SIX MONTHS LATER
DECEMBER
The spring before sixth grade, when my parents told me that Mr. Marcotte had accepted a position at Aviano Air Base in Italy and Kat’s family was moving with him, I shut myself in my room and refused to come out for anyone, especially Kat.
I knew I was being a giant brat about it, but we were about to start middle school. Kat and I had spent all summer making plans—we would both join the newspaper and maybe try out for the play and maybe finally sit with Anna Markey at lunch—and Kat was abandoning it all to move to Italy.
Starting middle school without her felt like a world-ending event. Mom implored me to imagine how Kat felt, having to start school in a country where she didn’t know anyone, but I couldn’t get over her leaving me behind.
I’d like to believe that if I’d known I would eventually lose her forever, I wouldn’t have been such an ass about her moving away. But I think I acted the way I did because it’s easier to live with anger at someone than to deal with the pain of missing them.
I miss her—I miss them—all the time, but I’m angry more often than I’d like to admit. I’ll think of a stupid thing Jesse said to me, a pointless argument Kat and I had where I knew I was right but I just gave in because I couldn’t win against her, and I get angry all over again.
It’s easier to be angry. It’s easier than wondering why I was the one who got away.
I’ve obviously had a lot of chances to discuss this in therapy. Mom found me a psychiatrist off campus who I take a twenty-minute bus ride to see every other week. There’s also all the doctors I spoke to during my two-week stay at Twin Oaks, not long after the search for Kat’s and Jesse’s bodies started and I lost what was left of my shit.
Anyway, a lot of things have happened between then and now, but all that matters is I’m okay.
I have to be okay. Because for four weeks, I am going home.
I haven’t been to Long Island since Thanksgiving; the drive from Geneseo is too long for spontaneous weekend trips, and to be honest, I’m not eager to spend a second longer in Brookport than I need to.
My father drives up two days before Christmas Eve to pick me up for winter break. I insisted I was fine to take the bus home, but Dad framed it as I’m just excited to see you and want that extra six hours in the car with you!
The real reason, obviously, is that my parents are probably skittish about me traveling alone. It’s a miracle they even let me leave for school at all, considering I was barely a functioning human being for most of the summer.
I push the thoughts away and let the sound of Dad’s audiobook lull me to sleep. We arrive home as it’s getting dark; the sight of our Christmas tree, its rainbow lights reflecting off the bay window, makes my heart tug.
When we get inside, Mom is in the living room, guiltily straightening the pipe cleaner antlers on the reindeer ornament I made in kindergarten. “I’m sorry we didn’t wait for you—Dad thought it might be nice if you got here and everything was all set up.”
“Mom,” I say. “I was at school, not—”
Missing.
“At war,” I say, letting my backpack slide off my shoulder, but it’s too late, Mom’s smile droops a bit. She covers it up by planting a kiss on my forehead.
“Do you want Mama Lenora’s or Panda Garden?” she asks, her eyes not meeting mine. “You’re the deciding vote.”
I’m suddenly not very hungry, but if I say so, she’ll keep digging and find out I also told Dad I wasn’t hungry when he asked if I wanted anything from the McDonald’s at the rest stop on the drive home.
It is very hard to hide signs of depression when your mother is a therapist; I tried that once and it ended badly. Or it ended well, depending on how you look at it, since I am here, in my house, on winter break from college, and not still in Twin Oaks.
“Panda Garden,” I say. “Can you get me my usual? I’m gonna start unpacking.”
She nods, worry working her jaw muscle, but by the time I’m shut in my bedroom, she’s on the phone with Panda Garden, her voice back to its normal, airy self.
I sit perched on the edge of my bed, my chest tight. I knew that coming home would be hard. What I did not expect was seeing our Christmas tree in that window—the same one we’ve had since I was in diapers—and barely recognizing it, as if it were an artifact from someone else’s life.
I need to do something to anchor myself, quickly.
I unpack my laptop and I Google Mike Dorsey.
This is the first thing I do when I wake up and the last thing I do before I go to bed. Sometimes, I even sneak in a session or two between classes when I’m bored. The only person who knows about this little habit is my therapist at school.
He says indulging the urge to Google the man who killed my friends and almost killed me is like picking at a scab. Gratifying, maybe, but at the cost of healing.
I don’t care enough about his stupid metaphor to argue with him about why it’s wrong. Googling Mike Dorsey isn’t gratifying, because I get nothing out of it.
There hasn’t been an update about Kat and Jesse’s case in months. The facts are out there, waiting for the necessary pieces to tie everything together: that definitively, conclusively prove that they’re dead; that Mike Dorsey is the man who killed them.
