There isn’t enough room at the service. Every seat is taken, and there are people standing around the walls, in a sea of gray and black. So that after, even though people are trying to speak quietly, I still can’t escape the constant buzzing, and I can’t pick any one face from the masses of people here to pay their respects, even two years later.
All these people who missed him. Who miss him.
A shadow has fallen over the house during the last three days, since we found Liam. Since the end.
People have been in and out—police officers, detectives, Agent Lowell—trying to make a case against Mike, all while the news vans have lined the street outside. A new type of chaos. I’ve been asked, over and over, to explain, with my parents sitting beside me. To remember exactly what Mike said to me, what we might be able to use for proof. But their words seem to come through glass, like they’re on the other side of some great divide.
Instead, my mind keeps drifting to that day, over and over. That morning at the sink, with the cut, the drop of blood, the razor clattering.
Why didn’t he tell me? I was right here. If something was on his mind, why didn’t he just say it?
It was Agent Lowell who finally explained, his words cutting through the haze.
“Nolan, I need you to understand, it’s all circumstantial,” he told me yesterday, after my parents left to handle some last-minute arrangements. “We’re holding Mike on an attempted murder charge against you, given your witness statement, alongside Kennedy’s. But is there anything else you can tell us? Something else he said to you about Liam?”
They have no proof. That’s what he was trying to tell me. That all we really have is a statement from me and Kennedy. Everything else is a connection we can see but not prove. The only one who knows for certain what happened that day is Mike.
Mike said Liam didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut, but that’s not true. Whatever was bothering Liam—his hand trembling over the sink—he kept it to himself. He came to the picnic. He must’ve run into Mike there.
We only have what we believe happened after: that Mike took Liam and Colby from the park, brought them to Old Granite Quarry, and pushed Liam over the edge. Then, noticing the video camera, he took the feed from it. And he kept it, for years, until he got word that a developer had bought the land. And then, to save himself, he sent that still-frame photo of Liam to his old girlfriend, Abby, in the hopes of nudging the investigation open again.
If he was trying to pin Liam’s death on me, the photo would have to be sent to someone else. He knew Abby from two years earlier—she had been a big part of the search the first time around.
Mike had worked with my parents in order to keep an eye on any information about Liam that came through. He always knew exactly what was happening in the case.
But they can’t try a case against him on belief alone. They need something solid. Something real.
“Something happened at the shelter,” I told Agent Lowell, but I was sure I’d already said it. We’d been at this for two days, in one form or another, but it all blurred together.
“I know,” he said. “And we’re interviewing everyone we can, taking statements. But there’s been a lot of turnover, and people aren’t always willing to talk.”
Or able to.
I closed my eyes and pictured Kennedy, peering into the bedroom window that night. Or Elliot, jarred from his desk, walking out into the hallway. The way some details stick and others fade; how time slips.
My phone buzzed beside me on the couch. Kennedy, I was sure. Each morning for the last three days, there’s been a message waiting for me. Throughout the day, too. I never know what to reply, how to balance both things: the grief overwhelming everything, alongside the rest. Even though I never respond, the notes keep coming. Little things, just to let me know she’s there. And that one, the one I read with Agent Lowell sitting across from me, said she would be here today. At the service.
Every time I think I catch a glimpse of her, the crowd shifts and I lose sight. Every few steps someone else stops me to see how I am, to offer their support, or a memory. It’s the memories, each time, that pull me back. Like they’re giving me something. Something new. Two years later, and a piece of Liam still catches me off guard.
I’m in the middle of a circle of his friends, home from college, when someone steps aside, making space for Abby. Her eyes lock with mine, then drift to the side.
My throat tightens. I remember the last words she spoke to me as well. You are so cruel. I wanted her to be lying. I wanted her to be wrong.
“Abby,” I say, stepping closer, even though it’s crowded. With the number of people around us, talking, it’s almost the same as being alone.
She waves a hand in front of her face. “It’s okay,” she says, like she can tell exactly what I’m trying to say.
I shake my head. “It’s not.”
She looks over her shoulder, to the pictures of Liam up at the front of the room. “No, you’re right,” she says. I can see her throat moving. “I just missed him so much,” she whispers, and it’s like she’s talking about something else. That day in the car, the one we’ve both tried desperately to forget.
“I know. Me too.”
A guy I’ve never seen before places a hand on her shoulder, and she looks up at him. “I’ll just be one moment,” she says, and then the pink rises up her neck.
I watch him go, but he doesn’t make it far. Just waits beside the wall, eyes scanning the crowd. Someone here not for me, or for Liam, but for her. “You have a boyfriend?” I ask. I can’t keep the surprise from my voice. But I don’t know what I expected—for life to just freeze for the rest of us?
She fidgets with her hair. “Yeah, yes. Five months now.”
I nod slowly, and she presses her lips together. “Oh. I mean, that’s good. He looks…” But I don’t know what to say. I don’t know anything about him, other than the fact that he’s not Liam. “I’m glad he came with you.”
“I’m sorry,” she adds, her eyes turning glassy. I want to tell her she doesn’t need to be sorry, that it’s a stupid thing to say to me. But then I think that maybe it’s not meant for me.
“He’d want you to be happy,” I say.
After Abby leaves, the crowd thins, and I’ve missed Kennedy. I drive home with my parents, feeling too cramped in the backseat, none of us sure what to say to one another.
The silence, when we walk through the front door, feels permanent. This is the way it will be from now on. Until tomorrow, at least, when the volunteers return, at my mother’s request. I didn’t understand. They all deserve to be found, she told me. I thought finding Liam would mark the end of something. A line that divided before and after. But I was wrong. Tomorrow, they’ll keep going.
But today, there’s just the silence. Just the three of us, in this quiet, empty house.
Mom drops her bag on the couch and steps out of her shoes. Dad takes off his suit jacket and stands facing that wall—all those eyes, looking back.
The phone rings, shattering the silence, and my mom jumps. For a while, they had the ringer turned off, letting the calls from reporters and friends alike fill up the voice mail.
It rings again, and my mom just stares at it, and it reminds me of when Liam first went missing, how they had been waiting for a call, any call, that would tell them their son would be coming home soon—and now that call will never come.
I answer the phone, just to get it to stop.
“Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?” The voice on the other end belongs to a woman who sounds about my mother’s age, maybe older.
“Yeah, I’m here,” I say. Last thing I want is for them to call right back if I hang up.
“I’ve been trying to get through for days. I saw on the news…” Her voice wavers with emotion.
I close my eyes, willing this call to go faster, to get this over with. A well-meaning stranger. Or worse.
“I live in Collins County,” she continues, which doesn’t mean much to me. “And my house, it backs up to Northridge Forest.” Still nothing. “I think I have something that belongs to you.”