Saturday, 9:29 a.m.
Though the house next door was built of the same stone and wood as the neighboring properties, it hinted at its status as a vacation rental. No cars were parked outside. The landscaping was low maintenance, without grass to mow or flowers that might need careful attention. Sensors were wired into the sconces flanking the front doors so the lights could blink on at dusk, off at dawn. The generator was silent, unlike those at the other homes on the street.
Leyna noticed all of this but knocked anyway. She gave it a minute before ringing the bell. Another minute before trying the knob. It twisted freely, so she pushed open the door and shouted a greeting, loud enough to carry to the rear of the large house.
Someone had been here moments ago. She was sure of it. Staring out her mom’s window, she’d felt as if someone stared back. It shouldn’t have mattered—she was the outsider in the neighborhood now, and for all she knew, the person belonged in that house. Leyna didn’t. But she was drawn forward just the same.
Her mom’s voice trilled in her head: Leave it alone.
As if she’d ever been the type to do that.
Leyna crossed the threshold into the open living space and shouted again. “Hello?”
The word echoed. When no response came, Leyna risked several more steps. Like in the Clarke house, the living room featured a grand fireplace and skylights cut into wood beams. It offered the same floor-to-ceiling windows and panoramic views, the same glimpse of forested hillside and white-blue sky.
The similarities ended there. In the vacation rental, the light oak furniture was catalog-chic—shades of beige and brown with the occasional throw pillow’s pop of color. All the pieces intended to be inoffensive and interchangeable, easily swapped out in case of unexpected breakage.
Empty but close to the other homes, the vacation rental made the perfect hiding place. She imagined Adam in one of the bedrooms that faced his childhood home, watching, alone or with Ellie. Even if the young woman had come willingly, Leyna knew how deeply Adam could hurt the ones he claimed to love.
Leyna moved farther into the house, pausing before each door, searching for a sign she’d been right, that she hadn’t imagined the movement in the doorway. Each time she entered a new room, her pulse quickened as she wondered if this would be where she found Adam or Ellie.
In the kitchen, she found a welcome note addressed to the Hahns stuck to the refrigerator; it included rules, a list of contact numbers, and the Wi-Fi password. The check-in date was two days in the future. On the counter, a pen and notepad and artfully fanned brochures of local attractions were arranged.
In the bathroom, a stack of brown towels was folded on a rack next to a soaking tub large enough to float a kayak. No scent of pine or bleach lingered. Whoever had watched her, it hadn’t been the house cleaner.
Leyna should’ve felt more at ease the deeper in the house she searched, but instead she felt like she was engaged in some warped version of Russian roulette, where each vacant room represented the click of an empty chamber. While she hoped to find Ellie, a perverse part of her also hoped Adam was with her—to prove to everyone that Leyna had always been right about him.
She imagined another of her mom’s disappointed sighs.
They ran away, Leyna. Let it go.
He’s dangerous, Mom. He’s always been dangerous.
She’d been back less than an hour, and she was already having imagined arguments with her mom. As if the real ones weren’t enough.
Leyna stepped back into the hall and moved toward what she assumed was the master bedroom. She had just stepped inside when she heard it—a distinct thump.
She tensed. Somewhere in the back of the house.
Spine rigid, she pricked her ears, waiting for the sound to repeat. Under the assault of the wind, the house creaked. Had that been what she’d heard?
She listened for several long seconds but heard only the wind’s whine and the groan of the walls.
After checking around the bedroom, she began to think maybe the thump had come from outside. Had a patio chair upended? Had a limb fallen onto the hot tub’s cover?
Leaving the master bedroom, she hurried to a side window that looked out over the patio. She saw a pair of Adirondack chairs and a small round table, all upright. The only debris on the hot tub was a dusting of pine needles.
Strange. She could’ve sworn she’d heard something.
Thump.
No way she had imagined it that time. Leyna hurried to a room in the back of the house. Unlike the master bedroom’s, this door was closed. She tried the knob, but it wouldn’t budge.
She returned to the kitchen and grabbed the ballpoint pen from the counter.
Back at the door to the locked room, Leyna knocked loudly, then called a warning: “Coming in.”
She waited thirty seconds, and when no rifle shots or additional thumps came, she removed the ink cartridge from the pen.
