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to resettle before school started, summer was a perfect time to sell.
     
    The Saturn rolled to a stop in the driveway. Natalie shut off the engine and started up the walk. As she debated whether to ring the doorbell or let herself in with the key she'd soon have to relinquish, the front door jerked open.
     
    Daniel stood before her, looking breathless and worried. “Have you seen Lissa?”
     
    The force of his question knocked her backward a step. “I'm supposed to pick her up, remember?”
     
    He spun around on bare feet, muscles tense and rippling beneath a thin white T-shirt. Natalie chased after him as he shouted Lissa's name—through the living room, the dining room, the kitchen and den, past stacks of packing boxes, and into the master bedroom, the king-size bed neatly made and clearly unused.
     
    They raced upstairs to Lissa's room and through the adjoining bath to the guestroom, which was strewn with Daniel's discarded shoes, shirts, and jeans.
     
    Natalie stood in the doorway and blinked. Half her mind still grappled with the idea that Lissa appeared to be missing. The other half took poignant pleasure in the thought that her husband couldn't bring himself to sleep alone in the bed they'd shared for fifteen years—the bed where their daughter was conceived. Their daughter.
     
    Suddenly, her world coalesced into sharp focus. “Daniel. Stop running around like an idiot and tell me what's going on.”
     
    Panting, he sank onto the rumpled sheets at the foot of the bed. “When she didn't come down to breakfast, I thought she was sleeping in like usual, but … ” He gave his head a frustrated shake.
     
    Natalie swiveled and pressed her spine against the doorframe. She clawed stiff fingers through the hair at her temples and tried to imagine things from Lissa's perspective. Poor kid! Selling the house must have screamed the end of her parents' marriage.
     
    Remorse shredded Natalie's heart. She never meant for her mistakes to bleed into her daughter's life. She should have been a better mother. She should have paid more attention.
     
    She clamped her teeth together and inhaled through her nose. “Let's think this through. Did she take anything from her room? Did you look for a note?”
     
    He shot her a look of awed surprise, as if she'd just solved the riddle of the Sphinx. “You know her stuff better than I do. You check her room, and I'll look around for a note.”
     
    A quick perusal of Lissa's closet and bathroom revealed missing clothes and toiletries. Plus, Lissa's favorite pink duffel bag wasn't hanging on its usual hook in the closet.
     
    “Found it!” Daniel's voice echoed up the staircase. He met her in the entryway with a crumpled piece of paper. “She stuck it on the fridge under the Pete's Pizza magnet. I should have seen it. Would have if I'd—”
     
    Natalie yanked the note out of his hand. Lissa's rounded, girlish script seemed all wrong for the angry, desperate words she'd penned:
     
    Don't look for me. I never want to see either one of you again!
     

     
    Daniel paced the kitchen. Three days and countless phone calls later, Lissa still hadn't been found. Not even her best friend Jody offered a clue—if she could be trusted not to be in on the scheme.
     
    Dear Lord, help! He ought to be out there looking for his daughter, not downing stale coffee and waiting for the phone to ring. But his friend in the county sheriff's department had told him he needed to stay home in case Lissa showed up.
     
    The only upside to the insanity was that Natalie had moved back in. Okay, she hadn't exactly moved in. But she had stayed at the house with him—albeit in separate rooms—while they waited and prayed for word about their daughter.
     
    He poured the last of his cold coffee down the drain and joined Natalie at the kitchen table, where her fingers flew across her laptop keyboard. Dressed in cutoffs and a faded T-shirt, her hair drooping across one eye in a tangled mess, she looked as