On a scale of one to ten, Joe is hovering around a sixteen when I come back home. Nolan walked me to the front door, saying we were going to face it down together. I think he’s regretting his decision right about now.
The look on Joe’s face is half anger, half anguish. No, scratch that: three-quarters anger, one-quarter anguish. “I left a note,” I say, wincing. “And a text.”
“I’ve been worried sick,” he says. Then he looks at Nolan, like this is his fault.
“It was important, Joe.” And then I tell him. How I recognized the photo on Nolan’s wall—the missing person. How we drove down to North Carolina through the night (here Joe rubs his temples, like he’s fighting off a migraine) and visited his house (I decided visited was the best term to use there). How his sister told us that her brother isn’t really gone, just choosing to disappear, and her mother doesn’t want to admit it. She gave us an address, to prove it.
“We went to the address,” I say. “A little while ago.”
Nolan clears his throat. I can see Joe’s face, like he’s trying to process, and also trying not to explode, and to somehow hold all these things in balance—the big and the little—and I just need to tell him.
“We saw him, Joe. His name is Hunter Long, and he was in this abandoned factory building, with these two other guys. We talked to him, and he knew Elliot, but he’s scared—”
Joe stands then. “Wait a minute, back up, back up. You went to this abandoned factory, and…what? Just walked right in?”
“Well, they must have heard us outside, and they stood up, and Hunter ran because he was scared, but I followed him—”
“Oh my God, Kennedy!” Joe is yelling again. Well, the scales tipped, and not in our favor. “Are you two out of your minds? First, driving through the night, and keeping your phone off so I had no idea where you were. Yes, I noticed that part. Then, tracking down some kid who may or may not be missing, just because you think you saw him with Elliot once—”
“I did see him, Joe. He told me—”
But Joe keeps going like he doesn’t even hear me. “Then,” he continues, pacing back and forth so Nolan and I have to turn our heads side to side just to keep up with him. “Wait, let me see if I’ve got this next part straight. Then, you wait until night, and you sneak around some abandoned factory, where who knows what is going on inside—obviously, nothing good. I mean, it’s an abandoned factory in the middle of the night, and you should be smarter than this. Kennedy, I trusted you. I did. But this is ridiculous. And then you followed him through the woods?”
Nolan’s head has dropped lower, like he’s ashamed.
“Joe,” I say. “He was Elliot’s boyfriend.”
He stops pacing then, narrowing his eyes. “What?”
I swallow nothing. “He was Elliot’s boyfriend. He was a runaway, staying at the college, which is how he met Elliot. And apparently Elliot confided in him, his thoughts about Will….Elliot didn’t want them together, you’re right. But it was because he thought there was something off with Will. Something she wouldn’t see. Joe, I think it was Will who shot Mom.”
Joe is speechless. His gaze shifts to Nolan, as if asking for confirmation that he’s hearing this correctly. Nolan nods once. He hands Joe the file, the one Nolan got from his house—all the details about Hunter Long. Who he is, where he lives. And a few notes written over the top, now in Nolan’s handwriting: the name of the factory, the date and time we saw him.
“Elliot’s trial starts this week. Don’t you think the police have been through this? It was your mother’s gun, and Elliot’s prints were on it. There was gunshot residue all over his clothes, and you told me what you saw….” Joe trails off, shaking his head. “Kennedy, this is wishful thinking.”
“It is, Joe. It is. You’re right. But I believe Elliot wouldn’t do that. I think you believe it, too. And if you believe that, it opens you up to seeing something more.” I take a deep breath. “I think Mom took the gun out, to protect herself, but Will took it from her. I think they were fighting, and Elliot didn’t hear it.” I remember what Elliot was like, when he was in the zone. How I could sneak up on him, with his headphones on, and he wouldn’t hear it until it was too late. I saw his headphones on the desk that night, when I peered in the window.
“I think he heard the gunshot,” I explain, “and that’s when he left the room. I think he tried to wrestle it away, to protect himself, and that’s when he shot Will.”
Joe just stares at me; I can’t figure out what’s going on in his head. It’s closed off, a mystery to me.
“He says he doesn’t know what happened.”
“Maybe he doesn’t,” I say. “You know how he is with blood. He gets sick at the sight of his own.” Or maybe Elliot does remember bits and pieces, and none of it changes anything. He did pull a trigger. He did do something terrible.
