I had my back pressed against the bedroom wall, ear to the open window, like a kid eavesdropping on the conversation outside. Daniel trying to send the police away, to stop them from dragging us into yet another investigation.
Stay out of it, he’d said to me, and he was right.
I’d already given my statement to Officer Fraize, useless as it must’ve been. Did you see anything in the woods? Hear anything that night? Anything at all?
No sir, no sir, no sir.
I had no relationship with Annaleise. There was nothing on paper tying us to each other, except in that hypothetical box in the police station from ten years ago, and that was just a corroboration of alibi. And yet here was a new cop out front, asking to speak with me.
His voice was gravelly but tentative. Careful. “If I could just ask her a few quick questions about her relationship with Tyler Ellison . . .”
And there it was. Tyler. Tyler ties to me and me to Daniel. Suddenly, the whole knotted mess of us is sucked down, prodded and pried until we reveal something unintentional. Something used to break apart the other. Hannah Pardot was an expert at that. This guy, not so much. He was tripping over Daniel, or Daniel was overpowering him. Either way, this cop wasn’t getting in to see me.
“I think she’s sleeping,” I heard Daniel say. “Look, I’m on my way to work, so I can’t stick around. Maybe try again this afternoon.”
“It’s important. A woman is missing, and every day she’s not found, she’s more at risk. It’s our moral duty to track down every possible lead.”
Like it had come straight from Witness Questioning 101. What was he, a month out of training? Moral duty. Hilarious. Like it was their moral duty to crack open every facet of anyone’s life, anyone who came within three degrees of separation. To destroy the living to find the dead.
It had been eight days since Annaleise was reported missing. Asking me questions about Tyler now wasn’t going to change the outcome for her. They weren’t looking for her. They were looking at him. Despite Daniel’s good intentions, despite his warnings, if I didn’t go out there, the police might think I had something to hide.
I pulled on fresh clothes and padded barefoot down the stairs, the conversation muted behind the wood and plaster. I pushed open the screen door and shaded my eyes from the sun. “Daniel?” I called.
The unmarked car was parked halfway up the driveway. This cop wanted it to seem like he was just dropping by, just in the neighborhood, nothing serious. It was navy blue with tinted windows, and it needed to be washed.
“Is everything okay?” I said.
The man wasn’t in uniform, and he was bigger than I’d thought, and younger, given his voice. About my age or younger—Annaleise’s age—which made him too young to be part of Corinne’s investigation. The way he spoke made me think he wasn’t from here. Not this town, anyway. An hour east was all it took to make a difference. The mountains and the single winding road kept this place separate, insular.
“Nicolette”—he checked his notepad—“Farrell?” Definitely not from here. Even if he was too young to know me personally, the names go with the houses. It wouldn’t be a mystery. The Carter property backs to the Farrell property, and the McElrays own land on both sides, though neither was built on yet. The Lawsons made a bid for the house and land across the lane when Marty Piper, the last of the Pipers, passed on after his third and final heart attack, but the house and the land were unoccupied, tangled in legalese and court paperwork.
I was staring off through the woods, in the direction of Marty’s place, when the cop said, “Miss?”
“Yes?” I said.
Daniel rolled his neck and came to stand beside me on the porch.
“You’re Nicolette Farrell?”
“I am.”
“My name is Detective Charles. I was hoping to ask you a few questions about your relationship with Tyler Ellison.” He seemed to be waiting for something—maybe for me to be the Southern hostess, like Laura, open the screen door and beckon him inside, offering him some tea. Outsiders only come in when the investigation shifts. Detective Charles, I was sure, was the new Hannah Pardot.
After he took a few hesitant strides toward the house, I walked down the porch steps, meeting him in the middle of the yard, my feet sinking into the ground, moist from last night’s rain.
“How’s the motel?” I asked, just to check. “Or are they putting you up someplace nicer?”
His mouth twisted. “I’m sorry, have we met?” he asked.
“You’re not from here, are you?” I countered.
“No, ma’am,” he said, flipping through his pad. He towered over me, so I couldn’t see the writing. He cleared his throat, pen poised over the paper. “This will just take a moment. I’m following up on some questions, here. Heard this might be a good place to start.” He didn’t look up the entire time he spoke. Not until he said, “Please describe your relationship with Tyler Ellison.”
“This will be really fast, Detective. We have no relationship. Sorry you wasted your time coming out here.”
His eyes flicked up to mine, then back to his paper. “How about in the past, then?”
