Grace sighed and took the card and envelope from him. “Okay then, let’s just call it mother’s intuition,shall we?” She waved the card between Luke and Grey. “You will both simply have to trust me when I say that Camry is living in Go Back Cove.” She looked at her watch, then at Luke. “It’s only nine. If you leave right after lunch, you should be there in plenty of time to settle into your hotel.”
“Excuse me?” he repeated, looking even more confused.
Grey sighed, only much more heavily than Grace had. “You’re going to Go Back Cove, Pascal, to talk our daughter into coming home.”
Luke’s eyes widened and he took a step back. “I am?”
“But you only have two weeks to make it happen,” Grace interjected. “We want her home by the winter solstice.”
Luke took another step back, his alarm evident. “Considering Camry’s last e-mail to me, I am probably the last person she wants to see. And this really is a family matter, don’t you think? Shouldn’t the two of you go after her?”
“We can’t,” Grace told him.
“But why?” he asked, tugging on the sleeve of his shirt.
“Because she can’t know that we know she was fired from NASA, much less that we know she’s been lying to us,” Grace explained. “She has to wantto come home, and she needs to tell us in person what she’s been doing for the last year.”
“Then how am I supposed to persuade her to come home if I can’t reveal how worried you are about her?”
“That should be easy for you, Renoir,” Grey said. “Ye just elaborate on the lies you’ve been telling us.”
Luke dropped his gaze to Grace’s feet, but then he suddenly stiffened, as if fighting some urge, and looked at Grey. “My full name is Lucian Pascal Renoir, but I go by Luke Pascal . . . sometimes.” He tugged on his sleeve again, as if the borrowed shirt irritated him. “And because Camry knew me as Lucian Renoir from my e-mails, and I thought she might be here when Jack Stone found me, I told him my name was Pascal so I wouldn’t get thrown back out in the snow on my as—on my ear.”
“Then when you arrive in Go Back Cove,” Grace said, pulling out a chair at the table and urging him to sit down, “I suggest you continue using ‘Luke Pascal.’ ”
“But . . .”
She patted his shoulder. “It’ll be okay, Luke,” she assured him, going to the oven and getting the plate of eggs and toast she’d kept warming for him. “As soon as you’re done with breakfast, you can sort through your belongings and give me what clothes need to be washed. Then we’ll get on the Internet and find you a hotel in Go Back Cove. It’s a small town, so it shouldn’t take you too long to find Camry.”
“My car was recovered?”
Grace set the plate down in front of him. “Jack and his deputy brought it back just this morning.
It’s parked in the upper driveway behind the kitchen.”
“Really, Dr. Sutter, I don’t think I’m the one to go after your daughter.”
“Of course you are, Luke. Because if I know Camry, the moment you work up the nerve to tell her that Podly is scattered over half of Springy Mountain, she’ll drag you back here so fast your head will be spinning.”
Luke snapped his navy blue eyes to hers, his face draining of color. “Y-you know about Podly?” he whispered, glancing at Grey before looking back at her. “You knowit was your satellite that crashed here last summer?”
Grace went to the fridge to get him some juice, giving her equally stunned husband a smug smile as she walked by. “Do you honestly believe I wouldn’t know someone was eavesdropping on Podly’s transmissions?” she asked, bringing the juice back to Luke. “All the time you and Camry were burning up the Internet with your e-mails, I was watching you watching Podly.”
“Did Camry know?” he asked, absently taking the juice she handed him.
“I never told her. But if she’d bothered to check, she’s certainly smart enough to have found out. But then, I doubt she would have been looking for an eavesdropper.”
“But you were?”
Grace shrugged. “An old habit from my days working for StarShip Spaceline.”
He looked down at his plate. “Then you also know that I caused the satellite to malfunction.” He looked up at her, his eyes filled with sincere remorse. “I’m sorry. I really don’t know what I did to make it crash. I spent three months going over the data in my own lab, and the last two months scouring the mountain, hoping I could find enough salvageable parts to figure out what went wrong.” He turned in his seat to face her fully and took her hand in both of his. “You have my word, Dr. Sutter, I was going to bring whatever I found directly to you. I-I’m sorry,” he repeated.
Grace patted his shoulder. “I believe you, Luke.” She nudged him around to his plate of rapidly cooling food. “Now eat, so we can get you packed up and headed to Go Back Cove. The sooner you find Camry, the sooner you can talk her into helping you find our satellite. Podly had heat shields in case something like this happened, so there’s a good chance the data bank survived reentry. Camry knows these mountains quite well, and between your trajectory data and her love of a good challenge, I’m sure you’ll both be locked in my lab with Podly by the winter solstice. Eat,” she repeated, pointing at his food when he tried to say something else.
He snapped his mouth shut with a frown and picked up his fork.
Grace took hold of her also frowning husband and led him up the back stairway.
“That’s it?” Grey asked as soon as they reached the upstairs hall. “The man destroys your life’s work, and ye not only hand it over to him, you practically hand him our daughter as well?”
“Luke didn’t destroy anything,” she said, pulling him into their bedroom and closing the door.
“He just told ye he crashed Podly.”
“No, he told me he thinkshe caused Podly to crash.” She stepped into his arms and started toying with one of the buttons on his shirt. “And I merely let him believe that he did,” she said softly.
Grey’s hands went to her shoulders. “Did youcrash the satellite?”
“I was rather busy right about then, Grey. If you remember correctly, our baby girl was giving birth to our granddaughter at that precise moment.”
“Then if you didn’t make it crash, and Pascal didn’t, who did?”
“I have no idea.” She started toying with his buttons again, undoing the top one. “Maybe the same person who sent us that Christmas card? Because what are the chances that my satellite would crash so close to my home?” She looked up. “The odds of that happening are astronomical, Grey. It hasto be the magic.”
He reached up and stilled her hand just as she undid the next button. “I find myself growing worried about ye, wife.”
“How’s that?” she asked, still managing to undo the next button.
“You’ve been acting far too much like melately.”
Grace went perfectly still. Oh God, he was right! She’d turned into a warrior,only instead of wielding a sword, her weapon was deceit.
She headed for the door. “I’m going to go tell Luke everything.”
“Oh, no you’re not,” he said, sweeping her up in his arms with a laugh and striding to their bed. “If ye confess to Pascal, then I’llbe forced to go get Camry, and I agree it would turn out badly for all of us.”
He opened his arms and dropped her on their bed, then quickly settled on top of her. “I’m not upset ye guilted Pascal into going after Camry, only that I hadn’t thought of it myself.” He started undoing the buttons on her blouse. “But then, I didn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle, did I? So when were ye going to tell me your little satellite is scattered over half of Springy Mountain? I would have found it for ye, Grace.”
“I know you would have, and I love you for that. But Podly really isn’t mine anymore, Grey. It’s Camry’s future. And I need for her to wantto go find it herself.”