She can’t believe she’s here. She’s on the other side of the circle. At her back is Erie Street and the thicket into which Chloe vanished. In front of her, a one-story home slouches. White paint lifts from its siding; there’s a loose strand long and slender enough, she bets she could pinch it, pull, and unpeel the whole house.
The window is a dark grey, its pane reflecting the maze of trees behind her. Libby treats it like an autostereogram—one of those Magic Eye pictures where if you cross your eyes, it will reveal something hidden. Chloe, perhaps, in her red lace dress and clutching a single black rose?
She slides a surreptitious glance over each shoulder, hopeful that Reeves will suddenly appear and she won’t have to knock. The Singh home has a burgundy door, pumpkins set out on the porch. Halloween-themed window clings smatter the picture window: jack-o’-lanterns and grinning ghouls, a bat with fangs, and a mummy whose dressings are in a state of unravel.
She takes a deep breath. The morning air is crisp and quintessentially autumn with its sweetness and bite. Her lungs feel frosted. Standing at the door now, Libby knocks softly. She waits.
Her ears prick to the sound of footsteps coming from inside. Instinctively, her hand reaches up toward her neck, fingers fumbling blindly for the locket that isn’t there.
A high-pitched groan disrupts the quiet as the door swings inward to reveal a sleepy Reeves in gym shorts and nothing else. Libby’s mouth falls open. She’s sure she looks like a taxidermied fish, but she can’t help it. He is a gorgeous specimen.
“Libby?” Reeves drives the heel of his hand into his eye.
“Um, hey.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Did I wake you?”
“I didn’t really go to sleep,” he admits, and begins to retreat. Libby’s heart sinks, but then he extends his arm and wiggles his fingers, beckoning her to follow.
She closes the door behind her and feels as though she’s been wrapped in a hot, cinnamon-tea-infused towel. The Singh home is cozy and decorated with rich, warm tones: burgundy walls, a marigold backsplash along the kitchen countertops. Candied apples sit on the stovetop. It’s the complete opposite of her house, where things are cold and clean and quiet.
He leans against a kitchen chair, and looks as though at any second, he could break into tricep dips. Libby has to fight to drag her gaze upward, instead of focusing on the light grid of his abs, the way the slightest movement sends a ripple through his torso.
“I’m actually glad you’re here,” he says. “I wanted to show you something.”
That catches her attention. Her eyes snap up to meet his. No one, besides Chloe, has ever told Libby they were glad for her presence.
“My parents are at work,” offers Reeves, “and my sisters are sleeping in there.” He tilts his head toward a closed door on the left as they move quietly down the hall. A soft light spills from a room on the right and Libby slows her stride, suddenly suspicious that this could be some nasty prank.
“What’s wrong?” In his room now, Reeves pauses near his unmade bed, the blanket rumpled like his hair and cascading to the floor. He is a picture of innocence, just a boy in his bedroom, standing in front of a—
“You like Crestfall?” Libby asks.
He looks at the poster on his wall and back to Libby. His cheeks pinken to the color of daybreak. “Yeah. I’ve read ’em all. I know it’s not really ‘cool,’ but…” He smiles, a nervous non-Duchenne.
“Which one is your favorite?”
Reeves’s eyebrow shoots upward. There’s only one answer to that question, which is: “Vale of the Valkyrie.”
Libby smiles approvingly and steps over the threshold. Her blood starts to fizz again. Her fingertips tap-tap-tap against her thigh. He likes Crestfall, which is unexpected. But just because they like the same graphic novel series doesn’t mean they could like each other. After all, he could still be a murderer …
And she’s still … Neck Roll.
Keep your wits, she reminds herself.
“Listen,” says Reeves, and he is so pretty and persuasive that she knows she is prey to his every command. Listening is simple. She could listen to him all day long. Especially if he never puts on a shirt. “You said something last night that … I don’t know … got me thinking.”
Libby is engaged in a silent civil war. Her body wants to take a step toward him, but her mind wills her to step back. So, she stays frozen. “About what?” she manages.
“You said Mr. Taylor came into your work the other day. To buy a shit ton of roses.”
She nods.
“But … it isn’t a good time to plant roses, yeah? My mom always plants them in the spring. They have to have, like, a certain number of weeks before the frost.”
“They’re Aurora,” she remembers. “Engineered for cold weather and stuff.”
Reeves’s brows inch toward each other. He looks thoughtful. “Aurora,” he repeats.
“His sister’s name,” offers Libby.
Without another word, Reeves turns to hunch over the computer. Libby counts the vertebrae that zip down his spine, distracting herself from the slow, paralyzing release of guilt. Mr. Taylor had shared that little factoid with her, no one else. Now, it’s out into the world, as if she’d just cracked open a locket and spilled out its contents.
She creeps closer to him and squints at the screen. At home, her mom has a candle called Fresh Linen. Reeves smells like that, and a hint of day-old body spray.
“What are you looking at?” she wonders, her eyes scrolling down a list of names and dates.
“Last year, Mr. Taylor mentioned in my class that his sister died when she was young. I don’t remember how it came up, but … it always stuck with me. Maybe because I have sisters and … well … I don’t think I could ever forgive myself if something happened to them.”
“Even if it wasn’t your fault?”
Reeves sighs. “No, I mean. I don’t think I’d be reasonable about it. I think I’d blame myself no matter what.”
Libby allows her mind to drift, just for a moment, as she wonders if her brothers think of her that way, too. She’s their only sister. Who they see once a year at Christmas and maybe, individually, once more in between. Would they care if she died? Would they even notice?