“He was my high school boyfriend,” I said. “I’m twenty-eight.”
He flipped pages back and forth, umm-ing and uhh-ing, before finding what he was looking for. “You’ve been together since?” he asked. “It’s my understanding that you’ve been seen with him since then.”
I smiled up at him. “I live in Philadelphia. But when I used to come visit, sure.”
“Not anymore?” he asked.
“I’m engaged,” I said, and I saw his eyes drift to my bare finger.
He flipped the pages again. “Uh, he’s been seen around your house. More recently. Very recently.”
I was getting irritated, and I didn’t make any attempt to hide it. “He’s been helping—”
Daniel stepped forward, cut me off. “I asked him to. He runs a construction business. We’re fixing up the house. Nic’s only home for a little while. He’s helping me as a favor.”
Detective Charles faced my brother. “You’re friends?”
The briefest of pauses, but I felt it. “Yes,” Daniel said. Be smart. Give the most finite possible answer. Close the loop, don’t make unnecessary openings, because they will seize them. They will fill them.
“So, the thing is . . .” Detective Charles flipped pages, and I caught a glimpse of a blank sheet. The jerk was playing me—playing us both. The pages were nothing. A few words scribbled in the margins. It was an act to pretend he didn’t know who we were and all our history. In truth, he had it filed away in his head. He’d been studying us, and he was playing his angle. God, how long had he been here?
I put a hand on Daniel’s arm and applied the faintest pressure before Detective Charles looked back up. “The thing is, we can’t find Annaleise’s cell—and it appears to be off. But we did get a look at her phone records. And the very last call she answered, the night before she was reported missing, was from Tyler Ellison. Around one A.M.”
“It’s my understanding that they were seeing each other,” I said.
He tapped his pen on the page. “No, see, that’s the other thing. Tyler said they broke up. And when I looked into why that might be—because that’s an awful big coincidence, break up with a girl and then she goes missing—talk around town is that it probably has something to do with you. And why do you think that might be?”
I felt my jaw tighten, my hands tighten. “Because historically, that’s what happened. And in this town, what happened in the past is all that will ever happen, Detective. If you were from here, you’d know that.”
“No need to get defensive. I’m just trying to understand.”
“Then ask Tyler.”
“I did,” he said. “Though he’s a hard man to track down.”
There was a time when all I had to do was conjure him to mind—just the wisp of a thought—and there he’d be in the flesh, as if I had summoned him. But now I had to agree. Tyler was starting to feel like a ghost, like if I blinked for too long, he might slip away for good.
Detective Charles tapped his pad. “He says he called Annaleise at one A.M. and that, let me see, he decided to break it off. Because, quote, ‘She wanted more than I was willing to give her.’ What do you suppose that means?”
“I’m assuming exactly what he said. He doesn’t like to be tied down.”
He smiled and it was unsettling—the shark ready to play his winning card. “That’s quite the opposite of what I’ve been hearing. Looks like he’s tied down really good here.”
I shifted my weight from foot to foot. “Look, up until last week, I hadn’t talked to Tyler in over a year. I have no insight into the inner workings of their relationship.” The detective caught the inflection in my voice, I was sure, and I fought to keep it steady as Daniel put a hand on my back. Calm down.
“Ms. Farrell, I’m not trying to get him into trouble or anything. I just want to get a feel for Annaleise’s state of mind that night.”
Lie.
“When were you and Tyler Ellison last . . . together?” he asked, keeping his eyes on his notepad.
“If you’re asking what I think you’re asking, that’s kind of a personal question.”
“This is a missing persons investigation. Of course it’s personal. Think of the girl, Ms. Farrell.”
Think of the girl. “Last year,” I said.
“Not last week? Not when you returned home?”
“No,” I said.
“You return home, and Tyler allegedly breaks up with Annaleise the same night, and then she’s reported missing the following morning. You can see how this looks.”
I could see what stories they had concocted, and the one they wanted me to feed back to them. But I’d been through this before. We all had. This kid, he didn’t have a fucking clue. “I understand that when the police have no leads, they become desperate, trying to find meaning where there’s nothing. Trying to connect unrelated dots into a picture they can understand. Whether it’s true or not.”
Daniel’s phone rang and he answered it right then without excusing himself. “Hello?” he said. “What?” He continued listening, and I kept my eyes on his face so I wouldn’t have to look at Detective Charles, whose gaze I could feel burning a hole into the side of my skull. “I’ll be right there,” he said. Then, to the detective, “Our dad isn’t well. We have to go. Good luck with the case.” He turned to face me. “They need us to come in. Right now.”
