twenty-four

I was frozen. I didn’t know where to go next. But luckily, Grant did.

He didn’t say anything the entire way into town the next morning. When the reflection off the snow fell on his face a certain way, for a second I couldn’t see his mouth. A ribbon of white light slithered across his skin like a scar. It made my stomach lurch and I had to look away.

I jumped out of the truck as soon as he parked it along the curb. It seemed like I was doing everything faster since the news story: brushing my teeth, eating, even sleeping. But time was moving quicker, and so was Ella, and if I wanted to find her I had to keep up.

“Come on,” Grant said, guiding me toward a tiny cafe across from the diner. “We need to get something to eat, regroup. Strategize.”

I had to admit, the thought of a massive latte and a sandwich was pretty appealing.

Grant’s fingers grazed my back as he led me past the shops. When we walked by the bead shop, I couldn’t help but glance inside. I’d never be able to pass it without thinking of Ella. I almost passed the stationery shop up completely, but something in the window caught my eye.

It was a wolf.

“Hold on a second.” I pulled away from Grant to look in the window. Yes, that was it—the same wolf journal with glued-on eyes Grant had given me two years earlier. I squinted at a small sign under it that read, More wolf items inside!

I turned back to Grant. “Hey, can we stop in here for a sec?”

Grant shrugged, rubbing his eyes. “Sure. But seriously, I need a coffee. You can only stare at stuffed animals and stick figures for so many hours without caffeine.”

I stood on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Ten minutes. Promise.”

The bells to the stationery shop jingled as we walked in. But they didn’t really sound jingly; it was kind of like there was a sock stuffed in them so the sound came out muffled. In fact, everything in the shop looked kind of muffled in a way. The walls were muted gray, and the rugs were a hodgepodge of faded blues. Even the cards and stationery that lined the walls looked smothered in dusty light. While everything else outside seemed to be moving faster, it had come to a screeching halt in here.

I walked the perimeter of the shop, searching for wolf-related things. Candice Dunnard’s had shop opened shortly before I’d left Amble, so I’d never been inside, but I’d heard about it. Mrs. Dunnard had always been known around town as a little bit of a “wolf freak”—she was always touting Amble’s legendary wolves to the (few) tourists who came here, and when there were reports of a rabid wolf in Minnesota attacking an elementary school playground, she tried to capitalize on the news by selling little beaded Wolf No More talismans out of her house. Then she opened the shop and started stuffing it with journals and carvings and books, all about wolves.

Ironic that her own daughter had gotten snatched up by them.

There were rows and rows and dusty cards, and a table full of rose-colored stationery in the middle of the shop, but no other wolf things. Finally, after another loop around the store, I found a single, lopsided shelf near the back. But there was only one row of wolf journals on it, and that was it.

“I thought this place was supposed to sell a bunch of wolf stuff?” I said. “There’s, like, nothing in here.”

The skin between Grant’s eyebrows puckered. “Yeah, I know. There used to be a ton of weird stuff in here—at least there was when I bought that diary a couple years ago. I don’t know what happened.”

I stepped toward the glass-case counter and reached to ring the service bell. Maybe I could at least talk to Mrs. Dunnard about the wolves. My fingertip had just grazed the surface of the bell when something on the corkboard behind the counter caught my eye.

Graham.

My last name, smattered across a news article headline. But another yellowed article covered up the rest of it. I stepped back and took a good look at the corkboard. Dozens of articles were splashed across it, some with pictures of winter cornfields and black-and-white houses that looked eerily similar to mine. And some with just the name Graham.

No, all with the name Graham.

I heard Grant breathing behind me, probably trying to process the same thing I was. I pulled away from the counter and stepped behind it.

“What are you doing?” Grant whispered. “You can’t do that.”

“Grant,” I snapped. “My name is all over this lady’s store. Like hell I can’t go back here.” He turned quiet then, and I immediately regretted the sharpness in my voice. I looked back at him. “I’m sorry, it’s just … this is freaking me out, okay? Just give me sec.”

He nodded, and I turned back to the board.

All of these articles, every single one of them, was about my family. I pulled off one that had a picture of the house that looked like mine—because it was mine—and started reading.

Amble police chief Mike Graham faces local retaliation after stepping down from the Sarah Dunnard missing persons case. The home where he resides with his wife and daughter was vandalized late last night. The case is currently under investigation.

I squinted at the grainy photo of our house. Everything looked the same except for the deep hole near the back, so dark and jagged it looked like something had tried to take a bite out of it. But I knew better; it was the damage caused by the arsonists. And just above it, two lines of sprawling, angry letters, but I couldn’t make out the words.

I reached up to put the article back in its place when another headline caught my eye. The date on this one was from January 2nd. The same date as today. The same date as on my one-way ticket to New York, the same date stamped onto the sticker on my suitcase only two years ago.

Victim’s Sister Named a Suspect in Attempted Murder Case

Carefully, I plucked the article from its pushpin.

There was a picture of the cornfield where I’d found Ella that morning, only now it was all wrapped up in police tape. I skimmed the faded letters. It was mostly about the incident, how Ella was found by her older sister, how she was in a medically induced coma for the week following her reconstructive surgery.

But there was one paragraph lingering at the end, kind of as an afterthought. Only to me it meant that the whole universe was crashing down on me and the stars snapped from their strings and got tangled in my hair.

A paring knife with the victim’s blood on the blade was found in the older sister’s possession the following day,
automatically making her a suspect. Following an
investigations by the police, Claire Graham was
released without further questioning due to the evidence being circumstantial.

I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until Grant was behind me, patting me on the back and whispering “Breathe, Claire” into my ear.

