Page 8 of April Flowers

She looked that way because she was Noah’s sister’s daughter, Avery.

Noah told himself again not to cry.

Noah looked at the security guard, a guy he recognized from his numerous visits, and said, “I can take it from here.”

The security guard looked as though he didn’t want to leave Noah alone. “I think I’d better stick around, chief,” he said to Noah, although Noah wasn’t the chief of anything.

Clearly, he thought Avery was too dangerous for Noah.

Maybe he was right. But there was no getting through to Avery with a stranger around.

Noah hoped his look expressed how much he needed time alone with her. “Five minutes,” he said. “You can check on us then.”

The guard sighed and gave Avery a strange and dark look. “You better behave with Mr. Carson, you understand? If you don’t, you’ll spend another night in juvie. Won’t she, Mr. Carson?”

Noah knew he needed to play along, at least a bit. “We’ll see about that.”

The guard gave Noah a stiff nod and left the room. Noah turned to lock the door, but he remained with his back to Avery for longer than necessary. He was trying to compose his thoughts.

“Did you come all the way over here to stare at the door?” Avery demanded. “Or did you come to turn me into a good kid? Like you do to all the others.”

Noah bristled. In his working life, he was accustomed to teenagers speaking to him like this, like he was the dirt between their toes and not the only person in the world fighting for their rights. But when those insults came from Avery, memories accosted him, reminding him of his early years as her uncle, when she couldn’t get enough of him, and when they’d laughed and laughed in the sunshine.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he muttered. “For nearly three days, I’ve been looking for you. I’ve had the cops scouring everywhere. All over Boston and New York. Everywhere in between. I’ve been worried sick.”

Avery’s cough transformed into a strange laugh. Suddenly delirious with anger, Noah whipped around to look at her: this dirty and too-skinny teen who’d disappeared after the funeral. As far as he’d been able to tell, she’d only packed a small backpack. How much cash had she had? How had she even survived?

He knew she was upset. He was upset, too. But why did she have to make everything that much harder? Why did she have to put his heart in a pressure cooker?

“I’m here now, aren’t I?” she said.

Noah sighed and looked at his hands. Never had he assumed he’d come to the Nantucket Island Juvenile Detention Center and be up against his own niece.

She didn’t even live here. Not officially.

“What? Are you going to make me sleep here?” Avery put pressure on him with a sinister smile.

Noah pulled a chair out from the corner and sat down with his head in his hands. He felt a migraine coming on. “Avery,” he said, his eyes on hers. “Why are you doing this?”

Avery looked on the verge of laughter. “Uncle Noah,” she retorted, her tone daring, “why wouldn’t I do this? I’m basically an adult. I should be able to live the life I want to live.”

“You’re sixteen.”

“Almost seventeen,” she said. “I would have been out of the house in a year. What’s the difference?”

Noah closed his eyes and counted to ten. He remembered one of the last phone conversations he’d had with his sister when she’d said, “Avery is having a hard time. I think a boyfriend broke up with her. Maybe? And I think she’s been skipping school.”

But his sister had sounded exhausted. She’d sounded on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Noah had said, “I’ll come to Boston and visit soon. We can hang out together. The three of us. We can figure out what’s going on with Avery.”

Because he hadn’t seen Avery in a couple of years at that point, he couldn’t imagine anyone but the bright and sunny blond and freckled niece he’d loved so much.

This Avery was a stranger.

This Avery had snuck out of the house during her mother’s wake—and fled.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sounds like you just did,” Avery sassed.

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