Page 15 of The Summer Guests

“Does she have a boyfriend? Someone she might have—”

“No.”

“You’re certain?”

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Mrs. Conover, we can’t always know what our children are up to.”

“You don’t understand.” Susan raised her head again. “Zoe and I are best friends. She was only eight years old when her father died of cancer, and for years, it was just the two of us. Zoe and me against the world. We trust each other. I trust her, because Iknowmy daughter.”

“Then your husband, Ethan, he’s Zoe’s stepfather?”

Susan nodded. “We met a few years ago, at his book signing. He’s a writer. A novelist. We’ve been married for two years. Ethan formally adopted Zoe last year.”

So Susan and her daughter were new to the Conover family. Having seen the cool dispassion of Elizabeth Conover, the arrogance of Colin Conover, Jo didn’t envy any woman who married into this clan.

“You see, Idoknow my daughter,” said Susan. “I know she doesn’t have a secret boyfriend. I know she wouldn’t run away without telling me, because she knows how frantic I’d be. She loves school, and her swim team, and her fantasy books. She loves animals.” Susan shook her head. “That’s why she went off to visit that girl. All because of some stupidcow.”

It took a few seconds for Jo to register that last detail. “What cow? What’re you talking about?”

“That girl she went to visit, apparently she has a cow and some goats. Ethan said that’s why Zoe wanted to go home with her. To see the animals.”

“Did you meet this girl?”

“I only saw her from a distance.”

“What does she look like?”

“She’s about Zoe’s age. Light-brown hair. Just like Zoe.”

And she has a cow.Jo had a sudden, vivid memory of a brown-haired girl walking across a snowy field. A girl with a Jersey cow and eight goats trailing after her. Jo knew the farm where that girl lived because she had visited it several times this past winter, had stood in the girl’s house, where the air smelled like woodsmoke and burnt coffee. She felt her heart thump faster as she asked: “Was the girl’s name Callie Yount?”

“I never heard the girl’s ...” Susan suddenly stopped. “Do you know who she is?”

“Excuse me.” Jo rose to her feet. “I need to make a phone call.”

Chapter 8

Maggie

A late-night intruder alert was almost never a good thing.

Maggie had spent so long working in the shadow of crisis that her nerves were permanently attuned to the first hint of trouble, and the beeping perimeter alarm made her surface straight from deep sleep into wakefulness. Moonlight glowed through the bedroom curtains. The digital clock on her nightstand read 12:07. The intruder alert kept beeping on her phone, set off by someone—or something—that had tripped her alarm. She sat up, her pulse already galloping, and reached for the cell phone to view the video feed from her surveillance camera.

Now the doorbell rang, the chime echoing throughout her farmhouse. Not a stealth attack after all, but someone openly announcing their arrival. Squinting at the video feed on her phone, she saw her neighbor Luther Yount standing at her front door, his hair a wild halo of silver, his face jittery with agitation.Calliewas her first thought.Oh no, something has happened to his granddaughter.

Maggie had no children of her own, but she was as frantic as any parent as she scrambled out of bed. She didn’t bother to pull a robe over her pajamas, but just shoved her feet into slippers and headed downstairs, flipping on lights as she went. By the time she reached the foyer, Luther was banging on the door, and when she yanked it open,his fist was still raised to bang it again. He was a giant of a man with an unkempt beard, and anyone who did not know him would find him a frightening sight, standing in the gloom of the porch.

“Luther, what’s going on?” she said. “Is Callie all right?”

“She’s fine, she’s fine. I’m sorry it’s so late, but I had to wait for her to go to sleep. I don’t want her to know anything’s wrong.”

“Areyouall right?”

“I’m okay, but ...” He sighed. “Jesus, I think I’m in trouble.”

Trouble, she could deal with. She’d spent her career responding to trouble. Relieved that nothing had happened to Callie, she stepped aside. “Come in. Let me get dressed, and I’ll make coffee.”

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