Chapter 209: Unknown Trips
Jessica’s question sat there.
Arianne’s throat had closed.
From the back, Lily was yelling about flour. Leo’s tablet chiming. Normal sounds. The kind that had no business being in the same room as a question about how Alex died.
She grabbed the coffee. Cold. Drank it anyway.
"That’s what I’m trying to find out."
She set the cup down. Her fingers stayed on the rim. Then she made herself let go.
Jessica watched her. Didn’t push.
"No one thought it would end like that," Jessica said finally. Too steady. Like she’d practiced it. "The accident. There was no warning. Nothing that made us think—"
She stopped. Pressed her lips together.
Arianne’s pulse was in her throat. Thick. Loud.
"We kept going back over it," Jessica said. "In the weeks after. Looking for the thing we missed. Something." Her hands tightened on the cup. "But there wasn’t anything. Or if there was, we didn’t see it."
Arianne held her face. Careful.
"You wouldn’t have," she said.
Jessica looked at her.
"Alex was good at that. Making things look like nothing."
A beat. Then Jessica nodded. One small movement, like she was fitting that sentence into something she’d already been building.
Jessica’s gaze drifted. "They had their routines. The company. The house. The kids." A pause. "And their trips."
Arianne’s hand went flat against the table.
"They started about a year before it happened. Every few weeks. Sometimes longer. Just the two of them."
Something dropped in her stomach.
Trips. Gilbert never mentioned trips. Neither did Franz. In all the years she’d known him—the calls, the dinners, the texts—he’d never once said anything about it. Neither had anyone else. Not Gilbert, not Nate, not Julian. No one.
A year before. Every few weeks.
Her jaw was so tight her teeth ached.
She breathed in. Out. Kept her face even.
Jessica’s eyes flicked toward the kitchen. "They’d leave Lily and Leo with us. Said it was good for them. For everyone." Her mouth curved. Not a smile. "I thought it was a couple’s thing. Time away. You know how Layla was—she didn’t like things getting routine."
Arianne’s hand pressed harder into the table. The groove bit into her palm.
"Alex went along with it. Didn’t complain. At least not to us."
Jessica smiled. Small. Real. "He came back happy. Both of them did. Whatever they were doing—it was good for them. Good for the marriage." She looked toward the kitchen. "I was glad. They worked hard. They deserved time away."
Arianne’s fingers pressed harder into the groove.
"They seemed fine," Jessica said. No hesitation. No caveat. Just the plain truth of someone who saw nothing to question. "They always seemed fine."
Arianne picked up the coffee. Cold. Drank it anyway.
She was sitting on everything she knew. The Veltara structure. Solindra. The four-day reporting gap. The name she’d written on the board at two in the morning with Franz standing beside her. She was sitting on all of it in this bakery with its apple-and-butter smell and the groove in the table and Layla’s mother across from her with shadows under her eyes.
Jessica didn’t know any of it. And Arianne wasn’t going to tell her. Not today, not like this. Not until there was something that could be done with it besides handed over as another weight for someone already carrying too much.
But she needed to know about the trips.
"Where did they go?"
Her voice came out lower than she meant. Harder.
Jessica frowned. "Different places. Nothing far at first. Then further, I think. They didn’t always say." Her hands tightened around the cup. "They didn’t make it sound important."
Arianne’s heart was hitting her ribs.
They didn’t make it sound important. Because they didn’t want anyone asking. Because they didn’t want anyone worrying.
She wanted to push harder. Where exactly, when, did they ever mention names or places or anyone they were meeting. The questions stacked behind her teeth, pressing. But the twins were in the back and she couldn’t do this in front of them and she was aware of Paul at the counter and the specific way a room changed when you pushed too hard in front of the wrong people.
She pressed one hand flat against the table. Felt the groove. The cork-and-quarter texture of it, Alex’s exact pressure.
Not yet.
The kitchen door swung open.