“Oh, God,” I said, running into the house, locking the doors, grabbing my shoes and purse. Daniel already had the car running by the time I was outside, on the phone with the insurance company he was working with as a field adjuster, explaining that he couldn’t make it to the site.
Daniel assessed damages for a living. Worked out of his home, going wherever one of several companies sent him in the region. Everything was a checklist—there was a formula to disaster, misfortune, and tragedy. Everything had a value and a cost. I suppose he got accustomed to digging through facts, assigning blame, detecting fraud. Or he found out he was good at it. After he’d lived through Corinne’s case, maybe it was a comfort to him—finding the logic in the chaos. Finding the truth.
“No,” he said, “I won’t make it out today at all. I’ll double up tomorrow. Yeah, call it a sick day.”
He was calling Laura as we drove down the road. The detective was sitting in his car, making notes to himself, pretending not to watch us as we drove away.
DAD WAS IN RESTRAINTS, flat on his back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. The room was full of people, all of whom worked there in one capacity or another. When Daniel and I barged in, the doctor made a show of placing his fingers on the inside of Dad’s wrist, which was limp and restrained by a thick ivory strap.
“What the hell are you doing to him?” I asked, pushing past the doctor and working on a restraint that had been buckled around Dad’s other wrist.
“Ms. Farrell.” There was a hand on my shoulder but the voice sounded farther away. “Ms. Farrell.” A woman’s voice, more forceful now, and then the hand moved to my wrist, restraining my own movement. “It’s for his safety. And ours.”
I looked at the hand on my wrist, at the long fingers and cracked knuckles leading to the knobby wrist and the slender arm. Daniel.
It was then that I got a good look at everyone in the room. A nurse looked shaken, half her hair pulled free from a bun. There were two men in the room who didn’t appear to be doctors or nurses, and were watching Dad carefully. And the woman who’d spoken my name, dressed in business attire and standing near the doorway.
“He’s sedated now,” the woman said. “But we don’t know what shape he’ll be in when he wakes up.”
The air was stale and cold and seemed so impersonal. No scents of home. Medicine, cleansers, bleach. It couldn’t be good for his memory. He needed to smell the wood floors and the forest behind our house. He needed the exhaust from his crappy car and the grease from Kelly’s Pub. “Well, when he wakes up to find himself physically restrained, I can tell you right now it won’t be good,” I said.
She pressed her lips together and stuck her hand out in my direction, not giving me any choice but to take it. “I’m Karen Addelson, the director here. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you yet, Ms. Farrell. Come, please, to my office, both of you.” She didn’t let go of my hand, instead taking hold of my elbow with her other hand. “He’ll be fine. Someone will stay with him.” Her hand on my elbow moved to my lower back, and she led me out of the room, Daniel at my side.
Karen Addelson was dressed smart, like how I modeled myself in Philadelphia. Pencil skirt, black trendy flats, blouse cut to look both professional and feminine. She dropped her hand as we walked in a straight line against the right side of the hall, making room for wheelchairs and service carts. Smiling tightly, she checked over her shoulder to make sure we were following. Her blouse was sheer with a camisole underneath, and it was so at odds with her makeup-free face and hair pulled into a severe bun that I couldn’t get a grasp on her.
We followed her into an outer office with potted plants on either side of bay windows and a desk with a secretary who smiled absently in our direction. “Hold my calls,” Karen said as she strode past into her office. Three cushioned chairs and a couch on one side, her desk on the other. She gestured toward the couch. Daniel sank into the cushions, but I remained standing. Everett would never sit there—You’ll lose the upper hand, Nicolette, I could imagine him whispering into my ear. Everett was like that: always teaching me how to handle myself in situations, as if he could mold me into his equal. I imagined his father doing the same for him, teaching him that line to walk, and a miniature Everett nodding, learning, copying, becoming.
Karen sat on the chair across from the couch, and I stood beside the couch, close to Daniel.
“I’m concerned,” she said. “Your father had an episode this morning.”
“What does that even mean?” Daniel said. “An episode?”
“He became extremely agitated—”
“It’s because there’s nothing here to help him remember,” I said. “I’d be agitated if I woke up in a place I didn’t know.”
“That may be true, Ms. Farrell, I don’t deny his right to those feelings. But his outburst went beyond disorientation. I’m afraid I’d have to call it paranoia. And it makes me question whether this is the right facility for him. Perhaps he would be better suited to a place that can care for those specific needs.”