No one knows for sure exactly what happened in that parking lot between Mike Dorsey and Johnathan Marcotte. The FBI is being tight-lipped—ask anyone and they’ll say it’s to protect their own asses, in light of how badly they fucked up. Because they were supposed to be close by during the ransom exchange, making sure no one got hurt.
And yet, somehow, Mike Dorsey figured out that Mr. Marcotte had told the FBI about the ransom demand, and they were waiting for him to leave with the money to catch him. In his panic, he tried to drive off. Mr. Marcotte jumped in front of the car, desperate to stop him.
Mike Dorsey dragged Kat’s father’s body three hundred feet with his Dodge Charger before he escaped long enough to make it to the top of the quarry, where he presumably shot Kat and Jesse before dumping their bodies into the water. He might have escaped if not for trying to speed away from the FBI agent waiting for him at the quarry entrance, and barreling his car straight into a passing tractor-trailer.
The FBI says that Kat’s and Jesse’s DNA was found in the trunk of Mike Dorsey’s Dodge Charger. Tire tracks matching his car were found on the north side of Blackstone Quarry; an initial search of the water yielded Kat’s bandana, some items from Jesse’s wallet, and a camping knife that Elizabeth Marcotte identified as belonging to her husband. Not much biological evidence was left on the blade after the time it had spent in the water, but the FBI believes Mike Dorsey tossed the knife to cover up that his blood was all over it after I stabbed him in self-defense.
Marian Sullivan-Marcotte’s hundred-thousand-dollar reward for Kat’s return, dead or alive, still stands. After the authorities announced they were calling off the quarry search until the spring—the water was too deep, plagued by poor visibility and too many crevices to search for bodies safely—divers came flocking in from all over, desperate to be the ones to find Kat and Jesse and collect the money.
Once one of the divers got stuck in a narrow crevice and nearly drowned, the town of Sunfish Creek barred the public access to the quarry.
I know all of this, of course.
I know that Michael Vincent Dorsey, the man responsible for what happened on Bobcat Mountain, was born in Tampa, Florida, and moved to Sunfish Creek with his mother when he was fifteen. He was arrested twice in his twenty-five years—once for stealing cash from the register at his job at a pet store, and once for marijuana possession.
His Facebook profile is private, but posts he made that his friends leaked to the press reveal a man who loved cars, his mother, and their orange cat, Briscoe. He also ranted about how weed should be legal, how the series finale of Game of Thrones was bullshit, and how rich people are the scum of the earth and all-out class warfare is the only solution.
The people who were willing to admit they had once been friends with Mike Dorsey, in exchange for a thirty-second spot on the evening news, described him as mercenary, scheming, but above all, naïve. Mike Dorsey always had an idea of how he was going to make money, leave his life as a mechanic in Sunfish Creek behind. He wanted to live like the rappers and influencers he followed on his private Instagram account; in the absence of talent or brains he’d of course turned to crime.
Put all these pieces together, and it makes sense Michael Dorsey would murder the granddaughter of a wealthy congresswoman, along with her boyfriend, for one hundred thousand dollars.
It’s enough for most people. But it’s not enough for me.
It’s an explanation, not an answer.
Outside my room, the doorbell rings, and Dad shouts that the food is here. I shut my laptop and push Mike Dorsey from my mind. If I let him linger there, I’ll start to dwell on the question that will never, ever be answered.
How did he wind up at Devil’s Peak that evening?
How did he find us in the last place we were supposed to be?
Serg called me while I was still studying for finals to ask if I’d be interested in working over my break, and I don’t think I’ve ever said yes to anything so quickly in my life. I can tell my parents are disappointed I have to work Christmas Eve until I come home with a crisp hundred dollar bill in tips for covering waitress duties.
Tonight is New Year’s Eve, one of the only nights we’re busy enough to open up the dining room on the second floor. The bar gets so backed up that I’m pulled away from the hostess stand to run drinks upstairs.
I scan the room for the crusty old dude and the woman who is too young for him one of the waitresses instructed me to deliver two old-fashioneds to. My flats snag on the carpet and I almost swan-dive with a full tray of drinks because the woman in question is Ben fucking Filipoff’s mother, Pam, and sure enough, Ben is sitting right next to her, across from said crusty old dude.
The man—slicked-back silver hair, clearly Brookport Old Money—flags me down. “Over here, sweetheart.”
Ben’s face turns the shade of a beet as I place one of the old-fashioneds in front of the man. Pam Filipoff looks up from her chicken marsala and squeaks, “Claire! We didn’t know you worked here!”