It was Grace who taught Leyna how to pick a lock. Leyna could still picture the way Grace’s face scrunched in concentration as she replayed the video dozens of times, her fingers nimble as she finessed the lock on her bedroom door. She’d insisted Leyna try too. When she’d asked why, Grace shot her a look of bewilderment.
People lock up the things they want to hide. As if she had the right to other people’s secrets.
In Leyna’s initial attempts, her fingers had been thick and clumsy, and she’d practiced for hours on her own to earn her sister’s approval. She was rewarded with one of Grace’s smiles, rare in those final weeks. But the smile quickly faded, and when Grace leaned into the shadows, her pupils swelled so that her eyes appeared black.
Protect yourself, Ley. Her tone hushed, insistent. You never know who you can trust.
Sixteen years later, Leyna shivered still.
On her knees in front of the locked door, Leyna rolled the ink cartridge between her fingers. It seemed sturdy enough, and the diameter was right. She pushed the cartridge in the hole, wiggling and twisting, first in one direction and then the other. It wouldn’t budge. She applied more pressure.
Finally, the lock clicked. In high school, Grace could’ve unlocked the door in less than a minute. It had taken Leyna at least five.
Leyna opened the door to the cloying scent of lavender potpourri. Like the vanilla candles her mom had been burning, the scent conjured the sting of loss. She supposed everything there would feel like loss to her, but it wasn’t like she could hold her breath or wander around the neighborhood with her eyes closed. At Ridgepoint, there had already been far too much of that.
She stepped into the room, which was as simply furnished as the rest of the house. Matching bedroom set—queen bed, dresser, nightstand—built from the same pale wood used in the other rooms. Though the blinds were closed, the red stripes on the comforter had faded slightly where the sun would’ve reached through the window. She touched that spot, imagining the warmth that had bleached the color from it. The dresser next to it had signs of wear on the corner, the polished edge showing less of the grain.
Leyna moved to the closet and opened the door. She bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood.
There, in the closet, a girl stared back at her with warm brown eyes set in a face that was even paler than her own except for twin spots of coral. Her long brown hair hung loose, and she tugged at the hem of a lavender T-shirt.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” the girl said.
Leyna took a step back. “Are you supposed to be here?”
“Of course not. Why do you think I locked the door and then hid in the closet?” She brushed past Leyna, hopped onto the bed, and sat cross-legged. “Did I scare you?”
“A little bit,” Leyna admitted. “Did I scare you?”
She shook her head. “I could see out of the closet, and you didn’t look scary.”
“Not everyone who’s scary looks it.”
“My mom says that too.” She rolled her eyes. “I thought you might be Rocky.”
At the mention of Rocky, Leyna could see him as he’d been that day ten years earlier when she’d finally confronted the Durans: in a henley shirt and jeans, at least six inches taller than anyone else in the neighborhood, his light brown hair starting to silver. He was the only one who’d looked at her with any compassion. True, there was anger mixed in with it. It had probably been mostly anger. But there was a hint of compassion too. Maybe.
Though Rocky’s dream of building out Ridgepoint Ranch had stalled, he still owned the land and lived alone in a cottage a short walk into the woods. Leyna guessed the pending lawsuit over permits made the land unsellable. But with no family in the state except the Durans, where else would Rocky go anyway?
The day Grace and Adam had gone missing, the deputy had taken a report from Olivia Duran before telling her there was little they could do about runaways. Though Olivia had protested—My son wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye—the neighbors had quietly supported Meredith’s claim that the kids had been planning to leave. Adam was obsessed with the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, also home to Grace’s favorite band. Even Richard admitted Adam had talked about moving east with Grace. The former owner of what was now the Miller house went so far as to say she thought she’d seen the couple headed toward the road that night, carrying bulging backpacks and holding hands.
But though the neighbors agreed with Meredith, their support went to the grieving Olivia, who drew more sympathy and less blame. What kind of woman must Meredith be to allow two teens to run away from her home and then keep that information from the other teen’s mom until morning?
Leyna had been excluded from the search—Olivia wouldn’t allow it—but she’d heard every word, and she’d trailed behind them even though she knew they would find nothing. She wanted to shout at their backs: You’re going the wrong way! She wanted to point them in the right direction, but then she would’ve had to tell them everything. She would’ve had to admit what she’d done, and she hadn’t been ready to confess her role in that night.
