Alice, I’d discovered, was friends with a network of other “housewives”—I always thought of the term in quotes, because like Alice, half these women had jobs, a number of them very high-powered. The other half all had so much staff that the only housewifely thing they probably did was sign off on the odd dinner menu, or instruct the maid on how many people were coming over for late-afternoon cocktails.

Suddenly my breath sped up, my heart pumping. Shit. Shit. I’d forgotten to make notes about the earlier photos. What if I forgot? What if I’d already forgotten?

Snatching up the notebook with trembling fingers, I flipped through to the last used page. I remembered writing those lines about my meeting with my father. There were no other cryptic notes. Forcing my breathing out of its panic cycle, I began to make short, sharp notes about my current research.

My hand was cramped in the aftermath and my handwriting so shambolic that it probably looked like I was on speed, but I’d gotten it all down.

All of what I remembered.

Opening the sweets drawer, I pulled out a wrapped piece of fudge and put it in my mouth. I relished the taste, but stopped my hand from reaching for a second piece. No doubt I’d need another sugar hit soon. Might as well try to pace myself since the no-sugar thing was a total failure. After successfully fighting off the churning in my stomach, I began to go through the images on Alice’s profile.

And hit the jackpot.

We’d had Cul-de-Sac parties back then, spearheaded by Diana. She’d stopped at some point, maybe because she was tired of being the only one who tried to organize fun stuff, but more likely because she’d gotten busy with her kids’ activities. But the parties had been a fixture in my teenage years. The one from which I found photos had taken place a month or so after my mother’s disappearance—and it had been organized by Alice.

In very bad taste for it to go ahead if people had known she was dead, but just slightly awkward if they’d believed she’d abandoned her family and run off with a quarter of a million dollars. I remembered that party, mostly because of how pissed I’d been at my father for driving away my mother. I’d stopped thinking about the scream by then, telling myself that if she’d been able to handle the Jag, she must’ve been fine. I’d even gone to the party, just another surly teenager.

A pulse of pain up my leg.

Wincing, I rubbed at my thigh even though it hadn’t been injured in the crash. And I wondered how my mind had so carefully edited out all mention of my cast from my memories of that time. Dr. Jitrnicka would no doubt have something to say on the point—there was probably a psychological explanation for why my memory issues seemed concentrated around this one seminal event in my life.

There.

A younger version of me seated in someone’s deck chair out on the main drive, with Beau beside me, and my cast a masterpiece of signatures and drawings. I didn’t look grim or angry despite the fact I’d been full of fury. I was half-smiling as I held a bottle of Coke in hand, while Beau was turned toward me, his mouth caught open midspeech. Another chatty kid who’d turned into a secretive teen.

My face looked thinner than usual, but bore no bruises or scrapes. Neither did my hands. But a month was a lot of time when it came to healing superficial injuries.

I needed more photos.

In my determination to unearth the truth, I scrolled back too far . . . and there she was: my mother, resplendent in a dress of vivid aquamarine, sunglasses on top of her head and champagne flute lifted in a toast to the photographer. It had been taken in the sunshine, at a table set with gleaming cutlery and dressed with a single orchid bloom.

The caption said: Birthday brunch with my glamourpuss of a friend, Nina. DD we missed you!

DD? A touch more scrolling and I found a photo of Alice, Diana, and my mother. The caption read: Shopping with Nina and DD.

I’d never heard Alice call Diana by that nickname, but their friendship hadn’t really survived my mother’s disappearance. My mother had been the glue.

I kept on scrolling down, rubbing salt into the wound. Another solo image of my mother in a sparkling black dress, her head thrown back in laughter: Nina at my first cocktail party.

Later on was a shot of my mother seated beside a laughing Calvin, playing cards in hand, while Diana looked on with an amused smile. Alice had captioned it: Extreme Go Fish!

Cora’s hand appeared normal in an image from the same night. Also in one of the shots was Lily, caught in motion in the background in the black uniform of the serving staff. Another party at which she’d been the hired help. How many homes in the Cul-de-Sac had she entered, how many trays had she carried, how many spills had she cleaned up?

There was Diana, in a little black dress that didn’t show too much cleavage and was accented with discreet jewelry. She was beaming up at Calvin as he talked to another man, whose face wasn’t visible. Next to them stood Paul and Margaret, the rockers chatting with my father. For once, my mother was beside him, her hand tucked into his elbow.

Both of them playing their expected roles.

I couldn’t stop looking at the images. Maybe there was a clue in the past, if I could only find it. It was too bad that Diana didn’t have a personal online profile as she’d no doubt have lots more interesting photos. But she just had a little business page on which she posted beautiful shots of her sweets, or reposted images sent in by her devoted customer base.

Maybe I should snap a shot of her fudge with my books, I thought with a grin, give her a boost. But my smile faded as I carried on through Alice’s feed, my mother aging backward with each scroll. Then the images of her came to a halt without warning and I couldn’t understand it . . . until I realized that Alice had moved into the Cul-de-Sac when I was thirteen. She hadn’t known Nina Rai before that date.

My head was stuffy, my eyes gritty from staring at the screen, and I had nothing except confirmation of a broken leg.

Getting up, I saw that darkness was falling. A pile of fudge wrappers sat beside my computer. Once again, I’d lost hours of time, but at least this loss was explicable. I’d become lost in the life of the boy I’d once been and the beautiful, broken woman who’d been my mother.