It was eight o’clock by the time Natalie pulled into Grace’s driveway again and parked behind the Mini Cooper. The air smelled earthy sweet. The stars were out. She felt a chill as she took the flagstone walkway up to the front door and rang the bell.
The door popped open with a familiar ker-plunk. Grace stood in a golden light, looking sleepy-eyed and fuzzy-headed. “Hey, Nat.”
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.” She stepped aside.
Natalie followed her sister into the living room, where Grace crawled underneath an old patchwork quilt on the sofa. She’d been drinking. There was a near-empty wine bottle and a long-stemmed wineglass on the coffee table. Natalie took a seat. “Grace, are you okay? Talk to me.”
“I’ve been looking through our old high school yearbooks,” she said, smoothing her hands over the pages. “Most likely to succeed, most likely to end up in jail. God, what idiots we were.” She closed the yearbook and sighed. “Just having a lot of regrets.”
“Where’s Ellie?” Natalie asked.
“Upstairs. I told her I’ve had it with her. God, that phrase just rolled off my lips, and I thought, dear Lord, I’m becoming my mother. The dreaded Deborah. Remember how angry she used to get? She’d blow a fuse, and her face would turn all shades of purple. Then she’d kick us out of the house. We could’ve been kidnapped. Now I find myself muttering the same obscene phrase. And it sucks, because I’ve always wanted to be the cool mom.”
“News flash. You are the cool mom.”
She shook her bleary head. “When it comes to Ellie, I can’t do anything right. If I bake brownies, she’s on a diet. If I’m too busy working, she’ll complain that I’m never around. If I take a week off, she gets bored with my company. I told her, ‘Go ahead. Slam your door. Insult me. Just remember, the more you push me away, the more I’ll stick like glue.’” Grace smiled. “Boy, she hated that.”
“She’s confined to her room?”
“Yeah, that’s her so-called punishment, right? I send her up there with all her toys and gadgets and devices … ha. Some punishment.”
“That’s okay,” Natalie said. “I wanted to talk to you alone.”
She nodded nervously. “Look, Natalie … I’m beat. This week has been so hard on me, I can’t do anything involving mental effort right now.”
“It’s about Willow,” Natalie said. “We’re considering reopening her case.”
The tense lines around Grace’s mouth showed that she was both repulsed and fascinated by this idea. She rummaged around in her large leather bag for her cigarettes and moved the ashtray closer on the coffee table. “What the hell for?”
“A couple of new things have come to light. What can you tell me about the day Willow died? Think about it. Take your time.”
She drew her legs to her chest and rested her chin on her knees, like a child, like the pensive older sister Natalie remembered. “It was a normal school day. We heard the news that evening, and I just … fell apart. It was raining, and I was sitting in my room, watching the rain outside. The police pulled up out front, Dad answered the door, and they told him what happened, and he just … collapsed. Mom began wailing like an animal. I felt so drained, I hardly had any feelings left in my body. It was as if a razor had cut me in half, dividing today from yesterday.” She rubbed her forehead. “God, it still hurts.”
“You were in a coven with Daisy, Lindsey, and Bunny at the time. They were your closest friends. Can you think of anything they might’ve said or done around the time Willow was killed? Anything unusual?”
“No. We were all upset. It was a difficult time.”
“Any gossip or rumors you might’ve overheard?”
“I can’t think of anything.” Grace shook her head, confused.
“Did anybody say anything to you after Willow died? Did the four of you ever talk about what might’ve happened to her?”
Grace rolled her eyes. “No. After Willow died, I completely fell apart. I was so messed up, I left the coven. You know, dark magic. It didn’t sit right with me anymore.” She rubbed her nose. “Well, I mean, Lindsey was … I mean, she always came across as quiet and reserved, but there was a hidden side to her that could be very domineering. She wanted us to keep it going, but I couldn’t stand it anymore. Neither could Bunny.”
“So, in the coven … you were doing dark magic? Black magic?”
Grace tamped out her cigarette and rubbed the base of her throat. “Okay, look. Lindsey’s the one who wanted to try it. I’ve blocked some of it out because, frankly … look at my life now. I’ve got a terrific kid, and I love my teaching gig. But truthfully? Back then? We might’ve done a few things in a group that we’d never do on our own. I don’t know. All the charms and fortune-telling games were fun. Keeping secrets. Testing our loyalty. Truth or dare. We pushed and pulled. It was exciting for a while. But then, eventually, it began to take on a life of its own and … How can I say this? Lindsey wanted to go darker. She encouraged the rest of us to cast negative spells on some of the girls at school. You know, just the ones who deserved it. There was a group of popular kids who used to pick on Lindsey a lot, and she wanted revenge. You know, make-our-enemies-cower-before-us type of thing. She was pretty persuasive, and she convinced the rest of us to try black magic, and at first it felt powerful. We were going through such intense emotions at that time, it felt like a rush … as if we were superhuman. But it was all playacting, Natalie. Because, after Willow died, it all fell apart. What happened was a horror. A hole. I can’t even talk about it. Life goes on, but there’s a big part of me that’s still frozen in time.”
