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Me, on the other hand, I had a hard time not worrying about what would come next. Especially now.

I’d told Charles I would check Grandma Marilyn’s social media. Mostly it was because I’d have felt guilty if he dug deep into research while I sat around twiddling my thumbs.

Of course, I’d already checked her social media as soon as I knew her current name and location. I’d tried to find her before last night, but Jones wasn’t exactly an uncommon surname. I finally managed to find the correct profile yesterday evening while I was supposed to be relaxing in the tub.

Unfortunately, my grandmother hadn’t posted a single photo of herself during all her years on the site, assigning a simple stock-image daisy to serve as her profile picture.

She also rarely updated her status. When I checked last night, the most recent one had been made about eight months ago—commentary on some TV show she’d just started watching on some cable channel I’d never heard of.

I navigated to her profile now, expecting to see the exact same feed.

But no.

My grandma had posted an update less than an hour ago. We’d probably just left her neighborhood at the time.Whoa.

“Nothing beats sunny skies and sandy beaches! Hello, San Francisco!” she’d captioned a photo of the Golden Gate bridge.

Wow. Was she really clear on the other side of the country?

What dumb luck.

Of course, California made sense. Her phone had a Cali area code. Hey, maybe she was planning to move back and change her name again.

Then I’d never find her.

I scrolled through my newsfeed idly, completely frustrated with this turn of events and wondering how I would break it to Charles, especially considering that we’d lost my engagement ring because of our trip out here. And it hadn’t even been a full week since he’d proposed.

Ugh. I was the worst fianc?e ever.

Tears stung at the edges of my eyes, and I didn’t try to hold them back. Stupid San Francisco, I thought, looking for someone to blame other than myself.

Then, for whatever reason, I navigated back to my grandmother’s profile to look at that picture again. Perhaps it was just to wallow in my dumb luck, or maybe I’d subconsciously realized that something didn’t quite add up.

That’s when I saw it. She’d checked in when she posted the photo, not at the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, but at the Golden Wok in Katahdin, Maine.

Oh my gosh.

She was here—here and lying about it.

When she’d tried to pull up the Golden Gate bridge, the social media site must have brought up nearby establishments with similar names. My grandmother hadn’t noticed that the geo-tag gave her away.

But why would she lie about being out of town?

“Hi, Mommy!” Paisley called as she rushed past me, then dipped her head and picked up a pink shell, only to immediately take off running again.

“Hi,” I called back distractedly. My grandmother was here, and she knew I was looking for her.

She wanted to put me off her scent, but I refused to go home without meeting her first. Maybe she’d never want to see me again after—and that possibility hurt me deeply—but, still, I at least had to try.

I’d rather meet her and have it go badly than never get the chance at all.

Now I just had to tell Charles what I’d found, and we could figure out our next steps from there.

15

When I shared my discovery about the failed social media checkin with Charles, I may have mentioned how much I wished Pringle was there to help us make a plan.

And Octo-Cat took the bait, hook, line, and sinker.

“The dog and I are better than that raccoon fraud could ever hope to be,” he growled and then insisted he could handle things from here.

We drove back out to the condominium complex, and I watched as the pets tore away from the car to begin their top-secret recon mission. Octo-Cat had declared the details of the operation to be on a need-to-know basis and then had proceeded to explain that I did not need to know.

Charles reached over and squeezed my knee.

With growing trepidation, I closed the door so that he could drive us around the corner and out of sight.

The part of the plan that I’d been privy to involved Charles and me circling the block slowly while the animals followed through with their mission to track down my missing grandmother.

“Am I wrong for kind of wishing the raccoon was with us?” Charles asked later with a snort. “At least he keeps things interesting.”

By this point, we’d driven around the neighborhood at least a dozen times, and the residents had noticed. If we kept this up much longer, we’d soon have a cop car on our tail.

“You know I only brought up Pringle to get Octo-Cat to think helping us was his idea, right?” I reminded him with a laugh. “So, yes, you are very wrong for thinking Pringle’s presence would improve anything. You don’t have to listen to him prattle on the way the rest of us do. Do you knowduring our last trip, he decided to pick up trucker lingo?”

Charles burst out laughing.“You’re kidding. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”