Kyle didn’t call before showing up at my place later that afternoon, like I’d thought he would. Instead, he showed up unannounced, with company. There were two police vehicles parked back to back in the driveway behind my car. I’d known they’d come in an official capacity eventually: I’d told them that was Emmy’s car in the lake, after all. It was the first logical step.
I took Emmy’s broken necklace from my jewelry box, placed it on the front table, imagined they’d want it as evidence. Wished I’d been more careful, not grabbing it with my whole hand when I found it, letting it sit in my clenched fist, distorting any prints left behind.
This house had to be where she was taken from. Tangled up in some mess with James Finley, lowlife criminal fuckup. The cops would have to be here, and I’d have to be ready. Still, I’d imagined a call from Kyle first.
Kyle walked up the steps with two other men, one in uniform, the other dressed like Kyle, business casual. I recognized them both: One was the man who’d questioned me in school the first day, Clark Egan; the other, in uniform, Calvin Dodge, who was here the afternoon I’d found the necklace, preparing himself for whatever danger might’ve been awaiting. Dodge was younger than the others, a little unsure of himself. I met them out on the front porch before they knocked on the door.
“Ms. Stevens.” It was Detective Egan who spoke first. Then Dodge nodded in greeting. But it was Kyle who asked, “Can we take a look around at Emmy’s things?”
“Sure,” I said, stepping aside, inviting them in.
I backed inside the house, but Kyle didn’t look at me, didn’t smile, didn’t place a hand on my waist as he moved by. “Show us which room is hers?” he asked, and I blinked for a second too long.
This was all for appearances, then. Acting out our parts, compartmentalizing the different sides of our lives. “The room on the left,” I said.
Kyle walked down the hall alone, and Egan stayed on the front porch, staring off into the woods. Dodge waited in the front rooms, wandering aimlessly through the kitchen and living room. He scanned the countertops, the couch, the phone hooked into the wall. I saw him taking it all in.
“Here.” I picked up Emmy’s necklace, handed it to Dodge. He looked down at the pendant, then back up at me, his eyes slightly glazed. “This was the necklace I found on the back porch,” I said.
He nodded. “I remember,” he said. “I’m sorry,” he added, as if Emmy’s fate were already a foregone conclusion. He patted his pockets, pulled out a plastic bag, held it open for me to drop the necklace inside. I hoped Dodge lasted, because he seemed to speak genuinely, to care about his job, but I worried he was too soft for the long term. He hadn’t been tested yet.
Detective Egan poked his head through the open sliding glass doors from the outside. “Donovan, can I borrow you for a sec?” His voice bounced off the walls, cut through the emptiness. I heard Kyle’s footsteps again before I saw him.
There was something about Egan’s voice that made me follow them all, our steps echoing on the wooden floors, out to the front porch, down the splintered steps. Egan looked at me watching them. His eyes drifted to Kyle’s, asking a question.
“There’s something under the porch,” Egan explained, his voice lower, as if to say: This isn’t for you, girl.
“What?” I asked, picturing the worst. Always the worst. A makeshift grave. A body.
He still didn’t look at me, though he responded: “Not sure yet. Some sort of containers. They yours?”
I shook my head. “No. We rent the place. I’ve never really gone under the house.”
Only Emmy had looked under here, with the flashlight that night we’d found the cats, scared them out.
Egan crouched down, his shoes and belt and knees creaking as he did, and shone a flashlight like Emmy had. I could tell they wanted to keep me back, but this place was mine. This wasn’t an official search. They had no warrant. I had every right to know. I leaned forward over Egan’s shoulder and followed the light. Something white was illuminated, tucked mostly behind a wooden support beam.
Kyle gestured for Dodge to go check it out, and Dodge pulled on gloves and climbed on his hands and knees into the darkness.
“Careful,” I called. “We get animals under there.”
Egan looked slowly over his shoulder at me. We waited in silence, and then Dodge came crawling back out with his flashlight and a cylindrical container. It was one of those cement mixing containers or fertilizer crates. Whatever label had been on the outside had long ago worn off. It was white, plastic, coated with streaks of dirt and mud, and sealed shut.
Dodge brushed the dirt from his uniform, wiped his hands against the sides of his pants.
Egan slipped on his own pair of gloves before bracing the container between his legs and peeling back the top. Inside, there was a bottle of bleach, yellow gloves, a scrubbing brush, and rags underneath.
“She cleans houses,” I said. This must’ve been where she kept her supplies, which she would then load into the back of the car.
“I thought she worked at a motel,” Kyle said. He squinted from the sun low in the sky, flipped his shades down over his eyes, his expression shuttered.
“Both. She did both,” I said.
“Do you know of any specific homes?”
“No,” I said.
He gestured toward the container. “This is hers, then?”
“I don’t know. It could be. Or it could be the owner’s. I really don’t know.”
“There’s something more under there,” Dodge said, shining his light back underneath. “Or there used to be.”
We all crouched down to follow the beam of light, to where I could see a mound of fresh dirt, kicked up. “Something used to be here.”
Something buried under the house. Or something digging.
“I told you, we get animals,” I said. “Cats, mostly.”
The scratching under the porch, echoing in the floorboards.
I imagined the noise in the middle of the night, the night when everything changed. The dog barking next door, the woman found down by the lake—the day I realized Emmy had been gone.
All those sounds in the dead of night.
It’s nothing, Leah.
Just the cats.
THEY STARTED WITH THE questions that evening, all three of them sitting around the kitchen table, taking notes. Asking again when I had last seen Emmy—James Finley had been dead for a while, on first look. Now they were paying close attention. Sifting through the details. Circling around and brushing up against something that made me bristle, that made me worried. The way they were asking, the way they were circling around it, not quite bringing it to the surface. As if Emmy herself might be a suspect. And I had to shape the story. I had to make them understand: She was not. Something had happened to her.
So when they asked about her state of mind, whether she was scared or worried, I told them maybe. I told them about that morning she went missing, how she was watching the woods for something. How she told me not to worry, how I was in a rush and left. And I noticed Kyle taking it all in, this account slightly different from the first time. I was giving him more, a fuller picture—the truth, then. I had to hold nothing back.
“I gave Officer Dodge her necklace,” I added, so they would remember. She had struggled on the back porch. Her necklace broke and fell, and she’d never come back for it. She couldn’t.
“Is this in character? Was it like her to just take off? Leave?” Kyle asked.
“No,” I said, but the word hovered in the air, unfinished, uncertain. I was sure they could feel it, the doubt creeping in.
“Okay, then,” Kyle said, pushing his chair back to stand.
“Thank you, Ms. Stevens, for your help,” Clark Egan said, mirroring Kyle, and Officer Dodge followed in kind.
“Will you be okay here?” Kyle asked, though his face gave nothing away. Nothing to make the other men look twice. Nothing to let me know whether his concern was for more than the typical bystander.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m exhausted.” I saw the faintest twitch of his lips, an indication of a secret only he and I knew.
They left the place much as they found it, even pushing the white container back under the porch, though not as deep as it was. But when I shut and locked the door behind them, the house felt different. The chairs were askew, and the scent of them lingered. There were shoe prints on the floor, and I couldn’t remember if they’d been there all along—nothing was as it had seemed.
I watched them drive off, the headlights dimming and fading. Pictured Emmy looking off into the woods. Heard Kyle’s question once more. Was it like her? The doubt in my voice, creeping into my head.
I thought of the stories I’d told Kyle. How she would come into my room late at night whenever she brought someone home. How she’d stay there until morning, behind my locked door, waiting them out.
For them, she was always a disappearing trick. She had just never done it to me.