“To confirm that they belong to my father.”

“To confirm . . . ?” Dr. Botnick shook her head. “That technology doesn’t exist, I’m sorry.”

I looked at Myron. There were tears in my eyes. “Don’t you see?” I said.

“See what?”

“He’s alive.”

Myron’s face turned white. In the corner of my eye I could see Bow Tie heading down the corridor toward us.

“Mickey . . . ,” Myron began.

“Someone is covering their tracks,” I insisted. “We wouldn’t cremate him.”

“I’m afraid that’s not true.”

It was Bow Tie. He held up a sheet of paper.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“This is an authorization to have the body of Brad Bolitar cremated per the legal requirements for the State of California. It is all on the up-and-up, including the notarized signature of the next of kin.”

Uncle Myron reached out for the sheet, but I grabbed it first. I scanned to the bottom of the page.

It had been signed by my mother.

I could feel Myron reading over my shoulder.

Kitty Hammer Bolitar had signed a lot of autographs during her tennis days. Her signature was fairly unique with the giant K and the curl on the right side of the H. This signature had both.

“It’s a forgery!” I shouted, though it didn’t look like a forgery at all. “This has to be a fake.”

They all stared at me as though an arm had suddenly sprouted out of the middle of my forehead.

“It was notarized,” Bow Tie said. “That means an independent person witnessed and confirmed that your mother signed it.”

I shook my head. “You don’t understand . . .”

Bow Tie took the sheet back from me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “There is nothing more we can do for you.”

Chapter 5

Dead end.

We sat in the airport and waited to board our flight home. Uncle Myron frowned at his smartphone, concentrating a little too hard on the screen. “Mickey?”

I looked at him.

“Don’t you think it’s time you told me what’s going on?”

It was. Uncle Myron deserved to know. He had called in favors and put himself on the line. He had, in a sense, earned my trust. But there were other things to consider. First of all, I had been warned more than once by those in Abeona Shelter not to tell Myron. I couldn’t just ignore that advice.

Second—and this was always front and center—I still blamed Myron for what happened to my parents. When my mother got pregnant with me, Uncle Myron reacted badly to the news. He didn’t trust my mother. He and my dad fought over it. My parents ended up running away overseas and then coming back years later and then . . . well, then it led to my dad being “maybe dead” and my mother being locked up in a drug rehabilitation center.

Uncle Myron waited for my answer. I was wondering how to tell him no when I remembered that I still needed to call Ema back. I held up the phone and said, “I have to take this,” even though the phone hadn’t rung.

I moved away from the gate and hit Ema on my speed dial. She answered immediately.

“So?” Ema said.

“So nothing.”

“Huh? I thought they were about to open the casket.”

“They were. I mean, they did.”

I explained about the cremation. She listened, as always, without interrupting. Ema was one of those people who listened with everything they had. She focused on your face. Her eyes didn’t dart to all corners. She didn’t nod at inappropriate times. Even now, even when she was just on the phone with me, I could feel that concentration.

“And you’re sure it’s her signature?”

“It certainly looks like it.”

“But it could be forged,” Ema said.

“Doubtful. I mean, there was a notary who witnessed it or something. But it could be . . .” My words trailed off.

“What?”

“After my father died, well, that was when she fell apart.”

“She started taking drugs?”

“Yes,” I said, remembering it all now. “In fact, Mom was so out of it . . . I don’t know how she could have made a decision like that.”

“So what now?”

“I fly home. I have basketball practice.”

I know what you’re thinking. Who cares about basketball practice at a time like this? Answer: I do. I get that that sounds warped. But even now—or maybe especially now—I needed to be back on the court. I needed basketball to be a priority. It was the place I thrived and escaped, and no matter what, I longed for it.

“Anything new on Spoon’s condition?” I asked.

“No.”

“How about Rachel?”

Silence.

I waited. Asking about Rachel may have been a mistake, I don’t know. Rachel was a part of our group, much as she, being immensely popular and probably the hottest girl in the school, seemed to have nothing in common with us.

“Rachel’s fine,” Ema said, her voice like a door slamming shut. “She’s dealing, I guess.”

I needed to reach out to Rachel when I got back. I had dropped a huge bomb on her—a life-altering bomb—and then I had flown away to Los Angeles. I needed to remedy that.

“So why did you call before?” I asked.

“It can wait till you get home.”

“Talk to me, Ema. I need the distraction.”

She took a deep breath. I could see her now, sitting alone in that huge gated mansion. “Why us?” she asked.

I knew what she meant. Nothing here had been accidental. A secret group called the Abeona Shelter had somehow recruited us—Ema, Spoon, Rachel, me—to help them rescue children and teens. This was never stated. We never applied for the job, and it wasn’t as though they had come to us. It just sort of . . . happened.

“I ask myself that every day,” I said.

“And?”

“I don’t know.”

“There has to be a reason,” Ema said. “First Ashley, then Rachel, and now—”

“Now what?”

“Someone else is missing,” she said.

My grip on the phone tightened. “Who?”

“You don’t know him.”

Silly, but I had thought that I knew everyone Ema knew. Maybe it was because she always played the big-girl-outcast-loner to perfection. The other kids made fun of her weight and her all-black clothes. Ema always sat by herself at lunch in the cafeteria. She had taken sullen and raised it to an art form.