Adrian laughed. “Where do you think she was?”

Officer Sanchez looked back and forth between us. Then he chuckled a little. “All right, buddy. I’ll write it up as a stolen vehicle.” He looked back at me. “It’s in the impound. Here’s the info.” He handed me a card.

I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry, um…was there any blood or anything? Do you think anyone got hurt?”

Officer Sanchez shook his head. “Hard to tell. The airbag deployed, but we canvassed the immediate area. Nobody dead in a ditch. I think they ran off on their own two feet.” He nodded up to Adrian. “Hey, you need to get back to the gym to spot me.”

Adrian’s laugh practically rumbled against my back. “Will do. Have a good day. And tell Karla I said hi.”

As soon as we stepped back inside the apartment and the door closed behind me, I darted for my phone.

I dialed Dad. It went right to voicemail. Then Annabel. Voicemail too. Brent would have answered, but he blocked me after I told him he could have my Gucci backpack when he got a job. Arg!

“Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. I have to go.”

I started grabbing things, shoving wipes and hand sanitizer in the diaper bag, running to the kitchen to get the bottle I’d left drying on his sink. I had to collect Grace and her swing. My fan mail was all over the floor. I was so panicked and flustered I couldn’t organize myself.

Adrian crossed his arms, watching me spin in circles around his apartment. “Who was driving the car?” he asked.

The hospital. I needed to call hospitals.

“My dad. I bought him a car to use. He’s on probation, he probably got scared.”

“Probation for what?” he asked.

“Health code violations. Stuff in the yard.” I stopped in the middle of the room, panting, the diaper bag swinging off my elbow. “Do you think your friend knew you were lying?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. There were no injuries, no property damage. Unless he has video footage, he can’t prove anything and he knows it. It’s not worth his time. I relieved you of any liability and saved him the paperwork and a trip to your dad’s house. And I knew it wasn’t you. I could hear you up with the baby at three a.m.”

I nodded, too freaked out to feel bad that Adrian was awake with us in the middle of the night, and I dove past him to grab Grace’s BabyBjörn off his table.

“Hey.” He put his hands on my shoulders to stop me as I whizzed by him. “Breathe for a second.” He dipped his head and looked at me with those deep green eyes. “What do you need?”

I swallowed. “I need…I need you to watch Grace,” I said quickly.

It came out before I even had time to think about it. But I did. I couldn’t take her on my scavenger hunt across hospitals and jail cells. And I definitely couldn’t take her to Dad’s.

Adrian nodded and took the diaper bag off my arm. “Of course. I got it. Go do what you need to do.”

“Are you sure?” I asked breathlessly. “You can handle it?”

He looked me in the eye. “I’m very sure. Go. She’ll be fine with me.”

He had this strong, steady, take-charge thing about him. The air of someone who was used to being depended upon. He was so capable and I wondered offhandedly if this is what other people’s dads were like.

I nodded at him and practically tripped over my feet getting out of the apartment. I ran home to change—but after getting almost all the way to the elevator I realized I didn’t have my purse or car keys and I was in unicorn slippers and a Froot Loops necklace.

I drove the twenty minutes to Eagan. I’d called all the local hospitals on the way. Dad wasn’t at any of them. He also wasn’t in the Ramsey County jail system. I asked about Annabel too, just in case she’d been with him during the crash and she was hurt, but her name didn’t ping either.

By the time I banged on Dad’s door, my panic had moved into anger.

I mean, what the actual fuck? He crashes the car and he doesn’t think I’m going to find out about it? He doesn’t bother to call me and give me a heads-up, tell me he’s okay?

When he answered, the smells of mildewy shower and festering garbage rolled out of the house at me.

“Dad,” I said dryly as he stood there, red-eyed and disheveled. He didn’t look like someone who’d been in a car crash, but who knew.

He squinted at me. “Melanie?”

It hit me like a punch to the gut. I had to take a moment to compose myself to answer. “Dad, it’s Vanessa.”

He blinked at me, and the light faded a little from his eyes. He pulled the door open and let me in, walking stiffly back to the sofa, where he lay down with a grimace.

I closed the door behind me.

God, the place was gross. Dad had always been a pack rat, but this was bad, even for him.

I wrinkled my nose at a bag of rotting trash by the front door that someone had pulled from the kitchen but never run to the curb. It was leaking from the bottom and sat in a putrid brown puddle. As usual there were stacks of random stuff everywhere. Shit he saw on the curb destined for the dump that he’d brought home with the grandiose plan of fixing it or using it somehow. It was ridiculous.

Normally I took off my shoes when I came into a house, but I wasn’t walking barefoot in here. “So, I see you’re shooting for a new personal best,” I said, stepping over a dirty, torn dog bed—which was interesting because Dad didn’t have any pets.

He spoke from the sofa like he was in pain. “Vanessa, I’m in an exceptional amount of discomfort. Your sister has relieved me of all my Percocet, and my back is killing me. I didn’t sleep a wink last night. If you’re going to give me a hard time, I’ll thank you to let yourself out.”

He’d injured his back last week tripping over something in the house. I told him to lock up the pills, which of course he didn’t do. I also told him to clean this place up, and he didn’t do that either.

I walked to the sofa and stood over him with my arms crossed. “Are you wondering why I’m here today?” I asked. When he didn’t bother to open his eyes or answer, I went on. “The police stopped by my apartment. Apparently they found your car wrapped around a tree this morning? Empty? Do you happen to know anything about that?”

He groaned and put an arm over his face.