Saturday, 12:32 p.m.
Seated on the sofa next to Dominic, Leyna studied the three Polaroids laid out in a row on Rocky’s coffee table.
She’d seen them before, but only at a glance, clipped to twine strung across Grace’s bedroom wall. Until Dominic had handed them to her, she’d remembered only the blank spaces on that wall. She’d spent years trying to fill in those blanks through countless searches of cardboard boxes, dresser drawers, and her own faulty memories. Now here they were, laid out in front of her, the images she’d tried unsuccessfully to conjure. Unremarkable but also everything.
Leyna studied the row of photos, each one feeling like an attack.
The photos were lightly damaged, as if folded and smoothed again, and smudged by fingertips.
The first showed a group shot taken at a neighborhood potluck the fall before Grace disappeared. Leyna was in this one too, standing next to her sister, both of them in sweaters because the weather had already turned crisp.
The second was a close-up of Grace in a pale blue cap-sleeved blouse, the tiny fake sapphire pendant she always wore with it resting in the hollow of her throat, Grace nearly smiling, strawberry-blond hair fanned by an invisible wind. The blouse makes my eyes pop, don’t you think? she’d said more than once. The necklace was never recovered.
Leyna plucked the third and final Polaroid from the coffee table. It showed Grace on the patio behind the Clarke house, the angle and Grace’s outstretched arm suggesting she’d taken the photo herself. Smiling again, back when Grace smiling had been a thing. Two others were in the photo: Rocky, stone-faced and in profile, his attention wholly on Grace at the other edge of the frame, and, wedged between the two of them, a third person with a guarded expression.
Her mother.
The air in the living room was stale and too warm. Meredith Clarke had claimed not to know Rocky well, yet here she was standing next to him and her missing daughter.
These were three of the Polaroids that Grace had taken down before she disappeared, Leyna was certain. So what were they doing tucked inside an envelope in Rocky Hamlin’s bedroom? And where was the one still missing?
Something else about the photos bothered her in a way she couldn’t yet identify. Something other than how Rocky looked at Grace.
The photo of the Duran brothers and Clarke sisters that Ellie had shown around town wasn’t among the Polaroids. There was no proof the girl had ever been there.
Suddenly aware they were in the house uninvited, Leyna picked up the photos and slipped them in her pocket. Dominic moved closer to her on the couch, the heat of his thigh burning into her own. Reading her body language, he said, “We should go.”
“He’ll notice the photos are gone.”
“He’ll notice the broken window first.”
Despite the risk, neither of them moved. “How do you think he got these?” she asked.
“Either she gave them to him or he took them.”
“Looks like it’s time to talk to Mom.” After several minutes of preoccupied silence, she said, “Judging by the photos, they were friendly.”
“Were they?” He sounded doubtful. At his tone, she could guess he was remembering the photo of Rocky staring at Grace, Meredith between them.
“That one creeps me out too,” she said. She wondered what he was thinking. Was he disappointed that there were no clues about what happened to his brother or to Ellie Byrd? For a moment, she’d let herself forget that he grieved his own loss.
“She looked happy enough,” he said. In the pause that followed, she felt the qualifier coming. A second later, it did. “But if they’d been close, wouldn’t you have known that?”
Leyna sorted through her memories as she had earlier, but she still found none that included Rocky.
“They were close enough for Grace to have taken this photo and hung it on her wall,” she said, trying on the argument even as it struck her as false. She’d felt the hint of connection when she found his battered copy of Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. And yet, after finding the photos of Grace, doubt reemerged, more insistent now.
If they were friendly, what kind of man befriended a teenage girl?
“I need to talk to Thea too.”
Beside her, she felt Dominic stiffen.
“Why would you need to talk with my sister?”
“Because when I asked her about him earlier, she was evasive. She was hiding something.”
“Of course she has secrets. She’s ten. And she was born six years after Adam and Grace went missing. What could she possibly know?”
“Probably nothing.” Leyna patted the pocket that held the photos. “But shouldn’t we at least ask again now that we have these?”
Dominic closed his eyes, rubbing his face with enough vigor that she worried he’d do damage to his skin. When he opened his eyes, he exhaled.
“I’ll talk to Thea,” he said. “You talk to your mom. More efficient that way anyway.”
“How about you talk to my mom, and I talk to Thea?”
He laughed, and her heart thudded at his smile.
“That’s a hard pass,” he said.
“I’ve shown you mine, now it’s your turn.”
“I like the sound of that.”
She felt herself flush. “I meant that now I’ve told you everything about that night. So what do you remember? Anything you haven’t told me?”
“That’s decidedly less fun.”
“Come on, Dom.”
His eyebrows knit; the premature grooves in his forehead deepened. “You know I wasn’t here.”
She felt confusion slip onto her own face. “You weren’t?”
“I had a midterm the next morning and left after lunch.”
“I could’ve sworn you were home for at least part of that evening.”
He shook his head, and his expression grew wistful. “I wish I were, but I was back in my dorm room by five. I didn’t get the call from my mom until the next morning.”
“You’re sure?”
The grooves cut deeper still. “Of course I’m sure.” Tone suddenly defensive. Too defensive? “You think I’d be able to forget the night my brother disappeared?”
Of course he wouldn’t. It had been a foolish question.
“Are you ever going to let go of your obsession with Adam?” Dominic sounded as weary as he had when it had ended with them.
Even after Leyna’s very public argument with his parents, her relationship with Dominic had limped along for a couple of weeks. Dying, even if they were unaware of how mortally it had been wounded.
In their last conversation as a couple, Leyna had shared the story of how she’d gotten the scar. He’d traced the patch of skin gently, as if it were a fresh injury. He’d touched his forehead to hers, and though it wasn’t his apology to make, he told her how sorry he was.
Each of his attempts at comfort only made her angrier.
“You’ve got to know I’m right about him.”
She figured if Dominic could see Adam as she did, he would join her side of the fight.
But by then Dominic had grown weary of fighting. “Can we talk about something else, just for today?”
“What else do we have to talk about? They’re all we have.”
She saw in his expression that her words had found their mark. Still, he didn’t leave. After sharing her story about the scar, Leyna suspected he lingered to make sure she was okay. Even years later, she remembered the force of his exhalation as much as his words.
“Sometimes, I think you’d rather be right than happy.”
That concern for her happiness again. If only he’d left then, twenty seconds earlier. But of course he hadn’t. Dominic always stayed.
“I could never be happy with you.” Each word a dagger. “You’re his brother.”
Dominic’s jaw had tensed, but all he managed was a quick “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
Then Dominic, the man who always stayed, left without looking back.
Now, he waited for her answer.
“I’m trying to let it go,” she said, even though she knew she wasn’t. That she couldn’t until she knew what had happened to Grace.
For the first time since Leyna had returned to Ridgepoint, the silence that settled between her and Dominic lacked comfort, their shared history rising between them like a concrete wall.