I spun around to face him, my cheeks hot and everything else inside me numb. A flicker of an image, white-hot and dangerous, sliced across my memory. “Ella’s blood was on a knife. In the cornfield.”

Grant’s head dipped below his shoulders. He didn’t say anything.

“How many more, Grant?”

He took a step back, palms raised. “How many more what?”

“How many more articles are like this?” I took a step forward and rubbed my hands against my eyes to blot out the tears. “How many more are out there? And what else is in the police records that we can’t seem to find?”

Grant’s whole body slumped and he closed his eyes, like just looking at me was too much for him to bear. “I don’t know. But I swear to God, Claire, I don’t know why the records aren’t in the database.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. I stood there, in front of Grant, gasping for breath. “That’s why the whole town’s furious I didn’t get charged—there was a freaking knife on me.”

Suddenly, the floor started to tilt beneath my feet and my head got all fuzzy. I leaned over and pressed my forehead to the cool glass of the counter, forcing air into my lungs.

When I blinked open my eyes, a smear of silver and brown swallowed up my vision. I blinked again, and a knife tucked into the glass case took shape.

I pulled my face from the counter, still blinking away the black spots dancing before my eyes. The knife was nestled in an old wooden box. At first, it looked just like any other knife, but when I got past the blade, I saw that the handle was wooden, carved into the jagged image of a wolf.

“I’ve seen this knife somewhere before,” I said to Grant.

“Of course you have,” answered a warbling voice that was definitely not Grant’s. I spun around to find Candice Dunnard leaning up against the entryway to the shop’s back room. She tilted her pointy chin up and looked down at me. “Your father bought one from me years ago. Why don’t you ask him to borrow it the next time you’re out hunting wolves?”

In my mind, the same wooden box tumbled out of the hall closet while Ella dug through the mittens and hats. “Ew,” she’d said, slamming the box shut. “Dad has the weirdest stuff.”

I must have looked like my brain wasn’t working for a second as I stood in front of her, open-mouthed and stunned into silence. She didn’t wait for me to respond. “Your family ruined my life. Now get the hell out of my store. You’re not welcome here.”

I shook my head. “But I don’t understand—”

“Your father hid evidence in my daughter’s case. I’m sure of it. Something that might have led to a conviction, to closure for me and my family. And then all the drama of the resignation,” she said, throwing her hands in the air, “and the rumors about how there were wolves out there that took Sarah. And then your sister’s various cases, which have completely overtaken any investigative powers the police mustered for my daughter these past two years. Your family is nothing but a bunch of liars.” She gritted her teeth, disgust practically radiating off her skin. “There are no wolves, unless you count the ones with the last name Graham.”

Just then I felt heat and light and safety. Grant’s arm looped around me, gently guiding me away from Candice Dunnard. I let him pull me away from her vile words, from her twisted Graham-collage splattered throughout her rundown store.

“Get the hell out!” she screamed, one last time for effect. We were already on our way out the door. The words sounded muffled, like my ears were stuffed with cotton balls, and I knew I needed to sit down—and fast—before I passed out.

I took a shaky step onto the sidewalk and slammed directly into Lacey Jordan.

“Watch it!” she yelped as she pushed me away from her. I gasped, my lungs choking on the icy air. Lacey brushed back her hair and glanced at her friend, who had a face I kind of remembered. History class, I think. Third period. A million years ago.

It was right about then that I noticed that Lacey and her friend weren’t the only ones staring at me.

A group of kids about my age was clustered around the door to the diner where I’d found Grant. A dozen pairs of eyes watched me, their mouths zipped into tight lines. Two people I didn’t recognize stared shamelessly at me from the shop across the street.

It felt like the entire town had been put on pause, and all of its residents were trapped in place by the concrete that filled up their heads. And every last one of them was watching me.

Hunting me.

Like I was the wolf.

There are no wolves, unless you count the ones with the last name Graham.

My back tingled as Grant’s fingers brushed between my shoulder blades. An alarm pinged in my chest; I needed to tell him not to touch me, not now. It was too dangerous. I was too dangerous.

But it was too late, anyway. Their eyes bounced between us, pausing for a fraction of a section over Grant’s hand making contact with my jacket. He wasn’t even touching my skin, but the fact that he was within a centimeter of my clothing seemed to be enough to classify him as crazy and criminal, too.

“You missed my New Year’s Eve party the other night. Don’t worry, though, I’m having another little get-together tonight. You’re coming, right, Grant?” Lacey asked, her eyes narrowing. It was a loaded question, thick with a meaning that she tried to keep smothered but failed: You’re still one of us, right, Grant?

Grant gave a quick shrug of his shoulders. “Depends on when I get off work, I guess.” He stared at the crack in the cement between us when he said it.

Lacey watched him for a long second before saying, “It’d probably be a good idea if you came. Alone.” She didn’t even bother to pretend to be nice to me this time, and now I knew why—it had less to do with my dad and everything to do with Amble. I was everything this town didn’t want to believe in. And I’d sucked one of its best assets into my little orbit of crazy. Just a little too close for any of them to bear.

Grant nodded and pressed his fingers into my back. “Come on, Claire, let’s go.” I let him guide me to the truck, even though his fingertips felt like knives. Well, I assumed it was his fingertips I felt poking through the fabric of my jacket. But even after we were in the truck, my skin still stung.

And I realized it wasn’t Grant at all.

It was the bitter warnings from everyone else in Amble—watching me, threatening me with tight-lipped mouths and angry eyes. Their warnings nipped at my skin all the way down the street.

“Get out,” they whispered. And I knew they meant it.

Just how long I had until they threw me out, I didn’t know.