“Joe, I want to tell the police. Not just about that. I want to tell them what I saw. What really happened. All of it.”
He pauses, looking me over slowly. Picking his next words carefully. “It’s going to look even worse for him, if you say it,” he says gently. Elliot, with a gun, pointed in my direction.
I know this. And yet. “If I want them to believe me, I have to tell them everything.”
Joe sits down at the kitchen table, head in his hands.
“I’ll call them tomorrow,” he says. “We’ll try to get an appointment for the same day.”
“I want to do it now.” Before the trial gets any closer, and before I lose my nerve.
“What? It’s Sunday. I’m not even sure anyone will get back to us until tomorrow.”
“Tell them we’re coming. Tell them I have something important to say. The trial starts this week. They’ll show up.”
Nolan looks at Joe. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I knew it wasn’t smart. I did it anyway. The whole thing was my idea.”
“Oh no,” I say, turning on him. “You don’t apologize. Not for this.”
While Joe is on the phone, I wait with Nolan in the doorway. “Thank you,” I say, resting my head on his chest for a moment. His hand comes to the side of my face, holding me there. I can hear the beat of his heart, the sound of his breath. “I guess this is almost done,” he says, and he seems wistful. Sad, maybe.
I nod, pulling back, but what I really think is that it’s just getting started.
Joe comes out with his keys and the file from Nolan. He’s changed out of his athletic shorts, now wearing jeans. “Okay,” he says. “We’re ready.”
He stands there between us and I blink several times, frozen in place. “They said yes?”
The key trembles faintly in his hands. “Is this what you truly want to do, Kennedy? Because if so, they’re ready for us. If not, I’ll deal with it. But this, right here, is your decision, and it’s time.”
Now that I’m facing it, I start to picture saying it. But Joe keeps his eyes on mine, like he’s keeping me grounded.
“Okay. I’m ready,” I say.
He nods, then as an afterthought, “We could use you as a witness, too, Nolan.”
Nolan mumbles something that might be a Yes, sir, but we’re already moving. I trail after Joe, trying to keep the momentum. Trying to just keep moving before something stops me.
As we back out of the driveway, Joe glances in the rearview mirror, waiting for Nolan to start his car so he can follow.
Joe clears his throat. “You were gone for two nights. Where did you sleep?”
My cheeks heat, and I keep my gaze down, my voice quick. “In the car,” I say, and his grip tightens on the wheel.
“This will be a talk for another time. But, Kennedy, it will be a talk.”
“Okay, Joe,” I say, my head leaning against the window. I stare at the sky, looking for that crack—the one I can always find, that runs through everything. But the sky is so blue, and the sunrise is so bright, it makes my eyes tear just to look at it.
Nolan’s car pulls in beside ours, and Joe exits first, staring up at the building. He walks up the front steps, but Nolan lingers by his car.
“It’s not too late to make a run for it,” he says. I smile, which I guess was the intended reaction. Now that I’m here, standing in front of the police station, I’m terrified. He reaches for me, and I rest my forehead on his shoulder, with his hand on my back.
“I don’t want to tell it to everyone,” I say.
“So just tell it to me,” he says.
Inside, there’s no one working at the front desk, and we walk by the same vending machine with the crack I saw last week, the same lacquered walls I ran my fingers across.
The three of us walk into the same conference room, but that’s the end of the similarities. Now there are two men at the table, along with a woman, and a video camera set up between them. “Oh,” I say, freezing at the entrance.
Joe puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes.
“I’ve asked my colleagues to be here today, to help make sure we have all the facts. And to make sure there’s no…confusion,” the man in the wire-rim glasses says.
I’m not sure whether he’s talking about my confusion or his, but I walk to the seat across from the camera.
I notice that his tie, today, is straight. “So, Kennedy,” he says, “I hear you’ve remembered something important. Something that will shed some light on this case.”
I nod. I’ve always remembered. But I wait until Joe and Nolan take their seats, and then think how to begin.
“I panicked,” I say, feeling my throat close, even now, with the thought of it. “When you questioned me in the hospital. There are things I didn’t want to say.”
