. Jewel stepped back and surveyed the mess, hands on her hips.
“I may have slightly overestimated my party-planning abilities.”
Sylvie looked up from the tangle of blue and silver streamers she was trying to separate, a strand of curling ribbon caught in her hair like a festive crown she hadn’t noticed yet. “You think? Just how many balloons did you buy?”
“Enough for a four-year-old’s birthday party.”
“Jewel. There are seven bags!”
“He’s very enthusiastic about balloons.”
Sylvie laughed, that full, easy sound that had become as familiar as the creak of the porch steps over the past few weeks.
She freed another streamer from the tangle and draped it over her shoulder.
“Okay. We can do this. After all, it’s a birthday party, not a military operation. We just need a system.”
Picking up a bag of silver star-shaped balloons and a bag of blue ones, she placed them side by side with more authority than she actually felt. “Right. A system. These two bags are for the arch over the door. The rest are for the yard.”
“And the cake?”
She smiled. “The neighbor who made it dropped it off this morning before she went to work. It’s sitting on the counter, covered in dish towels.
Obviously, it has horses on it, and chocolate inside, which Beck specifically asked for, and I quote, ‘the kind with the frosting that tastes like a dream.’”
Sylvie raised an eyebrow. “The kind that tastes like a dream?”
“The boy has some very clear opinions.”
“Well, he is Cole’s son,” Sylvie said warmly without the complicated weight that statement might’ve carried a few weeks ago, and Jewel found herself smiling as she reached for the ribbon slipping off the edge of the table.
She caught it, wound it back into a manageable coil, and reflected on how much had changed since that first impossible afternoon when Conrad’s truck pulled into Cole’s driveway. The two brothers circled each other like weather systems seeking a reason to collide.
“How long do you think they’ll be?” Jewel glanced at the window, where the early September sun slanted golden through the glass. The maple at the edge of the yard was just beginning to show the first faint blush of color at its tips, while the rest still held onto summer green.
Sylvie stretched a piece of blue crepe paper between her hands and began twisting it. “Conrad texted about forty minutes ago and said they were just leaving the hospital. Susan’s discharge was apparently a production. She insisted on saying goodbye to every nurse on the floor.”
“That sounds about right.”
Sylvie’s mouth curved. “And then there were the plants. Her friends have been bringing them as gifts whenever they visited her. I think she has four or five of them now. Apparently, Conrad was standing in the hospital lobby holding a potted African violet and a fern while still trying to look dignified.”
The image was perfect, and she could picture it exactly. Conrad’s rigid posture and carefully neutral expression, cradling a fern like it had personally offended him. “And Cole?”
“According to his text, he was, and I quote, ‘trying not to laugh and failing.’ You know, I never would’ve predicted those two would be texting each other jokes about African violets on this visit.” Sylvie shook her head, still smiling.
She puckered her lips. “No, me neither.”
It happened gradually, like most real things do, not in a single dramatic moment of reconciliation but through small, accumulated acts.
Conrad helped Cole down the porch steps on the second day home without being asked, and Cole accepted the help without turning it into a battle.
The two of them spent an entire afternoon in the barn going over the lodge’s winter maintenance plan, their voices rising and falling through the walls in what sounded, for the first time, more like conversation than combat.
Conrad drove the two hours each way to the hospital every day to sit with Susan, and Cole was here when he got back, coffee already made.
Of course, Della and Beckett had helped, too. It was tough to hold onto five years of resentment in the same house with two kids who already believed they were best friends and couldn’t understand why the grown-ups around them made everything so complicated.
As Sylvie hung a string of balloons over the doorway, she looked over.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m guessing they still have some real work to do.
Some things got said over the years that don’t just disappear.
But something cracked open while Cole was in the hospital, and it’s holding.
” She paused, turning to look at her directly. “I’m glad we came.”
“I’m glad you did, too.” And she meant it.
Sylvie began taping one end of the streamer to the doorframe, standing on her toes to reach. “So, while it’s just us…” She kept her voice casual in a way that was not casual at all.
“Well, that’s an ominous preamble.” Jewel unwrapped a string of small star lights and began feeding them along the edge of the buffet.
“What about Ashley?”
For a moment, no one said anything. Jewel kept her hands moving, feeding the lights through her fingers. “What about her?”
“You’ve been unusually quiet about her since that coffee shop meeting. The one that ended with her rushing out the door. Did you ever figure out what that was about?” Sylvie turned around, arms crossed, but her face remained open and genuinely curious. Concerned.
Jewel set down the lights and leaned against the buffet. Outside, a warm breeze swept through the maple, and the sound of Beckett and Della playing somewhere in the backyard drifted in through the open window, punctuated by Scout’s sharp, happy bark.
“Not entirely. She texted me at the hospital the day of the surgery. She said she was sorry about the way she ran off and wanted to explain. I told her I’d call her when things settled down.”
“And have you?”
“No.”
Sylvie waited. That was something she’d come to appreciate about the woman. She didn’t rush toward conclusions. She just made space and let things fill it.
With a heavy sigh, she relented. “I saw her talking to Robert. Before I entered the coffee shop, they were standing outside together. She was laughing at something he said. And then she took his business card.”
The silence that followed had a different quality than the comfortable one they’d been sitting in. Then Sylvie asked, “You’re sure it was Robert?”
“I’m sure.”
She let out a slow breath that almost sounded like a whistle. “And she didn’t mention it? During your meeting?”
“Not a word.”