Kill me. I offer a full-teethed smile. “Happy New Year, everyone.”
Mrs. Filipoff, nose and cheeks champagne pink, is not about to let me get away. She introduces me to Old-Fashioned, whose name is Frank and who is clearly unimpressed with having to make small talk with the help.
Ben bumps his hand against mine as I’m clearing the empty glasses on the table. “Where’s the bathroom here?” he asks.
He knows it’s downstairs; maybe he wants an excuse to talk to me or get away from Old-Fashioned, who is now whispering into his mother’s ear.
“I’ll show you,” I say, balancing one end of the drink tray on my hip. Ben steps aside when we get to the stairs so I can head down first.
“You look good,” he says, and I wish he wasn’t behind me so I can see his face and determine if he means it.
“You too,” I say. “Your mom’s new boyfriend seems nice.”
“He’s a dick.”
We’re at the bottom of the stairs; the bathroom is to the right, the bar is to the left. Here is where we should part ways, but Ben blurts, “What are you doing later?”
My cheeks flush, because he asked, but also because the answer is embarrassing. My parents are at a party at their friends’ house in Nassau County and won’t be back until after midnight; I was planning on taking home meatball soup in a bread bowl and falling asleep before the ball drops.
“Nothing,” I say.
“Same. My mom is going to Frank’s tonight.” Ben holds my gaze. “You know where to find me if you’re bored.”
I replay the invitation over in my head a dozen times over the next two hours. Around ten thirty, the chaos dies down. The diners have been served the final courses of their prix-fixe menus, and I haven’t had to seat a new table in over an hour. Serg relieves me of my hostess duties and I slip into the kitchen to retrieve my coat.
Carlos is sitting on the counter, prying open a bottle of Korbel. The cork flies out to cheers from the kitchen staff. He takes a swig and offers me the bottle.
I shake my head and he boos. “You better be coming to the tree lighting.”
He’s referring to the annual tradition in which he lights his Christmas tree on fire in his backyard and invites the whole staff to watch over cups of cheap champagne.
One of the waitresses whisks past me with a tray of crème brûlées and says: “She’s meeting a guy at his house. I heard her on the stairs.”
My cheeks burn while Carlos and the others whoop and holler.
“Get some, girl,” Carlos shouts. “Maybe it’ll loosen your ass up.”
I give them the finger with both hands as I push my way out the back door with my shoulder. But when I’m out of sight, I touch the smile on my face, fingers stinging from the cold.
The smile is gone by the time I’ve pulled out of the parking lot. I have to see it every night when I leave work; the street sign for Idledale Road, home to Kat’s empty house.
It doesn’t seem right that everyone is going about their business just like last year, like nothing has changed. Like Kat and Jesse weren’t here at all.
But you are, I think to myself. You’re still here.
Ben and I are on his couch, eating the caramel corn his mom made this afternoon in case he wanted to invite a friend over. I don’t think his ex-girlfriend was who she had in mind, but she’s as casual about this stuff as my parents are.
When Ben gets up to get us some sodas, I text my mom that there was a change of plans and I’m hanging out with a friend.
She replies right away:
Blood surges to my face as I bang out a response.
Ben comes into the living room, holding two Diet Cokes. “What’s so funny?”
“The fact that my mother is wasted on New Year’s Eve and I, a college student, am not,” I answer.
He hands me a Diet Coke and we segue into the obligatory college talk. He tells me about UVA, how he’s been thinking about transferring. The school is too big, it’s too hard to make friends. Without sports he’s not really sure where he fits in, especially when most of the people in his classes are smarter, wealthier, and laugh at his Long Island accent.
“I think what you’re saying is you miss being popular,” I say.
He laughs. “I think, Keough, you’re right.”
After a beat of nothing but the sound of our jaws working the popcorn, I take a sip of soda and ask, “What’s the gang doing tonight?”
I can’t help the note of bitterness in my voice, remembering how eager Noah and Shannon and Anna were to drag me when Kat and Jesse disappeared. How easy it was for Jamie to ghost me when she realized the tide was turning against me.
Ben flips the top on his soda. “Dunno. Haven’t talked to most of them since we left for school.”
“Really?” I realize sounding so surprised makes it sound like I care about who Ben is friends with, but I’m too curious to be embarrassed. “Why?”
“Because they’re assholes.”
Ben doesn’t offer anything more; I’m trying not to do that only-child thing where I automatically assume everything is about me, but I wonder if this is about me. If maybe he saw the Facebook posts and told them they were being assholes; if maybe he finally chose me over them, even when it was too late for it to make a difference.
