The old Josh wouldn’t have said anything to his mother about leaving Kai with the twins. But I’m not the old Josh and Rosie isn’t the old Rosie.
I dial her on the way out to Sheridan Road: “I know you’re not going to like this, but I’ve got a line on Chatham.” I go through the whole rigmarole, Kai is certified in CPR, the twins are in good hands, all that bullshit, then get to the meat of it.
“You think her sister is there?” Rosie asks.
“Good chance.” So I bluff that part of it. “I know I said I’d be there for the girls, and I wish to God Chatham hadn’t taken off just now, but please understand. And trust me when I say I’ve left Margaret and Caroline with someone so qualified that—”
“You’re already on your way out there.” There’s a slight edge to her tone now. “You’re calling me on the way.”
My first instinct is to lie to her, then fight it out later. But I bite the bullet and tell the truth: “Yes.”
A beat of silence answers me.
“Rosie?”
“We’ll talk about this later.” She sighs, but not in the way she usually does, like I’m the biggest disappointment in her life. “Just text me when you’re home safe.”
And that’s it. No drama. I wonder if it’s because I took the initiative to be honest with her, or because she’s just exhausted. Either way, I know she wouldn’t have been so complacent, had she known there’s another shrink-wrapped book in Aiden’s bag.
I drive down Washington, then hook a left onto Sheridan.
Aiden’s busy texting the guy, telling him we’re in the neighborhood with a frequent-buyers’ gift, whatever.
I glance down the street where Rachel Bachton used to live, and nearly slow to a stop when I see the news vans. Someone’s taping a story. “There’s news about the case.”
“Huh?” Aiden looks up from his phone to see what I’m talking about.
It probably has to do with the photograph the Bachtons have denied has anything to do with their daughter. But I wonder why the crew is taping in front of the house that hasn’t belonged to the Bachtons in years.
I inch forward, but keep glancing in my rearview mirror, as if I expect to see all the answers to all my dilemmas unfolding on the road behind me. Eventually, I pull up to the enormous house with all the stairs, and we start to climb.
After all the formalities, which include the enormous guy who lives here—he’s got to be about six-four, two-seventy-five—patting me down to ensure his safety, and asking me all the typical questions to convince himself I’m not a cop, I enter. Aiden waits on the front porch with his shrink-wrapped book.
“So,” the guy says. “What can I do for you?” He’s led me to a formal room with an elegant couch, the back of which is shaped like a camel’s hump. It’s hard to believe he would’ve chosen this furniture, and I instantly assume this place belongs to a grandmother or a great-aunt. Nearest to us is a pair of dainty chairs I can’t believe will hold his weight. But he sinks onto one, and offers its twin to me.
I sit. “There was a girl here last time I came.”
“Usually is.”
“This one’s blonde, with a shamrock tattoo on her ankle. You took her to a rave.”
“Rave? I don’t do that shit. Alana goes where she wants to go.”
My heart sinks a little in my chest. Alana. “That’s her name?”
“It’s the name she gave me. What about her?”
“Is she still here?”
He shakes his head. “Took off.”
“Can you tell me . . .” I flip through my phone for the screenshots of Savannah’s Instagram and present him with a close-up of the tattoo. “Is this the same tattoo?”
Dude takes my phone. “Could be. To be honest, her ankles weren’t what I was interested in.” He hands back the phone.
“Did she, by any chance, ever wear a dark blue wig?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
“You didn’t know her too well?”
He looks down at me, with his lips pressed into a thin, white line.
I twist in my seat.
“What,” he says. “You want to know if she’s a natural blonde? Do your own dirty work.”
“What I mean is . . . was she new in town?”
“Yeah.”
“Did she stay here with you?”
“What’s it to you?” His skin’s a little redder than it used to be. “You know, when I told Aid I’d talk to you, I didn’t think I’d be under a fucking firing squad.”
“My girlfriend’s gone. And I think she knew yours. I’m just trying to find—”
“Let’s get something straight. She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Okay.”
“So whatever she’s mixed up in, I don’t know about it.”
“Okay.”
“And I don’t care about it, either.” The guy stands up, signaling our conversation is over. “What do I care that she took off yesterday?”
“Yesterday?”
