Saturday, 1:32 p.m.
There was only one thing Leyna cared about bringing with her. She headed upstairs to her sister’s bedroom.
As much as Leyna wanted answers about Grace, she suspected she’d missed her chance to know more. As time passed, her own memories grew fuzzier—she was nearly certain Grace had been wearing jeans with her blouse, but she couldn’t remember if her hair had been loose or in a ponytail. And how sure was she that Grace’s hands had been empty? Earlier, she’d known that her sister carried nothing with her, but in her experience, there was nothing more unreliable than unwavering certainty. Outside her sister’s door, she closed her eyes and tried to reconstruct Grace as she’d been that night, but a thousand other images competed, and the only thing she could be sure of was that Grace was gone and that Leyna could’ve prevented it.
She hadn’t been able to help Ellie either, but maybe her story would end differently. Amaya said Ellie liked to force reactions from others, that she was fully committed to her craft. Maybe this was what Amaya meant, and Ellie had immersed herself in the role of Missing Girl and was now on her way back home to scavenge the emotions of her loved ones for her play.
Screwing her eyes more tightly shut, Leyna tried to picture it—Ellie walking through her parents’ front door with an awkward apology: Sorry I made you worry, but it wouldn’t have been the same if you’d known.
Yeah, that felt like bullshit.
Either way, Leyna hoped the girl was safe. The wildfire wouldn’t reach Sierraville or Sacramento, but Leyna knew there were other dangers even more deadly and unpredictable.
She left the hall light on and pushed open the door—and inhaled sharply when she saw Grace’s face. Three of them, actually, staring back at her from the bedroom wall.
My God, she was beautiful.
She moved slowly closer, stopping a couple of feet from the portraits. She resisted the urge to reach out and touch them, brush the blush of Grace’s cheek with her fingertips, afraid the sweat from her hands might stain them or start the process of corrosion.
She must’ve lingered over her memories longer than she’d realized, because she heard the door close and then her mom coming up behind her.
“You did a great job with these,” Leyna said, her voice husky.
“Thank you.” Her mother’s voice was surprisingly reverent. She pointed to the one where Grace looked youngest and wore her pale blue blouse. “I painted that the year she turned eighteen. Seventeen months after she disappeared.”
Carefully, she took down the portrait. Then she went to the closet and selected what Leyna guessed was a second portrait, this one secured in a cardboard box.
She counted the boxes. Twenty-one. She’d assumed her mom painted Grace once a year, but it looked like it was more often than that. She was overcome by the urge to go in the closet and rip open all the boxes to see as many versions of Grace as existed in the world.
Leyna gestured toward the one her mom held. “Can I see?”
“We should be going.”
“Please.”
Her mom hesitated, then unwrapped the box, taking care to keep the packaging intact. When she was done, she propped it up on the bed, against the wall, beside the portraits of Grace.
It was a portrait of Leyna. Leyna’s hair was shorter—just above her shoulders, tucked behind her ears. She always tucked her hair behind her ears when she wore her hair that short. She had on a white collared shirt and wore a gold medallion necklace. She’d once owned that shirt, and she still owned that necklace.
“I might’ve stopped by the restaurant a few times.” Her mom cleared her throat and looked away.
“I never saw you.”
“I never went in,” her mom said, as if this were the most obvious and natural thing in the world, stalking her daughter. And yet—Leyna felt a moment of unexpected warmth.
Meredith fidgeted. “Do you need a minute?” she asked, as if she needed one herself.
Leyna shook her head. “You’re right. We need to leave. I just have to do one thing first.”
Leyna snapped a photo of each of the remaining portraits with her phone, then moved on to the Polaroids still hanging on Grace’s wall. There were dozens of them, clipped onto twine. She considered taking them down and throwing them all in a shoebox, but it suddenly felt right leaving them there, and what most interested her wouldn’t fit in one anyway. There was no way to store that blank space where the fourth missing Polaroid had once been clipped.
She followed her mom to the bedroom door, stealing one last glance over her shoulder at the portraits. On the wall of Grace’s bedroom, at least, the sisters had been reunited.