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  For a moment, I just sink into it. The feeling of being loved.

  He pulls away. His hands dangle by his sides now.

  “If you love me, then try,” I urge him. “Try with Rachel. Get the baby. Start again. Do it right this time.”

  “Oh, Gracie. I don’t think I can. She expects too much of me.”

  “Well, I do, too, and you love me,” I say. “You’ve got a two-hour trip to consider your options. I’ll call at eleven A.M. and if you’re not there, I’ll put Joe Fusilli on your tail.”

  “You’d do that to me?”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  He cocks his head and looks at me. “You know, sweetie, that you can’t make someone stick. You just can’t. No matter what you hold over their head.”

  He’s right, of course. I can’t reform him.

  “Just go with her, then. Help her get Sonia. Don’t take that away from her, too. You can leave later.”

  “I’m afraid the die might be cast.”

  “You mean the money? For the rent and the airline tickets and things?”

  He shakes his head in a marveling way. “You know that, too?” He sighs and gets in the car. “I guess I’ve got some thinking to do. I’ll be in touch.”

  I watch him drive away. I don’t know where he’s going. I think he’ll go back to Rachel, just because he doesn’t want Joe Fusilli on his trail. But I really don’t know.

  I stand there, watching, until I can’t see his car anymore. I feel so tired. Tired of looking at all the cracks in love, all the imperfections. Tired of him. I don’t want him in my life.

  But there he is.

  THIRTY-ONE

  When I turn, Shay is waiting. She is always waiting. She waited for me to grieve for my mom. She waited for me to accept her. She waited for me to love her. She’ll never stop waiting.

  “Can I buy you breakfast?” she asks.

  We start walking toward the diner.

  “He’s a real creep,” I say.

  “Yeah,” she says. She hands me a tissue, and I wipe my tears.

  “Did you make up with Joe yet?”

  She stretches her arms above her head and smiles. “Not yet. But I feel a thaw coming.”

  We walk up the hill silently for a minute. “I thought you weren’t coming back,” Shay says. “I was so scared you weren’t coming back.”

  “I want this to feel like home,” I say. I want to be honest with her. “And sometimes it does. But in a way, I’m still looking for whatever that is.”

  She lets out a breath. “Okay.”

  “And I can’t get over that you lied to me.”

  She stops and faces me. Her hair blows crazily in her face, the way it does. She’s not wearing makeup, and everything looks naked on her face, all her emotion, all her feeling.

  “Well, you’re just going to have to get over it,” she says.

  I laugh at her fierceness. I can’t help it.

  “And stop saying that I lied,” she goes on. “You know darn well what the circumstances were. You can’t expect to know every detail of my past.”

  “Did you ever have a crush on Nate?”

  She’s startled. “Nate? No. I left that to Carrie.”

  “Did you like him?”

  “Sure. Everyone liked Nate. But I guess maybe there was something about him I didn’t trust…some instinct, because when Carrie fell for him, I was worried. Something…something seemed to be missing in him. But she loved him, so there was nothing more to say.”

  “You didn’t go to the wedding.”

  “I was in Spain.”

  Shay opens the door to the diner. She smiles at Josie, the waitress, and holds up a finger, which means this morning she wants coffee. I know her routine as well as Josie does.

  “Tea, Gracie?” Josie calls.

  I nod.

  Shay slides into a booth. Josie brings the coffee, and Shay takes the first sip with great appreciation, sniffing it first, curling her fingers around the thick mug. She smiles her thanks at Josie, asks her how her son is doing.

  I am beginning to realize, as Zed told me, how lucky I am. And if making this work takes work, I’ll work it.

  “I don’t expect to know everything,” I say to her. “Just the important things. It’s just that…there were secrets in my family. Things my mom couldn’t tell me. And my dad is obviously one major liar. So I think I’m making a decision in my life to live differently. And I’d like it to start with you.”

  “Fair enough.” Shay puts down her mug. “Fire away.”

  “Who was Diego’s father?”

  Shay takes a sharp breath. “Well, you certainly cut to the chase.”

  She doesn’t want to do this. I see that. I see something there so deep, it hurts just to probe it.

  She takes a sip of coffee and nods again.

  “His name was Pablo,” she says, and our long morning together begins.

  Copyright

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  eISBN 978-0-545-28327-4

  Premonitions was originally published by Scholastic in 2004.

  Disappearance was originally published by Scholastic in 2005.

  Copyright © 2004, 2005 by Jude Watson. All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  This edition first printing, March 2010

  Cover photograph © by Hilda Bordahl

  Cover design by Tim Hall