He’s almost back to the front door.
“Wait.” I offer my phone again. “Is this Alana? Is this the girl I saw here that day?”
Just when I think he’s going to squash me into oblivion, if only with his hard-ass stare, his shoulders relax a little. He takes the phone.
“Farmgirl.” He reads the username and, this time, takes it upon himself to flip through the pictures on my phone. “Yeah, that’s Alana.”
“My girlfriend calls her Savannah,” I say. “Says she left Moon River a few months ago.”
“Moon River?”
“Georgia.”
“Alana was from Georgia. I saw her license once.” He sort of smiles a little. “And on certain words . . . she had a cute twang after she’d had a couple drinks.”
I know the twang to which he refers.
“She’s underage. She lied and told me she was eighteen, can you believe that?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what I thought this was about. I mean, I met her in a club. I’m twenty-two years old. I wouldn’t normally . . . you know. But what do you do if the girl lies, right? I put an end to it as soon as I found out, but—”
“Yeah.”
“Sixteen. Christ.”
“Chatham—my girlfriend—she came here, to Sugar Creek, looking for her. Says she’s her sister. And now they’re both gone. Both left last night. Would you happen to know Alana’s last name?”
“I was too focused on her birthday to notice.”
“Yeah.”
“Well.” He hands back my phone. “If Alana’s your girlfriend’s sister, I hope you do find them. And if you don’t mind, tell her she can keep the watch if it’ll ward off any legal fallout from the time we spent together.”
“Yeah.”
“Good luck. Wish I knew more.” He opens the door. “Then, and now.”
“We brought a little something for your trouble.” I don’t want to make eye contact—he might then notice that I’m close to falling to pieces—but I force myself to look him square in the face because he’s been walloped, too, in his own way. “I’ll let her know about the watch, if I find her. Thanks again.”
I go back to the car, while Aiden and this guy chat it up on the front porch.
If that girl—Alana—is Chatham’s sister, it means Chatham lied to me. About her sister’s name, about knowing her at the rave. About everything.
God, I wish Aiden would hurry the fuck up. I just want to go home.
If you’ve ever had something precious in your sights, and come this close to grasping it before it’s out of reach, you understand: I could scream right now. It’s like surviving a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean, only to die by whale bite at Sea World.
I roll down the window. “C-caw!”
Aiden takes the hint and finally joins me in the car and makes some statement like we’ll find her, man, and other bullshit he means to be encouraging. And it’s not that I don’t appreciate it—I do—it’s that I’d rather face facts than believe in a fairy tale.
We swing past the spectacle at Rachel Bachton’s old house, but we can’t tell what’s going on. There are only two crews, which is strange. In the early days of the investigation, even up until about five years ago, the road would be so crowded you couldn’t turn onto it. I wonder if other crews are set up at the lighthouse, on the boardwalk, or other places Rachel Bachton was known to be way back when.
I’ll turn on the news at home.
Once we get home, Aiden and Kai head out, I text my mother, and I’m sort of relieved to be alone. Aiden left his netbook—what’s he going to do with it when he’s high anyway?—so I know I’ll see him tomorrow when he comes to get it.
For a few seconds after I sit down, I’m locked in a staring contest with blonde Chatham on Aiden’s screen. Then I look at the Scrabble tiles that spell out her name, as if waiting for them to move. I consider keeping them, framing them. Her fingers touched them, laid them out in this display.
I snap out of it and turn on the television, and find a channel covering the Rachel Bachton story.
I’m trying to listen to everything being said, but my mind is tripping back and forth, trying to put pieces into the puzzle, trying to decide why Chatham would lie to me about knowing the girl at the rave.
Alana-slash-Savannah.
Why would Chatham lie about her name?
Wait.
If her name is really Alana . . . her license could be a fake, after all.
I open my laptop and type Alana Goudy into a search engine.
“Holy fuck.”
Within the past couple of hours, it’s official: the foster girls entrusted to Wayne and Loretta’s care have been declared missing and endangered. I’m staring at a picture of two girls. Two girls I’ve seen before. But they’re not who I thought they were. Savannah is the girl at the rave, no doubt about it. But Alana—Alana Goudy is Chatham Claiborne, with blonde hair.