“Paranoia?” Daniel asked.
“Yes. He was yelling that someone was after his daughter, and he refused to remain here. He was unmanageable. He became violent, insisting that he had to get out, get to you. Help you.” She stared at me, and I looked away, imagining him yelling for his daughter—for me. My spine tingled, paranoia or not.
“It took two men to restrain him so a doctor could sedate him. But all he kept saying was ‘My daughter’s not safe.’”
I felt Daniel staring at my face. The chill moved up my spine, hollowing out the room and my stomach and my lungs.
“If this was an event in the past, I could understand,” she continued. “That would be more in line with what we know of his condition. Was it? Were you once in danger, Ms. Farrell?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what’s happening to him.” His words echoing over and over, as if I’d heard them myself.
“Well, as I said, the paranoid delusions make me question if he’s in the right facility,” she said, driving home the point of our meeting.
“It’s my fault,” Daniel said.
“Excuse me?” Karen said. We were both staring at him; his cheeks were burning as if he’d been working in the sun too long.
“Our neighbor went missing. Annaleise Carter? Maybe you’ve seen it on the news? I told him. I realize in hindsight that was a mistake. It just slipped out. She disappeared in the woods behind our house, where my sister is staying. I wanted him to hear it from me and not the news. I shouldn’t have told him. I’m sorry. It’s not paranoia, though. It’s confusion. It’s a mistake.”
Karen tilted her head to the side, assessing my brother’s words. She finally nodded. “That’s understandable. Upsetting, to say the least. We will need to continue to monitor him, however. If this becomes a pattern . . .”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll talk to him.”
“Let me,” I said. “I’m the one he was talking about.” I was glad that I was standing, glad for the confidence in my posture.
Karen stood. “I think that’s a good idea.”
“Without the restraints,” I said.
DANIEL WENT TO THE cafeteria to order three lunches to bring back to Dad’s room. I was sitting cross-legged on the chair in the corner, drinking a soda from the vending machine, when Dad finally woke. There was an orderly in the room near the door, per Karen’s request.
“Hi, Dad,” I said tentatively.
He rubbed absently at his wrists, and I could see the red chafing mark against his wrist bone. I leaned over his bed so he’d see me before he saw the room he didn’t own and the man he didn’t know.
“You’re okay,” I said. “I’m okay.”
He pushed himself up and winced. “Nic?” he said, his eyes focusing, narrowing, roaming.
“You’re at Grand Pines, and you’re fine, and I’m here, and I’m fine.”
He reached his hand, placed it on the side of my face. “Nic, thank God. Nic. It’s not safe for you.”
“Shh, Dad,” I said, looking at the man beside the door. “I’m fine.” Daniel walked in with our lunches at that moment, three stacked Styrofoam boxes. “And Daniel’s here, see? We’re fine.”
Dad sat up like a child in bed after a nightmare, both relieved and terrified. He looked at Daniel, at me, at the man beside the door. “You’ll take care of her?” he said to Daniel.
Daniel opened the boxes, looked inside each, and passed them out. “Yes, Dad,” he said, and I felt a lump rise in my throat. “You can’t let yourself get worked up, okay?”
Dad rubbed at his wrists again, like he couldn’t remember if something was supposed to be there.
“Dad,” Daniel said, “it’s important.”
I leaned forward, spreading a napkin on Dad’s lap. “Dad, everything’s fine.”
He stared at Daniel. “Promise me,” he said. “Promise me you’ll take care of her.”
Daniel already had food in his mouth. Nothing could kill his appetite. He kept his eyes on Dad. “You know I will,” he said as he chewed.
Karen Addelson came in with the doctor. “How’s everything going in here? Patrick? Are you feeling better?”
“What? Oh, yes. Yes.” He grabbed his sandwich like he was playing a part. “This is my daughter. Have you met? Nic, meet the Lady in Charge. Lady in Charge, meet my daughter.”
“Nice to meet you,” both Karen and I said. “Now, Patrick,” Karen went on, “how about we sleep this off? Have your lunch, and the doctor will give you something. We’ll discuss this tomorrow. Okay?”
I nodded encouragingly. Daniel nodded. Dad looked between the two of us and nodded until she left the room. He gripped my wrist. “Promise me, Nic.”
“I promise,” I said. I had no clue what he was asking or what I was agreeing to. I had a feeling it was better for us that way.