Sixteen years later, she still wasn’t ready.
“Why would you think I was Rocky?” Leyna asked.
The girl’s grin drooped, replaced by a slight reserve. She shrugged.
“He sometimes fixes things for the Millers when the house is empty.” She started bouncing on the bed. “Before I hid, I was looking for our dog. His name’s Goose. He’s part French bulldog and part something else.”
Leyna tamped down her curiosity and the tension that always came with it. Her smile made her cheeks feel unnaturally tight. “Goose. That’s an unusual name.”
“Mom wanted a dog, and Dad said she should get a bird instead. So she compromised and got a dog named Goose.”
Olivia had just given birth when Leyna left that last time. That baby had to be this girl. “So where are your parents?” Leyna had no interest in seeing Olivia Duran again.
The girl wrinkled her nose, her eyes closing to slits. “My mom told me I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”
For someone who’d been told not to talk to strangers, the girl certainly had a lot to say.
“Your mom’s right.” Leyna sank onto the bed, on the edge, far from the girl.
The girl pulled a granola bar out of her pocket and offered it to Leyna, who shook her head but smiled. “My mom told me not to take food from strangers.”
The girl unwrapped the granola bar and took a bite.
“How’d you get into the house?” Leyna asked.
“My mom has a key for emergencies,” she said, chewing around her words. “How’d you get in?”
“The front door was unlocked.”
She wrinkled her nose, obviously irritated by her own mistake. “So how’d you get in the bedroom?”
“I picked the lock.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “With what?”
“Part of a ballpoint pen.”
The girl tossed the half-eaten granola bar on the nightstand, and when she spoke, she was nearly breathless. “Can you teach me how to do that?”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to talk to strangers.”
She bounced on the bed. “I’m Thea. Now will you teach me?”
Imagining the look on Olivia’s face if she learned that Leyna had taught her daughter how to pick locks, she laughed. Sorry, kid. Never going to happen. “Have you seen anyone else around besides your dad’s cousin?”
The girl studied Leyna through narrowed eyes. “If I tell you, will you teach me how to pick a lock?”
“Thea.”
The voice came from behind Leyna, and it raised the hair on the back of her neck. She’d once thought it the kindest voice she’d ever heard. How wrong she’d been.
Leyna turned and locked eyes with Olivia Duran, who stood in the doorway looking as tall and stunning as she’d been back when she was still Meredith’s friend and Leyna had called her Aunt Olivia. At twelve, Leyna had gone to the Durans’ house expecting comfort. Instead, she’d been told to go home with words that haunted her still and had devastated her as a child:
You can’t be here, Leyna. Not today. Not anymore.
And then Aunt Olivia had shut the door with enough force that the frame vibrated.
The feud sparked by that slammed door might’ve cooled over time if not for the incident with the flyers. The summer Grace would’ve turned twenty-three, Olivia hung new MISSING posters all over Quincy and Portola. Below the banner, in bold: Help bring Adam home.
No mention of Grace.
That in itself wasn’t new. Every year, Olivia headed into town to replace the old, tattered flyers with updated ones, always with a new photo. Sometimes multiple photos. But somehow, there was never room for her to mention Leyna’s sister, even in the section that gave the details of Adam’s disappearance. It said only that Adam never returned home after visiting a neighbor’s house. Though simply stated, there always seemed to be an accusation hidden in those words, and everyone knew which neighbor to blame.
In years past, Leyna had put up her own flyers, of course, but when she’d checked on them later, they were gone. A random act? Maybe. But more likely, they’d been torn down by Olivia or Richard or even her own mom, who always insisted Leyna leave it, as if she were a dog being encouraged to drop a stolen sandal.
Olivia usually replaced the flyers in March to coincide with the anniversary, but with a new baby at home, she’d been several months late getting to it. That Olivia had hung the damn posters so close to Grace’s birthday had irritated Leyna, but that she’d chosen that photo of Adam for the new poster enraged her. Leyna recognized the photo immediately because the original had included Grace.
Olivia had eliminated Leyna’s sister from the photo. One quick crop, and Grace no longer existed.