“So, if his sister is dead,” Reeves continues. “Why is he buying that many roses for her?”
“He could have more than one sister,” she reasons.
“He could. But when he mentioned her last year, it sounded like she was the only one.” Sitting in his desk chair now, he tosses a glance over his shoulder. His eyes roam her from head to toe, rapid, like the puck in one of those strength tester games at the fair. A dimple dents his cheek as he doles out a subtle, reassuring smile that wills her to trust him.
Does she?
She must. That, or she simply doesn’t value her own life. While Libby might be brazen, she isn’t stupid. She knows as well as anyone that if Reeves wanted to pin her to the floor and cut off her airway, nothing would stop him.
“They could be for her grave,” she guesses.
“Sure. If she’s buried in a crypt.” Reeves clicks around on the screen while Libby tries to keep up. “I figured Mr. Taylor must be in his thirties,” he explains. “So, I checked the obituaries of everyone who’s died in Black Harbor in the last thirty years. There were a bunch of Taylors, but they were all older women. No one was a match for his sister.”
Libby’s lips move in sync with his as she hangs on his every word.
“So, I switched up my search.” Reeves minimizes the window of the endless roster of Black Harbor’s deceased, though something tells Libby they will be revisiting this page. “I searched for accidental deaths that had occurred in the area in the past thirty years. Because, you know, if she was young when she died, there’s a high probability it was an accident or something like that.” He huffs out an exhale. “If you think Black Harbor is dangerous now, don’t go down this rabbit hole.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah, all kinds of fatalities. People drowning, getting burnt up in house fires, guy trapped in an elevator for two weeks. He died, by the way. And then there are all the jumpers. I guess if it can’t be proven as a suicide, it’s ruled an ‘accidental death.’” He makes air quotes. “I think I was onto something, but then…”
“What?”
He tilts his head so that his ear is almost touching his shoulder and swivels his chair toward her. “You knocked on the door.”
Libby bites the inside of her cheek. She shrinks back, toward the wall, like she always does when wishing she could disappear. Wishing she’d never come, actually. If it hadn’t been for her, Reeves might have been further into his investigation.
She’s the reason he has to do this, she realizes. She dug a hole around him, pushed him into it, and now he has to claw his way out.
It was self-preservation. The cops were looking at her for having killed Madison and Sari. How absolutely ridiculous! And, like a rabbit caught in a trap, she squealed and lobbed Reeves’s name out there as a distraction.
If he’s innocent, she owes him. If he’s a killer, she’s as good as dead anyway.
“But, if you’re telling me his sister’s name was Aurora…”
The air between them is suddenly charged. They are on the cusp of finding something, a clue, maybe, to bring them closer to Chloe. Libby leans further, her eyeballs practically sticking to the computer screen. Then, she feels the soft part of her arm brush Reeves’s shoulder and she backs away.
Without missing a beat, Reeves types “aurora taylor obituary” into the search bar. The first result is a baby who passed away two months ago, the second an eighty-four-year-old woman from Florida. He scrolls down the page, coming across no Aurora Taylors from Wisconsin. “These deaths are all pretty recent,” he says. “When Mr. Taylor brought it up in class, I got the feeling it had happened a while ago.”
A cramp needles the back of Libby’s calf. She’s been crouched over Reeves for the past several minutes as he searches. Finally, she gives in and kneels on the carpet. “Try ‘Aurora Taylor tragedy Black Harbor,’” she suggests.
New results populate. The first few call out a mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, but then: “What’s that?” asks Libby, pointing. “Click on it.”
A fresh page loads. It’s a news article from almost twenty years ago. Together, they read the headline. GIRL, 15, DIES IN TRAGIC 30-FT FALL IN DEFUNCT FACTORY.
“That’s the old tannery,” says Libby, recognizing the ramshackle brick behemoth. “I’ve always heard the place is haunted. Now I guess we know why.”
“And by who. Check this out.” He scrolls down the page, eventually stopping on a photo of a teenage girl. She’s pale with dark hair chopped into an asymmetrical bob. A small, delicate nose and slashes of black eyeliner give her a catlike aesthetic.
“‘Aurora Patricia Blum fell thirty feet through the roof of a derelict building after she spent time “chilling” and listening to music before being spooked by her brother who had come to collect her.’” Libby gasps and whips around to face Reeves. “Mr. Taylor?” she asks.
“Keep reading.”
She does, and they learn that Aurora Blum was described as a “quiet, contemplative” teen who enjoyed singing and writing poetry. She liked to visit the old tannery as a “refuge for her thoughts” and occasionally skipped school to go there.
“‘Her brother, Edward Taylor Blum (16),’” reads Libby, “‘reports finding Aurora at the tannery and calling for her to come home. He heard a noise of floorboards snapping, and a scream, and ran to her aid. She survived for approximately ten minutes before succumbing to internal bleeding and ultimately cardiac arrest.’”
“Oh my God.” Libby presses her hand over her mouth. “That’s so sad.”
“I know.”
“So … Mr. Taylor must use his middle name as his last name.”
“Eddie Taylor is Edward Blum,” acknowledges Reeves.
There is one picture at the bottom of the page. It’s a photo of an adolescent Mr. Taylor with his sister. He wore glasses, and Libby recognizes the close-mouthed smile. The girl next to him—Aurora—sucks on a red lollipop. She has black-painted lips and her neck is severed by a plastic choker.
Libby’s heart pulses in her throat. A gasp escapes her lungs as she realizes she has seen this girl before.
And judging by his horrified expression, Reeves has, too.
She looks just like Chloe.