KAREN MET US BACK at the front desk. “We’ll assess him tomorrow. Determine the best course of action. Let’s plan on meeting again next week.” She handed me her card. “We’ll be in touch.”
Daniel and I remained silent, one foot in front of the other, goodbye to the receptionist, thank you to the man holding the door, until we were back in the overheated car, driving with the windows rolled down until the air conditioner kicked in.
“What the hell was that about?” I asked.
“Hell if I know,” he said, both hands circling the steering wheel, the afternoon sun reflecting off the pavement like water.
“Did you really tell him about Annaleise? Or was that just the first thing you could think of?”
“No,” he said. “I really did.”
“That wasn’t smart.”
“No. It really wasn’t.” He sighed, his hard-to-read expression even more impenetrable.
“You were wrong to do that,” I said.
The pink was creeping up his neck as his knuckles blanched white, like the blood was seeping from one spot to the other. “I am fully aware of that, Nic. Fully. I’ll come back tomorrow to check on him.”
“Okay,” I said. “What time?”
He cut his eyes to me, then back to the road. “Don’t worry about it. Get some work done around the house. I’ll bring him the listing papers.”
“The house isn’t ready.”
His jaw tensed. “That’s why you should stay home.”
So much for my momentary swell of emotion for him. This was how we always communicated. In the things we didn’t say. We had developed a habit after our mother got sick, fighting in the space between words about anything other than what we meant.
He was with me the day I scratched Tyler’s truck with the swing of my passenger-side door, the day we met for real. “You never pay attention!” Daniel had screamed, slamming the driver’s-side door. “You parked too close!” I’d yelled back as Tyler looked on.
Nothing about the list of things that needed to be voiced: our dad’s growing distance, the fact that Daniel was dropping out of school, about what would happen to us after Mom died. No, we argued about how close we parked to other cars, about scraped metal and whether I was running late or he was early.
This was how we got through. This was the story of me and Daniel.
“I already called out of work for the day,” he said. “I’ll lend you a hand. Make some progress.”
The meaning underneath: that I had not made any on my own.
I SAW IT FIRST. That things were not how I’d left them. I stood in the entrance, unmoving, as Daniel brushed by me. “He came in,” I said.
Daniel spun around. “What? Who?”
I slammed the door and leaned against it, my breath coming too fast. “That cop. He came in the fucking house.” I pointed to the dining room table, scattered with chaos, but my chaos. I’d been sorting things into boxes not by item but by time period: things from my childhood, newer things that I’d never seen, and things I could tie to the memory of eighteen—to when Corinne disappeared. And the items I wasn’t sure, scattered across the top of the table.
But those items weren’t grouped how I’d left them. Things had been rifled through and moved. The home renovation book that I’d found in the kitchen drawer, dog-eared, and left on the table, now open to the marked page when I’d left it shut. Receipts with the dates worn off, reshuffled into the wrong piles.
“How can you tell? This place is a mess.”
“He was here, Daniel. Things have been moved. I swear it.”
His eyes met mine, and we stared at each other, into each other, until he said, “Check the house.”
I nodded and took the steps two at a time to my room. If the cop was looking for signs about Tyler, shouldn’t he have checked here? But the room was just as I’d left it. Even the top drawer that I hadn’t closed in my rush to speak to the cop. Dad’s room was mostly bare, and the closet was sparse—slippers on the floor, empty metal hangers, a few work clothes.
But Daniel’s room—the one with Dad’s old things—had been searched. Boxes moved and stacked, papers left out, without any attempt to hide it.
I heard Daniel’s footsteps coming up the stairs, down the hall, and then I could hear his heavy breathing over my shoulder. “What is it?” he asked.
“Here. Someone’s been through here,” I said.
Daniel looked at the mess. His old room. Our father’s mess. “Not someone looking into Tyler, then,” he said.
“No,” I said.
Daniel placed his hand against the doorjamb too gently. Since the fair, he never slammed his fists into walls, or kicked at the ground or his car. Lest somebody see him do it. See a pattern. But he was trying too hard, spilling outside his skin, holding himself too still. He spun silently and went back downstairs.
I followed, watching him check the windows, pushing until he was sure the lock was in place.
“Did you lock up?” He turned on me. “Because there’s no sign of forced entry, Nic.”
“I did,” I said slowly. “But the back door lock is broken.”
His eyes widened, and he mumbled under his breath, striding through the kitchen, checking for himself. He pulled on the handle and it gave, just like I’d said it would.
“I told you,” I said, hands on my hips.
