“I just didn’t put it together until today,” I finished.
“Stop it,” Krista snapped suddenly, storming over to us. Her skin had gone from white to red, and I’d never seen her eyes so angry. “Tristan is the best of all of us. There’s no way he had anything to do with this.”
“Krista…what other explanation is there?” I asked.
“He’s had a lot going on,” Krista said, looking at the ceiling. “He’s been distracted. Maybe Nadia planted those coins in his room—did you ever think of that?”
“Then why did he run?” Joaquin asked. “Why is he hiding?”
Krista just stared at him. She didn’t have an answer for that.
“And why did he have this?” I reached into the back pocket of my jeans and unfolded the photo of my family.
“Where did you get that?” Joaquin asked.
“When you guys went after Tristan, Fisher came back to tell us Nadia was gone, and he and Kevin searched Tristan’s room,” I told them. “They found this in the bottom of his shoe trunk.”
I looked at it once, staring into my father’s laughing eyes, before folding it and putting it back into my pocket.
“So what do we do now?” Krista asked.
“Simple.” I reached down and picked up the paintbrush, scraping the excess paint from its bristles into the can. “We figure out how to get my father and Aaron and Jennifer and the others back.”
I reached up and started to paint my name right above Tristan’s, the tail of the R touching the top of the T. It took all my concentration to keep my arm from shaking, but I managed to work through it.
“But how?” Joaquin asked, watching the brush as if mesmerized. “No one has ever come back.”
“There has to be a way,” I said firmly, biting my tongue to keep from cracking as images of my father, Aaron, and Jennifer swirled through my mind. I dipped the brush into the paint again and methodically wrote my last name, Miller. “If people can be sent there erroneously, there has to be a way to bring them back. We have to believe that.”
“And then what?” Krista asked. “If we do get them back. What happens then?”
I didn’t reply. Not until I’d finished. Not until my name was fully inscribed on that wall for all eternity.
RORY MILLER (THAYER) 2013.
The bottom curl of the 3 dripped down the craggy rock wall, the bloodred paint marring the top of the white h in Parrish. Satisfied, I dropped the paintbrush back into the can and faced them.
“Then we find Tristan and Nadia,” I said clearly. “And we make them pay.”
Every book I write is a journey, and this one in particular marked my path from a dark, devastating moment in my life back into the light. As such, it started out in a rocky place and seemed to take forever to be guided to where it needed to be. For their help along the way, I have to thank the following people, who always seem to be there to support me in ways large and small.
I owe the deepest gratitude to Lanie Davis, who worked as hard as I did on this book, if not harder. I couldn’t have finished it without you. (But you knew that.) Thank you also to Josh Bank, Sara Shandler, Katie McGee, and Emily Meehan for their input and insight at various stages of the manuscript. Thanks to Sarah Burnes for metaphorically holding my hand through my breakdown and to Matt for actually holding my hand and talking me out of my threats to drop everything and become a Realtor or a cupcake-baker or a cupcake-baking Realtor. Most of all, thank you to Brady and Will for always bringing a smile to my face and reminding me why I do what I do. I love you more than anything and always will.