It always does, doesn’t it?

Yes. It helps to know there’s someone out there who can say, “I know exactly what you mean!” or “Wow, you too? I thought I was the only one!”

So often, Meredith was that person, and now . . .

“ ’Morning, Mom.” Landry’s firstborn is sitting on a stool at the granite-topped breakfast bar, eating a container of Greek yogurt in front of her open laptop.

“ ’Morning,” she returns, finding comfort in the sight of her daughter. Addison is just a kid, but there’s always something reassuring about her presence in a room.

“She’s an old soul,” Landry’s friend Everly likes to say. When her marriage ended, she developed a fascination with New Age philosophy. Sometimes—like with her observations about Addison—her groovy insight feels dead on. Other times it’s out there. Waaaay out there.

Addison’s damp hair hangs long and loose, tucked behind her ears to reveal beadwork earrings that match her bracelet—all handmade, of course, by Addie herself. She’s wearing a pair of cutoffs that bare her toned, tanned legs and a tank top that barely covers her taut midriff.

Oh, to be sixteen going on seventeen again. Oh, to look like that . . .

Again?

No. At that age, she might have had the same coloring, hairstyle, and build, but her daughter has a confident poise that she herself lacked. Addison is Rob, through and through.

Addie glances up from the computer screen, then takes a closer look at her mother’s face, and immediately asks, “What’s wrong?”

“Why?”

“You look upset. What happened?”

“I got some bad news this morning.” Setting the laundry basket on the slate floor, she quickly explains about Meredith.

Addison digests the information, then reaches out to touch Landry’s arm. “I’m sorry, Mom. I guess it doesn’t help to hear that her suffering is over and she’s in a better place?”

“No, it does . . . I just . . . I wish I’d known in the first place that she was suffering.”

“Maybe she wasn’t.”

“Maybe not.”

But she doesn’t believe it. She’s seen it happen among her online friends too many times to think that there’s an easy way out.

“Meredith never even mentioned that she was sick again,” she says, more to herself than to Addie.

“Really? Well, then, maybe she wasn’t. Just because she’d had cancer doesn’t mean she died of cancer. Maybe something else happened to her. A car accident, or a heart attack, or—” Addison cuts herself off abruptly. “Sorry. I guess that doesn’t make it any better. But you said it seemed sudden, so . . . I don’t know. I was just looking at it logically and thinking maybe it was sudden.”

“You’re right. I’m so used to assuming . . . you know. Cancer.”

“I know. But so many people survive it, Mom. Look at your grandma. She had it, was cured, and then died of old age.”

“Meredith wasn’t old enough for that. She’d just turned sixty. But her daughter did say . . .” She hesitates, trying to remember the wording of the post. “I think she said she was still in shock.”

Seeing the troubled shadow cross her daughter’s green eyes, Landry remembers that she’s the adult here and Addie’s just a kid, old soul or not.

She abruptly changes the subject. “What are you going to do on your day off?”

“I’m not sure yet. Maybe I’ll go shopping. I need a new bathing suit.”

Ordinarily, Landry would offer to go along, but today she’s not in the mood. Instead, she offers her credit card and use of the car, then carries her basket full of clothes toward the laundry room off the kitchen.

A few minutes later, as she’s pouring detergent into the washing machine, Addison calls out urgently from the next room.

“Mom? You need to come in here. Hurry!”

Landry doesn’t bother to start the washer, hurrying back to the kitchen to find her daughter still seated at the breakfast bar. The yogurt container is pushed aside on the counter and she’s leaning over her laptop, delicately arched eyebrows furrowed as stares at the screen.

“You said your friend’s name is Meredith and she lives in Cincinnati, right?”

“That’s right. Why?”

“I plugged that and her age into Google—is her last name Heywood?”

“Heywood. With an e. Yes. Why?” she asks again, already leaning in to look over her daughter’s shoulder.

“This is from a Cincinnati newspaper. It was just posted. I’m . . . I’m really sorry, Mom.”

Addison points at a headline.

Landry stares.

LOCAL WOMAN MURDERED IN APPARENT HOME INVASION

“Is that . . . is that—” She can’t seem to get the words out.

Addison points mutely at name in the lead paragraph.

Meredith Heywood.

“Dad?”

When her father, sprawled in the leather recliner where he spent the night, doesn’t turn around, Rebecca Heywood Drover crosses into the den and reaches out to gently touch his shoulder.

He jumps, and jerks his head to look at her with wide, red-rimmed eyes. “Beck! You scared the hell out of me.”

Three days’ worth of beard shadows Hank Heywood’s lower face, and his brown hair has gone mostly gray since Beck saw him before all this—before he left to take care of Gram in Cleveland, before Mom . . .

“Sorry,” she tells her father. “It’s just . . . Detective Burns is here, with another detective. They want to talk to you.”

He nods dully. “You can send them in here.”

“You don’t want to . . .” Beck trails off, trying to figure out how to put it delicately.

Pull yourself together isn’t very delicate; nor is make yourself presentable.

If Mom were here, she’d make him shave and change out of the rumpled Miami University Red Hawks T-shirt he’s slept in for the past couple of nights at the hotel—if he’s slept at all.

Mom isn’t here, though.

Mom will never be here again.

Beck still can’t believe that she’s gone.

Years ago, when her mother was first diagnosed with breast cancer, she’d imagined what it would be like to lose her. Even last year, when she had that recurrence, Beck had once again allowed herself to consider that her mother might not be around for years to come. Waiting for test results for days, weeks, she found herself imagining various excruciating scenarios.

But then the tests came back clear, and Mom had beaten the disease again, and the worry faded.

She’d been caught off guard when her father’s cell phone number came up on her caller ID Sunday afternoon. She knew right away something was wrong. He was not the type to call just to chat.

“Beck,” he said, “I’m still in Cleveland and I can’t get ahold of your mother. Do you know where she is?”

“Nope. I talked to her Friday night, and she said she was going to putter around all weekend. She’s probably outside or something.”

“It’s supposed to be pouring there. It has been here, all day.”

“Here, too,” Beck told him, glancing at the rain streaming down the windowpanes.

“I’ve been calling the house and her cell phone since this morning, and texting her, and e-mailing and IMing, too. She hasn’t responded. That’s not like her.”

It wasn’t. Mom may not always answer the house phone, but she’s pretty reliable when it comes to online stuff. Ever since she started her blog, she’s developed quite a reader following and made friends all over the world.

Beck found it ironic that the woman who didn’t know a Web site from a campsite a few years ago now spends many—if not most—of her waking hours on the Internet.

Spends?

Spent.

Mom is gone.

Swallowing hard, she looks at her father and says, “Maybe you should go in there and talk to the detectives. They’re waiting in the living room, and . . .”

And I need to be alone for a second to pull myself together.

“Yeah. Okay.”

She watches him push himself out of the chair and shuffle out into the hall, hunched over as if he’s aged a couple of decades in as many days.