His hand was on the knob, twisting, twisting, in case there might be a different outcome. “It was broken before? Before you got here?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Am I sure? Yes, I’m sure, Daniel. God!”
His face had turned so red with the anger he was holding in that it started to go the other way, blotchy spots of white breaking up the rage. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you get it fixed? What the hell are you even doing here?”
“What difference would it make? Come on, Daniel, is a stronger lock going to stop someone determined to get in?” Be rational. Be calm. Everett’s words, but they were useless in my family. This was how we worked.
“No, Nic, but it would be proof. A broken window, fingerprints on the glass . . .”
“Oh, give me a break. Nobody’s going to waste resources on a home break-in for a house we’re not living in where nothing went missing. They’ll blame it on kids. Nobody. Cares.”
“Oh, somebody cares,” he said.
I swallowed. Took a deep breath. Tried to focus, searching for a reasonable explanation. “Maybe it was Tyler,” I said. “He still has a key from years ago—”
Daniel made a deep sound in his throat, though I didn’t know if it was for me or for Tyler.
“Maybe he was going to fix the air-conditioning. And maybe—”
Daniel threw his hands up, took a step closer. “What? He got distracted by piles of junk and wasted his day going through Dad’s things in my old room?”
“Asshole,” I mumbled. I flipped the switch in the foyer to check the air-conditioning, because God if I didn’t want it to be true. The other possibilities nauseated me. Made me feel like someone had poked that box in the police station too hard, and it had sprung a leak, and the names were circling, caught up in a whirlwind, vicious and desperate.
Tyler was the only answer that was safe. Please be Tyler.
I turned the AC dial down and listened to the walls. Nothing. No catch, no whoosh, no rattling vents.
Daniel’s knuckles were white. He was right beside me, and his voice was eerily low. “Tyler works. He doesn’t need to sneak around or use a key when we’re out. I’m sure he can talk his way in here pretty easily. Bet he doesn’t even have to talk.”
I pushed him in the chest, gently, just for space. Another inch. So we were going to fight about Tyler again. That, at least, was an argument we knew the lines of already.
“He’d call first,” he said. “Did he call you?” At my silence: “Did he?”
“No, but we’re not . . . he’s not really talking to me right now.”
Daniel let out a bark of laughter. “Un-fucking-believable. You’ve actually done it, Nic. You’ve pissed off the one person who seemed immune. You’ve finally gone too far. Congratulations.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“And you’re so fucking stupid sometimes, it’s infuriating.”
He stared at me and I stared back, my head tilted to the side—his cheeks bright red, his neck splotchy, his fists balled up, something dark and ugly coursing through my veins. “Are you going to hit me now?” I asked.
He breathed heavily, furiously, and whatever fragile ground we stood on shattered.
One question, creating so much distance between us yet pulling us right there. His knuckles colliding with my cheek and the beginning of the end of everything.
Daniel walked around me in a wide berth. He left the front door ajar.
I SLOUCHED AGAINST THE wall, cradling my phone to my chest.
This place messed with me. Made me forget myself. I called Everett, but his cell went to voicemail. I called the office and kept my voice practiced and steady as I talked to the secretary, Olivia, who’d become one of my closest friends. A tied-to-Everett friend but a friend.
“He’s prepping witnesses,” she said. “I’d love to chat, but this place is falling apart this week. Can you hear that?” And I could: the ringing phones in the background, the low hum of voices. She went on, “Jesus Christ, I need a girls’ night so bad. When are you coming back? Shit. I gotta go. I’ll tell him you called.”
I stared at my phone, wondering whom to call to ground myself. The truth is, I’m not good at close friends. I’m great at casual, at meeting up after work and bringing lasagna to the potluck. I’m excellent at being friends with Everett’s friends. But not at exchanging numbers and calling up just to talk.
I always leave people behind. Holiday greeting cards last one apartment, and then I move, no forwarding address. Emails go unanswered. Phone calls unreturned. It’s a habit. It’s easier. I’m the friend in the group they’ll throw a going-away party for but never keep in touch with. I had ladder rungs to climb, debts to repay, a life to create.
And whom did I have after so many moves? Everett, for a year. My college roommate, Arden, but she was a doctor, and busy, and every decision she made was life-or-death, which made everything I said seem trivial. My thesis adviser, Marcus. I could call him, vent my issues in a normal way. Surface level. Not like this: My best friend disappeared when I was eighteen, and it’s all coming back, and I’m losing my dad, and someone’s been in this house. Maybe the cops, but maybe not.
