Wish You Were Here by Lani Diane Rich

because he’d left their family, but he’d gone because he wanted to save people. And they didn’t have phones or mailboxes or anything.” She straightened up and looked up at Nikkie. “But you were in California?”
    Nikkie nodded, her face tense. “And Arizona.”
    Nate felt as if someone had just dropped a heavy stone on his gut. All these years, Piper had never mentioned the Congo to him. They ’d talked about Nikkie very little, except for Nate’s rote explanation that her mother loved her, but wasn’t able to be around. Here Piper had been building this whole scenario in her head, a reason why her mother had left her that made sense, and he’d never even known. He wanted to run over there, throw Nikkie out the door, and pull his little girl into his arms, but he knew he couldn’t. He had no choice but to sit there and watch as the last of his daughter’s precious illusions were shattered.
    Piper stood up from the couch and walked over to him. He smiled as brightly as he could, but her face was flat. “Hey, Pipes,” he said. “How ya doin’?”
    “ I’m going to ride my bike down to the lake, okay?”
    He nodded. “Okay. Be back for lunch.”
    He watched as she gave a short, halfhearted wave at Nikkie, then walked out the front door, closing it quietly behind her. Nate sat where he was for a while, watching Nikkie as she sat on the couch, not moving. She looked beaten up. Nikkie had never been one for showing emotions, so for her to look beaten up meant that something was really going on inside. She wasn’t entirely cold; he knew that. In there somewhere was a beating heart, it was just buried under so many layers of shit that by the time you got to it, it was hardly worth the digging.
    And the fact that it was his little girl trying to wade through all the shit made him a lot less sympathetic than he would have been otherwise.
    He shot a look at Ruby and pushed up from the table, walked over to Nikkie, and stood a few feet away from her in silence. The truth was, he was so far out of his depth that he wasn’t sure what to say or do. Finally, Nikkie raised her head.
    “ Should I go after her?” she asked.
    Nate shook his head. “No.”
    “ Do you think she’ll ever forgive me?”
    Her voice was so quiet that Nate wasn ’t sure if he’d imagined it, but when she looked up at him, he could tell by the look in her eyes that she was torn up. As torn up as Nikkie ever got, anyway.
    Good.
    “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I guess it all depends on what you’re willing to do to earn it.”
    Nikkie nodded again. “Right.” She pushed up off the couch. “Well, I guess I should get back to my cabin. Take a shower. Get some rest.” She looked at Nate. “When can I see her again?”
    Nate took in a deep breath. “Come back for dinner. Six-thirty.”
    One edge of her mouth quirked up. “You cooking?”
    Nate shrugged. “Me or Ruby.”
    Ruby ’s eyes lit a bit with gleeful malice. “I make excellent mac and cheese. Straight from the box.”
    Nikkie held a cold look with Ruby, then turned and left. Nate walked over and sat down next to Ruby, suddenly exhausted beyond the telling of it.
    “You’re doing the right thing,” Ruby said. “A girl needs to kn ow her mother, for better or worse.”
    Nate nodded. So he ’d been told.
     
    ***
     
    “It’s a California driver’s license,” Freya said, holding up one of Nikkie’s receipts on which she’d scribbled the paltry information she’d gleaned from going through Nikkie’s purse. Through her cell connection, she could hear her sister’s boyfriend, Jake Tucker, typing the information into his computer. “The name she’s going by is Nikkie Cooper, but she might also use Brody.”
    “ All right,” Jake said. “I can run a basic check on her; it’ll give you what jobs she’s had, any criminal record, aliases, that kind of thing. We’ll see what comes up.”
    “ I also need you to track down a number,” she said. “I got