“So.” Ben sinks into the couch, props his socked feet on the coffee table. “I texted you, after Mr. Marcotte’s accident. I just wanted you to know it wasn’t me—I didn’t tell Noah or anyone at school you were there with them that weekend.”
“I saw,” I say. “And I believe you.”
Ben didn’t have a reason to lie to me, and there were three hundred people in our class alone who could have heard from anyone that Kat and Jesse didn’t go on that trip by themselves. It doesn’t matter who outed me, only that they did, and where I wound up because of it.
“I was going to respond to you.” I glance sideways at Ben. “I just didn’t get the chance.”
There’s no non-embarrassing way to admit to Ben why I didn’t get the chance to text him back. My phone was confiscated for two weeks while I was checked into Twin Oaks. I wasn’t allowed contact with anyone but my parents for the first few days while I was stabilized for major depression and suicidal thoughts.
My chest goes hollow at the memory: me, pleading, crying in the waiting room. Don’t make me do this. I don’t belong here.
“You probably heard the rumors about where I was,” I say, keeping my voice even.
“I did,” Ben says. “You don’t have to tell me what really happened unless you want to.”
It surprises me, but I realize that I do want to.
So I tell him everything: How after Mr. Marcotte got hurt and the FBI announced Mike Dorsey was dead, the media backed off me a bit.
And then, Brenda Dean. She was the first person to suggest that Mike Dorsey might not have been acting alone. She didn’t use my name, but she didn’t have to. One of her guests suggested that perhaps I had pointed a finger at Paul Santangelo to cover up my own involvement in the kidnapping.
Because how could a crime so heinous also be random? Mike Dorsey had to have known we would be there; murders are spontaneous, but kidnappings are planned.
I read every single Reddit thread about me. There were dozens, speculating that I’d helped Mike Dorsey, promising to split the ransom money with him.
People posted one-star reviews for my mom’s therapy practice. Says she helps people yet she raised a liar.
Mom said it would pass, that people would find something else to get riled about, that we just had to ride out the storm. But I couldn’t stop reading that shit. I became obsessed with Googling myself.
I hadn’t slept in almost a week when my parents checked me into Twin Oaks.
When I finish, Ben doesn’t say anything. I’m looking ahead, at the muted coverage of the ball drop, so I don’t have to see Ben’s face. Most people I tell about my stay at Twin Oaks, it takes them a second or two to wipe the pity from their face before they say something like There’s no shame in getting help.
When I glance at Ben, he’s watching me. I feel my lips part as he reaches, brushes a popcorn crumb stuck to the ends of my hair. He doesn’t blink as he moves his hand higher so he’s cupping one side of my face.
I climb onto Ben so I’m facing him. He pulls my face to his and kisses me like I am the only girl he’s ever kissed, which I know isn’t true because he’s better at it than he was when we were together, so I can only assume he’s had lots of practice on girls at college—
His hands move to my lower back and I press into him and when my fingers are on his belt loop he says into my ear, “Claire, this isn’t why I asked you to come over.”
I go still. “You don’t want to?”
“Of course I do—I just don’t have any condoms.” Ben turns the shade of the cranberry couch.
The last thing I want is to look as disappointed as I feel; I stay where I am, my fingers still hooked over the waist of his pants. “Burned through them all last semester, huh?”
Ben’s skin is hot on mine. “I’ve probably gotten one percent of the action you think I’ve gotten.”
“That’s still more than I’ve gotten.” I snort. “Including tonight.”
“That’s hard to believe.” Ben twirls a finger through the ends of my hair, dyed a lighter shade of brown than the rest. I’ve cut it to my shoulders, the shortest it’s been in my life. “Your new hair is ridiculously hot.”
I laugh, and he flips me over, pushing my shirt up to kiss my belly button.
He moves lower, and I close my eyes. My head goes blank; for the first time in six months I don’t have to remind myself that I’m still here. I just am.
My parents beat me home from their New Year’s party, which is unfortunate because I would willingly go into witness protection if it got me out of questions about what Ben and I did this evening.
In the bay window, our Christmas tree is dark, but the living room lights are on.
Unease worms through me as I step through the door. Mom is on the couch, her face in her hands. She drops them to her lap. There’s a smear of mascara on the side of her hand and her face is spotted with red.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, and she shakes her head, unable to bring herself to speak.
Dad comes out of the kitchen, a glass of water in his hands. He halts when he sees me.
I force the words out. “What happened?”
Dad’s voice is hoarse. “Mr. Marcotte is dead.”