They were the people you called with news: I met a guy. I’m engaged. I got a new job. To share the highs and the lows. But friends to call for the deep things, the things that live in the dark spaces of our hearts? Those people didn’t exist for me any longer. Not since I’d left Cooley Ridge.
EVERETT CALLED BACK AT night, when I was cleaning the house—guilted into action by Daniel’s disapproval. I heard voices in the background, fading as he walked away. “Hey, sorry. I thought it was earlier. You weren’t sleeping, were you?”
“Nope,” I said. “What’s going on there?”
“Boring legal stuff. Boring but relentless.” He sighed. “I miss you. How’s it going with the filing?”
“Papers have been submitted, and we’re waiting for a court date. Working on the house. How’s the case?”
“Oh, you know. Be glad you’re not here. I’m still at the office. You’d be furious.”
I checked the clock, saw that it was nearly ten. “I’d show up and bring you dinner.”
“God, I miss you.” And then another voice—a woman’s. Mara Cross. “Hold on,” he said. His hand was over the speaker. “Uh, the Pad Thai. Yeah. Thanks.” Then to me: “Sorry. We’re ordering food.”
“Mara’s there?” I asked.
“Everyone’s here,” he said, not missing a beat. Everett had a painfully healthy relationship with his ex—at least he thought so. But her smile was too forced when she looked at me, and everything about her was too stiff when she walked by him, knees to shoulders to neck. They weren’t really friends, despite what Everett wanted to believe. Olivia couldn’t stand Mara, the way she talked down to her and then to me. It’s probably how we became friends.
I’d asked Everett ages ago why he and Mara had broken up, because she was always smiling and attractive and smart and there. “We weren’t compatible,” he’d said, which made no sense to me at first. They seemed perfectly compatible. Equals, even. She had strong opinions and worked even longer hours than he did, and they could talk about the same things: torts and motions and appellate courts. Words that I understood but that held no real meaning for me.
I liked to imagine they were incompatible in some other way—in bed. Whenever I saw her, whenever I caught her looking at Everett like she knew him too well, I held tight to the word incompatible, picturing something awkward and unsatisfying. Her name became synonymous with this vision, and I found myself legitimately surprised when she won cases. Her? She’s so awkward. Her arguments so unsatisfying.
Easier than to think that I must be none of those things: strong, opinionated, dominating in a room. Otherwise, we would not be compatible, or so goes the logic. What did he see in me? Someone he could mold, create, introduce, and place in his world exactly like he wanted? What did he see in the painted furniture and the long conversation in Trevor’s apartment? A blank slate? You have to come from nothing, I’d told him. Maybe he took it too literally. He didn’t know I was already something.
I knew things about Everett the same way he knew things about me. From what he chose to share. Or what his family shared in a Ha-ha, remember the time way. Where were his skeletons?
He had friends, guys mostly, who varied in degrees of never growing up—which was obnoxious but not harmful. Not haunting. Not defining. They’d tell stories of Everett doing keg stands, and that one time he swallowed a goldfish whole, which was repulsive but not the same as a missing best friend and a family of suspects. If Corinne had never disappeared, maybe we’d meet up for drinks when we were all back in town, share stories like this with our boyfriends, our husbands. And then Bailey puked on Josh Howell’s sneakers . . .
There was a difference, a chasm, between that type of story and a real past.
Did something like this exist beneath Everett, too?
Where were the stories that defined him, that broke him open, that laid him bare?
Who was this man I had agreed to marry?
“Tell me something about you,” I said. “Something no one else knows.”
I heard his chair squeak as he leaned back; I imagined him sliding his feet out of his shoes and placing them on the dark wood. Stretching his arms up over his head, the buttons of his shirt pulling, the outline of his bleach-white undershirt beneath.
“Is this a game?” he asked, and I could hear the yawn in his voice.
“Sure,” I said. “Or it doesn’t have to be.”
“Okay. Let’s see. Okay. Don’t laugh. I tried to use my dad’s credit card in middle school to buy porn online. It didn’t occur to me that his statements would have the purchased information.”
“That’s gross,” I said, laughing. “But it doesn’t count. Your dad knows.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me. Still can’t look him in the eye when I think about it.”
“You’re cute. But that’s not what I meant. I meant something more, you know? That nobody else knows.”