Lily burst out first. Covered in flour. Hands up like a trophy.
"Look!"
Leo followed. Tablet in one hand. Face focused in a way that was too old for his face.
Paul came out after them. Towel over his shoulder.
"They helped. Don’t worry. Nothing’s broken."
Lily held her hands higher. "We made dough!"
Leo held up his tablet.
Sticky
"Go wash," Jessica said, standing. "Both of you."
Lily groaned. Grabbed Leo’s wrist. "Come on."
They moved toward the sink. Water started running.
Paul moved to the counter. Close enough. Far enough.
Jessica sat back down. She watched the twins for a moment. When she looked at Arianne, something had changed.
"How are they?"
"Steady. They adapt faster than they should."
"And with you?"
Arianne didn’t answer.
It was a different question than it sounded. She understood that. Jessica wasn’t asking about logistics. She was asking whether the twins had someone who actually showed up—not just present, but there. The thing she hadn’t fully worked out yet without making it look like she was working it out.
From the sink, Lily was complaining about the water being cold.
"They’re not alone," Arianne said.
"With you and Franz."
"Yes."
Jessica tilted her head slightly. "You’ve made it work."
"We’re making it work."
There was a difference. Jessica heard it.
Jessica looked past her. "Lily."
Lily turned. Water dripping off her hands.
"How is it, living with your Uncle Franz and Aunt Aria?"
Lily thought about it. "It’s nice. It’s busy."
"Do you get sad?"
"A little. Sometimes." She glanced at Leo. "But it’s okay."
"Why?"
Lily shrugged. "Daddy was busy too. Like Aunt Aria. He always had work. But he always played with us too." She gestured at Leo. "And Uncle Franz does too."
Leo nodded once. Small. Sure.
"And Aunt Aria tries," Lily added quickly.
Arianne’s grip on the table went white.
The exhale that came out of her wasn’t planned. It just came. Lily wasn’t looking at her when she said it—already turning back to the sink, already talking about something else—and that was somehow worse. She didn’t say it for Arianne. She said it because it was true, the way children said true things, without calculation.
Tries. Not does. Tries.
That word was going to live in her chest for a while.
Jessica watched the whole thing. Then she leaned back. Something in her shoulders changed. Not lighter. Just different.
"That sounds right," she said.
The room felt different after that. Not lighter. Fuller.
They sat for a while. Arianne didn’t push back toward the trips. Not yet. The twins were in the room and she needed to not do this in front of them.
Jessica didn’t speak for a moment.
Then: "Bring them again."
"I will."
"We’ll be here."
"I should have done this earlier."
Jessica shook her head. "You’re here now."
It wasn’t forgiveness—Arianne could hear that. It was something different. The specific grace of someone who had already decided not to spend what was left of their energy on blame.
Jessica and Paul had been running this bakery for months since it happened. Getting up, turning on the lights, making the coffee, baking the bread. They hadn’t had the option of not showing up. Neither had Arianne. Maybe that was what Jessica was saying. You showed up when you could. So did I. Here we are.
Arianne looked at the table. At the groove.
She would come back. She understood that now in a way she hadn’t when she walked in. Not as an obligation. As something she actually wanted—this table, this bakery, this woman who had known Layla since before any of it.
Arianne watched them.
Lily laughed from the sink. Bright. Pulling Leo into something he didn’t understand but followed anyway because that was what he did. Leo let her pull him. That was how it worked between them—Lily led, Leo followed, and somehow together they always landed somewhere they both needed to be.
The trips. A year before. Every few weeks. Alex and Layla, leaving the kids, going somewhere they didn’t name.
She needed to know where.
She picked up her phone under the table. Pulled up Franz’s number.
Typed: Need to talk tonight. Not over text.
She sent it before she thought too hard about it. Then she set the phone face-down on her thigh and watched the twins at the sink and waited.
His reply came back in under a minute.
Okay. Come to Nate’s. I’ll be there.