His eyes gleam, and he presses Record. They’re all watching me, waiting. But instead I focus on Nolan, sitting at the other end of the table. Just one person. One person, who will listen. One person, who will believe me.
I will have to tell them about Elliot, standing and pointing the gun at me. And about hiding in the shed, the call I made for help, which no one received. I will have to tell them I never looked at the shadow house.
I pretend it’s just me and Joe, in the car on the side of the road; or me and Nolan, sending messages to each other, back and forth—a connection before we’d even met. And then I start talking. It comes out in a rush, like I’ve been holding it in forever and it’s been trying to escape all this time.
I repeat the things Hunter told me about Will and my mom, what Elliot believed. I tell them about Hunter Long, how he could be a witness, maybe, if they can find him, and convince him. Though I worry he’s unlikely to agree—he said he didn’t want to be involved. And then I tell them what I think must have happened.
They all look at one another, and I know what they’re remembering. The police traced Elliot back to the woods, that night, but couldn’t find him. Like he was hiding, ashamed of something he had done. But I try to look beyond that. “Elliot can’t handle the sight of blood,” I say. “When he was younger, he used to pass out, just looking at a cut. That much blood…it could’ve sent him into shock.”
He must’ve stayed in one spot for hours, just standing there. I imagine him in the circle, where Liam disappeared. The police searched that area over and over, and they didn’t find him. Sometimes I wonder if the earth swallowed him up. That crack in the universe. If he slipped right through, for a moment, to be safe. If he escaped for a little bit, too.
When daylight came, he walked back home; up the road, to the driveway, through the front door. Blood-soaked, shaking, fingertips near frostbitten. He came back, and nothing would ever be the same.
When I finish my story, the woman is watching me closely, and the man in the glasses stares at Joe, like he expects him to talk some sense into me. Or like he expects Joe to ask me to leave the room, like last time, so he can explain. But he doesn’t. He sits there, staring back, and then the man asks if he can speak with Joe alone.
Joe shakes his head. “That’s what Kennedy knows, and we wanted you to know it, too. I think it’s fair to assume that if you call her up to the stand, that’s the same truth she will tell you then. We will be sharing this with Elliot’s lawyer as well.”
Joe hands them the file that Nolan gave him, with all the information on Hunter Long. I have no idea if they’ll follow up—maybe not if it’s messing up their case. I have to hope that their goal is not just a tally in the win column, but uncovering the truth. And I do. I believe it.
I think there’s something tying us all together here. Everyone in this room. The type of people who search for answers, who want to know, who want the proof. I think it’s maybe true of all of us, outside this room, too, stretching across the globe, on and on and on.
The man in the glasses looks through the file before frowning. “Kennedy, you’ve told us Elliot had the gun. He pulled the trigger—”
“I know he did. But I don’t think he started it. I think he was protecting himself.”
He sighs.
“Were my mother’s prints on the gun, too?”
He frowns. “They would be there, from any time she touched it. Even if it was a different day.”
My eyes widen. “So the answer is yes,” I say. I see her, then, racing for the linen closet, opening the compartment, for the safe where she kept the gun. I see her punch in the code, taking it out. I hear them arguing. I see her backing down the hall as Will steps closer, even as she holds the gun. And then Will telling her to stop, reaching for her, taking it from her as she backs into the stairs…
I can see that the people across the table are thinking it through, too. That there’s something here, that we’re reaching for, just beyond the places we can see.
“The evidence supports Elliot as the shooter,” he says, but more softly.
“His prints were on the safe?”
Three heads shoot up, and they look at one another. “What safe?” the woman says.
I don’t understand and look to Joe. “The safe where the gun was kept.”
But the man in the glasses is already shaking his head, just as the others are shuffling papers around. “When we asked you at the hospital, you said the gun was kept in the linen closet. Elliot said the same thing.”
“Right. It was hidden in the linen closet. Inside the safe.”
“There was no safe,” he says.
My heart beats faster, until I can hear it, echoing inside my head. “Inside the wall panel. It’s disguised to look like an electrical box. The safe is inside the wall panel.” It was just another quirk of the house that she loved, a hidden compartment the previous owners must’ve installed. One more secret she uncovered after we’d already moved in.
Silence. And then: “Will you go through that night, one more time, Kennedy? Every second of it, to the best of your recollection.”
“Yes,” I say.