Read Through the Door for Free Online

glass of wine. She just needed to take the edge off, to get some sleep. She glanced at her closed laptop on the counter, and then opened it. No new messages.
    “Told you so,” Cedar whispered. “He doesn’t want to be found.”
    Just then her phone buzzed, and she picked it up. There was a text from Jane:
I found his parents. Did you know they live here in Halifax?
    Cedar stared at the phone in her hands, then texted back:
That’s impossible. Finn told me they were dead.

CHAPTER FOUR
    The next morning, Cedar sat staring at the yellow sticky note in her hands. On it she had written the address and phone number for Finn’s parents, Rohan and Riona Donnelly. She took a fortifying gulp of coffee and turned the note over, as if instructions on what she should do next would be written on the other side.
    She heard Eden’s bedroom door open and quickly stuffed the note into the pocket of her robe. “Morning!” she said a little too brightly. Eden gave her a strange look. Cedar got up and poured a bowl of Raisin Bran for them both.
    “You hate Raisin Bran,” Eden said.
    “Yes,” Cedar said, trying to keep the quiver out of her voice. “Yes, I do. Okay, I’m going to shower now.”
    Eden stared after her as she darted into the bedroom and closed the door behind her. She leaned against the door and pulled out the note again.
    Finn’s parents are here? In Halifax? They’re alive?
Finn had told her that both his parents had died in a car accident when he was younger. According to him, he’d lived with relatives for a few years before striking out on his own at age seventeen. He had never seemed particularly bothered by his past, butneither had he offered up any more information, so Cedar hadn’t pushed it. But why would he have made up something like that? Maybe Jane was wrong. She supposed there was only one way to find out. She pictured the conversation. “Hello, I’m your son’s ex-girlfriend. He told me you were dead. Do you happen to know where he is?”
    She groaned and headed into the shower.

    The problem with open-concept office spaces was that personal phone calls were almost impossible to make. Cedar dumped her bag on her chair and headed for the stairwell. She leaned against the brick wall and stared at her phone.
This is ridiculous,
she thought.
Just call them.
She had called every Donnelly in the phone book after Finn’s disappearance, just on the off chance that one of them was a distant relative who might know where he was. No one had ever heard of him. What if Jane was wrong, and this wasn’t them, and she was back to square one? Or worse, what if Jane was right? What if she was only one step away from finding Finn? That thought was almost as daunting.
    Cedar had thought about calling in sick so she could stay home with Eden. But she knew she was on thin ice after bringing Eden into the office yesterday and acting like a complete space cadet. So she had taken every single door in their apartment off the hinges except for the front door, telling Maeve some story about having them repainted. She had also given Eden a firm talking-to, threatening her with everything from no TV for a month to spending her life as a lab rat if she opened any portals. She’d even stooped so lowas to warn Eden that the shock of seeing a portal might give her grandmother a heart attack. Eden had agreed to wait until it was just the two of them to do more exploring, seeming to take delight in the fact that this was a special secret they shared. Cedar had squeezed her tight and told her she’d be back as soon as she could.
    But Cedar had to admit she was more than a little curious about this new mystery of Finn’s parents. Maybe they were horrible people; maybe they had been abusive. She supposed that that would have been reason enough for him to pretend they were dead.
    She gripped her phone tightly and entered the number Jane had given her. She tried to control her breathing while listening to it ring.