Mindy started back to the car. She had done her due diligence, but thoughts of Ricky's disappearance only deepened her concern for Tess. She had almost reached her Prius when a familiar voice broke her stride.

"Hey! Minds!"

Eddie. Her older brother. She knew it before she turned. His voice boomed unmistakable: low and gravelly with an equal mix of affection and superiority.

"Minds! Wait up."

She stopped.

"Hey, Eddie. Anything?"

Eddie slowed down, catching his breath, and bowled over exaggerating the exertion of the run as he was wont to do – at least Mindy hoped it was an exaggeration. Eddie was only three years older than her and still a couple years shy of forty. He had a rounded gut, but it was more beer belly than obesity, and though his face bore the tell-tale pockmarks and red nose that came with a mix of rosacea and alcohol, he was in good health as far as she knew. He ran every day, he still enjoyed a good touch football game with some of his old high school buddies on the weekends, and despite his drinking, he ate and lived pretty well – better than most in her family. He just had an odd habit of making sure you knew his every ache and pain.

"Sorry, just one moment, Minds." He clutched at his side. "I've got to get out more."

"Eddie." Mindy only had so much patience.

"Nothing. I was just checking the park. No luck, yet." Mindy's heart sank. She hadn't expected good news, but she had still hoped for it. How could she not?

"I take it nothing on your end?"

Mindy stared at him for a moment – a sarcastic reply on the tip of her tongue ready to roll off. Yet Eddie deserved better. That need to jab, that was Amanda Baker still digging in.

"No, nothing," Mindy said, restraining herself. "No one has seen her since she visited Anna early afternoon."

"Jesus. You'd think Sarah or Beau would have given her a ride back. She's only seven. It's Beau, it is. He's always been a shitty influence on Sarah."

"Eddie, she had her bike and it's only a two minute ride from their place to mine." She didn't want to defend Beau, or Sarah, or anyone right then, but it would be too easy to place blame where it didn't lie. Mindy had let her out. Ricky had disappeared barely seven weeks past and she had let Tess go. So what if Harris Hallahan was in county lock-up. It might not have been him that took Ricky at all. She had already had her doubts, but Mindy had bought in to the community line – the fervent and unsubstantiated belief in this man's guilt, despite the lack of any direct tie to Ricky Hill. She had bought into it because she wanted to believe it, and now Tess was missing.

Her fear apparently evident, Eddie came in and pulled her into a giant bear hug. Mindy may have been small, if not the 98 pounds small she had maintained pre-pregnancy, but Eddie was anything but. At just over six feet tall he was a large man not just in height but also in heft, stocky throughout and most of that made up of muscle save for the beer gut. When he pulled Mindy in for a hug, she felt it – a mighty bear hug that in more jovial circumstances would have lifted her clean off her feet. As it was, he merely hunched over and pulled her in tight.

"It's okay lil' sis," he said, patting her back as he roped her in. "We'll find her. I've got my boys looking. You know little Ed and Charlie when they're on a mission. You can't stop them."

"Thanks." Mindy couldn't say any more than that and even that came out choked as the tears began to flow and the anxiety finally broke loose. Eddie hugged her close a moment more, careful not to call attention to her momentary breakdown. He knew her well enough to know she needed to push through it.

At last, she dried her eyes and broke his embrace.

"Thanks, Eddie. Really."

"No problem." He hemmed and hawed for a moment, then continued. "You sure you don't want to ask Melinda."

Mindy cut her eyes, softer than she usually would have, but the message came in clear nonetheless.

Eddie raised his hands in surrender.

"I get it. Just thinking maybe Tess shot over there to see Jimmy."

Jimmy was Ricky's older brother. He'd be ten in October, and while three years wasn't a world of difference, Mindy found it highly unlikely that Tess would have paid him a visit.

"They don't really run in the same circles, Eddie."

"No, but... you know..." He paused, uncertain how to continue.

"I know what?"

"Well, just how things like this are. Kids, you know, they blame themselves sometimes. I mean, we all know it's not little Tess's fault, not at all, but does she know that? Really know that?"

"Of course she does."

"Are you sure? Lil' Ed tells me different."

Shit! Mindy had been so caught up tending to Melinda and getting the word out about Ricky, had she somehow missed that her own daughter blamed herself for what had happened to her cousin?

"I mean, I'm not trying to tell you your own daughter or nothing, it's just if she does, you know, think she's to blame, maybe she feels the need to check in on his mom, his brother, the whole Hill clan. I don't know. You know kids. You can't predict how they'll respond to something like this, right?"

"Damn it. You're not supposed to make sense. You know that, right?"

"I do." He stood there, unable to take the leap for her. Simply waiting.

"Fine. Let's go see Melinda."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

Oh, there was about to be some serious fallout. If Tess wasn't there, if she was anywhere but Melinda's, this visit was about to be all kinds of awkward.

"Okay, then," Eddie started. "I'll ride with you?"

"Sure."

Eddie ran passenger side, stopping before stooping in. "What about her father? James, does he know yet?"

Mindy slammed the door and slid into the driver's side. James and Eddie had always been close, but Eddie never knew the darker side of that man. He only saw the jovial professor persona, the still waters just before the pot hit the burner. The side that boiled, that side James had saved for Mindy alone.

"Fuck James," she said as Eddie hunched in.

Before he had even finished shutting the door she had slammed the gas, swerving out into the street and gunning it for her sister's. A sibling reunion awaited, the likes of which they hadn't had since Harris Hallahan had first been taken into custody. Eddie and Melinda had never been close, but family was family. They were in it together no matter how mired in shit the path became.

As she sped towards Chez Hill, her fingers once again began to drum at the steering wheel. Tess had to be there. She had to be.