Page 94 of The Luminosity of Loriana Harper

“No, you’re not getting treats.”

He cocked his head.

She laughed. For the first time in what felt like forever.

The laptop in her den was a siren’s call. How easy would it be to go and do some digging? Heck, she could do so on her phone, if she wanted to get it from the kitchen where it was charging.

And while she was searching Marjorie Dawes, she could also search Todd Eldridge.

Her breath caught on the notion. She’d barely thought of him in years, yet this was the third time she’d conjured him this month. Even before she’d heard of Marjorie’s disappearance, she’d been reminded of her former fiancé. The man of her dreams. The man she planned to marry. The man who vanished.

Except people didn’t justvanish. They had to leave a trace. One didn’t just wander out into the world and never be heard from again.

And yet, she knew they did. Canada’d had a reckoning with that with the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Commission. About people vanishing and never being heard from again. The Highway of Tears held more stories like that.

But a grown, healthy, vital man?

His body’d never turned up. At least not in Vancouver or the lower mainland. She’d filed a missing persons report. She’d checked the hospitals and morgues. She’d asked all their friends. To her regret, there were two things she hadn’t done. She hadn’t asked her parents for help, and she hadn’t gone to Todd’s ailing aunt.

He’d been an orphan. His parents died in a gondola accident when he was just a toddler. His spinster great-aunt had taken him in. Life’d been rough, but he’d come out of it okay.

Or so Loriana believed. They’d met at the University of British Columbia—she an English major and he an engineering student. It’d been love at first sight, and they’d become secretly engaged within three months. They planned to graduate and then elope. Todd didn’t think his aunt would understand, and Loriana was absolutely certain her parents wouldn’t. Her fiancé was from the wrong side of the tracks. He’d grown up poor. He had no lineage. Nothing differentiated him from the hundreds of thousands of other men his age.

She wasn’t a snob. Her parents’d been.

Still are.

And although it galled her to think it—she was glad they hadn’t met Mitch. For a million reasons, they wouldn’t approve. At thirty-nine she didn’t need their fucking approval, of course. But she also didn’t need their censure or bigotry. She had enough to deal with already.

Now what?

She wouldn’t search Marjorie Dawes. And she wouldn’t search Todd Eldridge. He’d known she’d grown up in Mission City and planned to return. She’d been in the phone book for almost two decades. She was on social media—although mostly to do with the library. He could find her, if he wanted.

Not if he’s dead.

Which was the thought she always circled back to. At first, she’d been convinced of the fact. He’d never voluntarily leave her—therefore, he must be dead.

Slowly, as time passed, that thinking evolved. Or, more like doubts crept in. What if he’d tired of her, and didn’t want to let her down? What if he’d tired of his life, and decided to set off in search of adventure? Vancouver had a huge port system. Hopping a freighter wasn’t impossible. Or riding the rails clear across the country? Or, as Colton intimated, there were ways to sneak into the United States. Getting lost there would be pretty easy, right?

Some days she told herself he was married in Wichita with a wife and six kids. Other times she told herself he was living in Wales with a husband and a flock of sheep. Now, she wouldn’t have pegged him as either a farmer nor gay, but anything felt possible.

Most days, when she let herself go there, she admitted there was a good likelihood he was dead. That his body had either never been found, or never been identified. The realist in her understood she’d never get answers to the questions that burned within her.

She held a throw pillow against her face and screamed.

Sure, she probably didn’t need to muffle the sound. No one in the house to hear it. But she also had Nosy Norma to contend with. Even in the dead of night, she’d swear the woman lurked. Since Loriana had few secrets, she didn’t worry about herself. But she did worry about her neighbors. She’d ferreted out a few unknowns over the past years. Things people thought they’d hidden. Things people believed buried. She’d never tell, of course.

She glanced at the mantel clock. Might as well call it a night. She could always read in bed if sleep was slow in coming. In the morning, she’d deal with Mitch and Marnie.

Or at least she hoped.

Chapter twenty

TheonlyreasonMitchknew the longest night of his life was over was because the sun had crested the dawn horizon twenty minutes ago. Beautiful pink streaked the sky, covering the odd puffy clouds in a rosy embrace.

The grit in his eyes from lack of sleep felt like sandpaper, and his nose was running from the walk home in the cold. Oh, he could’ve taken the proffered ride. Both his lawyer and Corporal Dorrie Duhamel’d offered. Even Declan’d left his card and said to call, no matter what time.

But Mitch hadn’t. Seven a.m. on Christmas morning was not the time to be calling in favors. And he could’ve roused one of the cab drivers in town. Again, wouldn’t make any friends that way. Plus, he needed to clear his head, and a walk through the nearly deserted town while the dawn was still an hour away’d felt like a good idea. The trek was just over a mile, and his long strides had covered the distance in no time.

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