“And so it ended?”
Grace nodded. “For me it did.”
“What kind of black magic?”
“Oh, come on. We were into some heavy shit back then. Things got pretty negative, but it wasn’t the end of the world.”
“How negative?” Natalie asked.
Grace eyed her skeptically. “Didn’t you test those waters yourself?”
“Not really. It scared the hell out of me.”
“Secret rituals, invocations, sleeping naked in a graveyard. Willow was into black magic herself once, but she disavowed it pretty quick, especially after Mom got to her. But, hey, none of us stayed witches forever, right? We didn’t become Wiccan priestesses. It was just a blip on our radar. We all went on to do other things. We outgrew it. We grew up. I’m not the same person I was six months ago, Natalie. Are you? We wanted to be in control of our lives, that’s all. Or maybe we wanted freaky powers, because the world can be pretty overwhelming at times. But, come on, Natalie … you get that, don’t you?”
“I get it. Definitely.”
“Anyway. That’s why I’m so upset about Ellie. The same thing just happened to her. I didn’t expect her to go down the same rabbit hole.” Grace looked at her hands. “When I signed the divorce papers, Burke told me he never understood what I wanted. How the hell could he not know? I wanted romance, I wanted flowers, I wanted to travel to Tibet and parachute out of an airplane … anything but this boring, repetitive life with its worries and domestic issues to be resolved, and him commuting to Manhattan every week doing God knows what.” Grace made a sour face. “I don’t know why I married him in the first place. But I fell for the whole crummy package. He can be charming when he wants to be. He’s a good bullshitter, and he had me convinced … this was the one. But it was all fakery. He hid Asshole Burke really well.” Grace smoothed the loose hair off her neck and said, “Anyway, my daughter is all I care about now. We had a fight. I feel bad about it, but it’s for her own good.” She worriedly rubbed her forehead. “Sorry. Do you mind? I have to go check on Ellie.”
“Go ahead.”
“I hope she isn’t listening to any of this.” Grace stood up. “Be right back.”
Wiccans were not Satanists or Goths, although there could be plenty of overlap. Wicca was a crazy brew. You could shape it any way you liked—there weren’t very many specific rules. Invoke the devil. Tattoos and piercings. An obsession with death rites, coffins, and hearses. Magical words repeated for protection. It drew misfits, socially awkward kids, shy types, loners—but also it attracted plenty of unsuspecting, naïve, well-rounded teenage girls.
Natalie could hear Grace’s footsteps in the upstairs hallway, then she knocked on Ellie’s door. “Sweetie? You awake?” There was a pause. “Honey? You in there?”
No response.
The door creaked open.
Silence.
And then, Grace called out, “Ellie?”
Natalie went to stand at the bottom of the stairs. “What’s wrong?”
Grace leaned over the banister. “She’s not in her room.” She disappeared again, and Natalie could hear all the bedroom and bathroom doors swinging open and shut. “Ellie? Where are you? This isn’t funny.”
Moments later, Grace hurried down the stairs, looking deeply shaken. “Her wallet and phone are gone. Ellie?” she called out.
“Try her number,” Natalie suggested.
Grace picked up the landline and dialed Ellie’s number. She shook her head. “No answer.” She left a frantic message. “Where are you? It’s Mom. Call me!”
Then Grace put on her jacket and scooped up her leather bag.
Natalie stopped her. “Whoa. Where are you going?”
“To look for my daughter.”
“No way. You’ve been drinking,” Natalie told her. “You can’t drive now. You need to sober up first.”
“What am I supposed to do? Sit here and hope for the best?”
“Call everyone you can think of. Friends, classmates, parents, teachers. In the meantime, I’ll go looking for her. If she’s on foot, she can’t have gotten very far.”
“She’s never done this before,” Grace said, breathless and scared.
“Give me your keys.”
Grace clutched them in her hand.
“Grace, what if Ellie comes back? She’ll need you to be here, waiting for her.”
She bit her lip and nodded.
“Start dialing,” Natalie told her. “I’ll put out a BOLO. All the guys in the department will be looking for her, okay? Don’t worry. We’ll find her. This is what I do.”