His chair squeaked a few more times, and I didn’t think he’d answer. But then he did: “I watched a man die once,” he said. The air in the room changed. His voice dropped, and I felt his mouth coming closer to the phone. “I was in high school. There was a car accident on the highway, and I wasn’t supposed to be out. There was a crowd of people already around, helping. An ambulance on the way. I couldn’t look away.”
Yes, I thought. Here he is. Here’s Everett. Can he feel it? “More,” I said.
A deep breath. I heard footsteps, a door closing, the squeak of his chair again. I didn’t dare interrupt. “I don’t know if I have the stomach for my job,” he said. “I like dealing in the facts and the law, and I believe that everyone is entitled to the best representation. A fair trial. I do my job well, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes there’s a moment. A moment when you realize the person you’re defending is guilty. And you can never go back. And then justice is this double-edged sword. Like I’m upholding justice with my ‘unyielding drive,’ to quote my dad. But which is the real justice, Nicolette? Which is it?”
“The Parlito case?”
“Just anyone,” he said. He sighed. “I’m a better lawyer when I don’t know.”
“You can do something else,” I said.
“It’s not that easy,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” I said. “I don’t care what you do. You know that, right? I don’t give a shit if you’re a lawyer or not.”
He paused. “Right. If you say so. We don’t all have that luxury. I’m thirty. I’m a partner. This is my life.”
“What I’m saying is, it doesn’t have to be.” Change your hair, leave everyone behind. Go someplace new and never look back. You can do it. We can do it.
He laughed as if mocking himself. Putting distance between himself and the conversation. “So tell me, Nicolette, did you always want to be a counselor?”
“No way. I wanted to be a country singer.”
“Wait,” he said. “You can sing? I feel like this is something I should know.”
“Not even a little.”
His laugh was soft, like cotton.
Truth is, I was a terrible counselor in terms of actual counseling. Said the wrong things, never had the right advice to give. But I excelled at listening, so I learned not to speak much. I could direct students to the right resource or the resource to them, to find the help they needed. I saw what they were hiding and let them show it to me. They spilled their collective adolescent guts in my office. On paper, I was an excellent counselor.
Perhaps it was because they sensed a kindred spirit or saw something inside me, like what I saw in Hannah Pardot—the feeling that she knew more because she once was one of us.
Maybe they knew I had seen darker things. That I would understand.
Or perhaps they would sense that I am an excellent keeper of secrets.
I am.
I ENDED THE CALL when Everett’s dinner arrived, already feeling he was unreachable, in a world too far away. With Tyler, it had been the opposite. I’d had to delete his number from my phone to keep from calling him on impulse after a drink at the bar, after a bad date, and especially after a relatively good one.
But one second off the phone with Everett and all I could feel was the distance between us and him turning insubstantial, a figment I had conjured up out of hope that something so good could happen to me.
I slept fitfully, until I gave up. Too many thoughts swirling through my mind, too many names. I thought of anyone who’d have reason to break into this house, to look through Dad’s things or to rifle through Daniel’s old room. The list spanned ten years. I wasn’t sure I was solving what had happened then or what had happened now. Maybe Dad was right, that time wasn’t real. Just a thing we created to move on. Just a label to make sense of things.
“IF I WERE A monster,” Corinne had told us on the front porch with the lanterns swinging and the shadows dancing, “I’d pretend to be human.”
Bailey had laughed, and Daniel had smiled. She’d walked up to him, taking his chin in her hand, turning his head side to side, squinting as she stared into his eyes. “No,” she said to him, “human through and through.”
She looked at Bailey next, running her fingers through her long black hair as she did it, which was because Daniel was there and she always put on a show. Her nose touched Bailey’s, and Bailey didn’t flinch. We’d learned to let her have her way. Go along for the ride, and it turns out all right. There’s a plan that only Corinne knows, and we’re a part of it.
“Hmm,” she said. “No, no, not here, but he’s been here. He visits sometimes. What does he make you do, Bailey? Does he make you kiss other people’s boyfriends?” That was you, Corinne, I thought but didn’t say. Neither did Bailey. “Does he make you like it?” Her hand was on Bailey’s back, under her shirt, her body pressed to Corinne’s, and Daniel’s eyes had gone dark and hazy, under a spell. “Does he make you dream of him at night? Of boys who aren’t yours?”
She stepped back, breaking the spell. Bailey blinked twice, and Daniel walked into the house.
Corinne smiled like nothing had changed. She took my chin, looked deep into my eyes. I could see myself reflected in her pupils from the lantern swinging overhead. She blinked and pressed her cheek against mine, facing away from Bailey, and whispered in my ear, “There you are.”