Leyna had just ripped one of the flyers off a utility post when she’d heard a voice from behind her.
“I’m sorry.”
When Leyna turned, her gut clenched, and she almost said her sister’s name.
“I didn’t know Grace well, but I was a year behind her in school. She seemed sweet.”
The woman had to be telling the truth about not knowing Grace well. No one who’d known Grace well would’ve described her as sweet. Passionate, definitely. Mercurial. Charismatic. Maybe kind. But sweet? Never that.
The resemblance between this woman and her sister was disconcerting. The reddish-blond hair. Blue eyes. The slope of her jaw, and the contour of her cheeks. This woman was a few inches shorter and, of course, years older than Grace was when she disappeared. About the age Grace would’ve been if it had been her standing on Portola’s main street.
The woman shifted, filling Leyna’s awkward pause with a smile. She introduced herself as Dawn, and Leyna finally found her voice.
“If you knew Grace, did you know Adam too?”
The smile faded. “I did.” She hesitated, and Leyna waited for her to say more about Adam. Instead, the woman’s expression grew guarded. “I hope you find out what happened to your sister.”
Leyna noted the word choice—what happened to your sister, as if information were all she could possibly find. She also noticed that although the woman apparently knew Adam too, she offered no sympathy or hopes for him.
Dawn made a move to leave but it appeared half-hearted, and she stopped when Leyna took a step toward her. There seemed to be more this stranger wanted to tell her.
Leyna gave her an opening. “How did you know Adam?”
But Leyna guessed before the other woman answered.
“We used to date. Before Grace.” The smile returned, though it broke at the corners. “Adam had a type.”
“It didn’t end well?”
Dawn’s sigh was weary. “Do high-school relationships ever end well?”
“What happened? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Adam had a temper, especially when he was jealous. And he was jealous a lot.”
“What did he do to you?”
Dawn laughed harshly. “He wasn’t jealous with me. Just with her. Your sister. It kind of kills a relationship when the guy you’re dating gets jealous because guys are paying attention to another girl.” She shrugged. “It’s okay. We didn’t date long, and even in the beginning, I figured I was a substitute for Grace. Not great for my ego, but I suppose I dodged a bullet.” She looked sheepish. “Sorry.”
Leyna ignored the apology, entirely focused on what she’d said before it.
“Dodged a bullet how? Do you know something about what happened to them?”
Dawn’s eyes went wide, the shake of her head emphatic. “Oh. No. I only meant he broke a guy’s arm.” She wrinkled her nose in obvious repulsion. “Adam claimed it was an accident. The guy tripped. But the day before, he’d asked Grace to Homecoming, so…”
Leyna knew all about Adam’s type of accident.
Dawn offered one last sympathetic glance. “Hope you get closure. Six years is a long time to wait for answers.”
Then she’d hurried away, leaving Leyna clutching the flyer she’d torn from the pole.
In the Durans’ driveway later that day, Leyna had confronted Olivia and Richard, holding the now wrinkled paper inches from Olivia’s face, hand trembling but gaze steady.
“Say her name,” Leyna said quietly.
Olivia took a step back but stayed silent.
“Come on, Aunt Olivia. It’s the least you can do, since your son is the one who killed her.”
Leyna didn’t raise her voice, even when she told Dawn’s story of Adam breaking a guy’s arm. Even when she started sharing the ugliest memories:
Adam told Grace she was lucky to have him, since she had nothing but her looks to offer, and those wouldn’t last long.
He’d called her fat. Stupid.
When Grace stopped having sex with him, Adam hooked up with Grace’s friend and then convinced her she was to blame for not loving him enough.
Adam slapped Grace hard enough that she’d needed to ice her cheek.
The last one hadn’t been a lie, exactly—Leyna knew how violent Adam could be—but it had been close enough to one that everyone could see it. That cast doubt on everything else she’d said, even though it was true. All of it.
So Leyna kept at it, nearly pleading for them to believe her—“Why can’t you see that Adam is a monster?”—even after Olivia blanched, and Richard said, icily, “That’s enough, Leyna.”
When she’d finished her tirade, she noticed Dominic and her mom were among the spectators. She knew she’d gone too far when she saw even they looked horrified.
Olivia wore the same horrified expression now.
So, not happy to see me then.