Sylvie was still, her hand resting on the streamer she’d been about to tape to the second side of the doorframe. “You think they know each other. From before that day?”
Once again, she picked up the lights, more to keep her hands busy.
“I don’t know. Robert came up here the first time to see Rebecca after she and her friends left me at Abbey Lane.
I know they met and talked to Ashley then, and I know my ex-sister-in-law never misses a chance to gossip.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Ashley told her everything about her suspicions that Cole somehow caused Vivian’s disappearance.
Ashley even admitted that much to me. I suppose it’s possible she once introduced Robert to Ashley, but if it’s all innocent, why didn’t Ashley just tell me about it? ”
“So Ashley could’ve told either or both of them about the bracelet?”
“She could have, or they might’ve seen it in pictures.
There were photos of Vivian wearing it floating around—from the local paper, rodeo circuit pages, the kind that end up online and stay there.
Rebecca has all day to sit around, doing nothing better than talking and scheming.
But knowing about a piece of jewelry is different from actually having it.
And someone had it in their hand. If Robert planted it, someone had to have given it to him. ”
Sylvie leaned her shoulder against the doorframe, the forgotten streamer trailing from her fingers. Her expression had turned thoughtful. “So, it kind of all points to Ashley being involved? In the planting?”
That was the question lingering at the back of her mind for over a week, like a splinter she kept probing but then pulling her fingers away from. Saying it aloud would make it more real, more tangible. And part of her, the part that genuinely liked and trusted Ashley, still hesitated.
She moved to the window, looking out at the yard without really seeing it.
“I’m starting to think so. I can’t get past the reaction she had when I mentioned seeing the bracelet.
That wasn’t surprise. That was panic. And I keep picturing her standing outside the coffee shop laughing with my ex-husband like they’re old friends. ”
“But you can’t see how it all connects yet?”
She pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose.
“I can see pieces of it. I just can’t seem to make them fit together into anything that makes sense.
If she wasn’t wearing it when she disappeared, where has Vivian’s bracelet been all this time?
Why would Ashley use it to try to frame Cole now?
She already believes he’s guilty. If she had the bracelet, why wait until now to plant evidence?
And why would Robert care about any of this at all unless someone pointed him in this direction with a very specific purpose? ”
“Maybe to get you to leave? To shake your trust in Cole enough that you’d pack your bags and go back to wherever he could get his hands on you again.”
It was a clean, terrible logic, but she shook her head. “The bracelet alone wouldn’t be enough for that. It scared me, it shook me, but I didn’t run.”
“Maybe that wasn’t the whole plan. Maybe the plan was to give it time.
Plant the seed, let it grow. Or maybe there’s a piece neither of us is seeing yet.
” Sylvie pushed off the doorframe and came to stand beside her at the window.
“I think you just need to ask her directly. Not skirt around it, not with a story about seeing the bracelet somewhere. Just ask her straight out. Why are you talking to my ex, and what do you know about Vivian’s bracelet ending up in Cole’s barn? ”
“You’re right. I know that’s the right move. I’m just not sure I’m ready for whatever the answer is.”
“I’ll go with you. Tomorrow, before I have to leave. You set it up, and we’ll both confront her.” The corner of Sylvie’s mouth lifted slightly. “That way, if she decides to bolt again, I have longer legs, and I’m considerably less inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt than you are.”
She felt a small, genuine smile pull at the corners of her mouth. “That might actually come in handy.”
“So you’ll do it?”
She exhaled and looked at the half-decorated dining room, with its trailing streamers, unopened balloon bags, and the cake sitting under dish towels in the kitchen. Then she thought about Beckett turning four and how much she wanted this day to be untouched by all of it.
“I’ll consider it. After the party. Tonight, after Beck is in bed, I’ll think about it properly.”
“That’s fair.” Sylvie gave a single nod that indicated she considered the matter settled, retrieved the streamer from where it had drooped against the door, and went back to taping.
Jewel picked up the string lights again and began winding them along the edge of the buffet, her mind drifting to the other thread she’d been steadily pulling at for the past week. “I’ve been researching Trevor Montgomery.”
Sylvie glanced over. “Vivian’s ex-boyfriend?”
She nodded and tucked the lights behind a small vase, securing the wire.
“He’s definitely back on the circuit again.
I’ve been tracking his schedule through the rodeo association listings.
Next week, he’s competing in Albany, which is close, as far as these things go.
And with Cole recovering, and Susan coming home today, I think it’s time to stop avoiding this and talk to him directly. ”
“You think he knows where Vivian is.”
She straightened up. “I think he’s the only person left who might.
If she ran off with him and then they separated, he’d know.
If she ran off with him and they’re still together, he’d know that, too.
And if she didn’t run off with him at all…
” She left that possibility hanging in the air between them.
“Either way, Trevor Montgomery is the closest thing I have to an actual answer. I’m going to find him. ”
Sylvie looked at her for a long moment with an expression that was both approving and worried. “Be careful with that one. Men who were involved with women who disappeared don’t always welcome the conversation.”
“I know how to handle reluctant subjects.”
“I know you do. I’m still saying be careful.”
She was about to answer when the sound hit them both at once.
Screaming.
High, sharp, and terrified—not the bright theatrical shrieking of children playing. This was different. This was real. Scout’s barking had shifted from his usual playful yip to something deeper and more frantic, like the sound of a dog ready to fight for someone it loved.
Jewel was already moving toward the back door before the second scream reached them, Sylvie a half-step behind her, the streamers forgotten and trailing across the dining room floor.