All the Missing Girls(12)
“The doctor said there’s nothing wrong with me.”
Everett had insisted on coming into the exam room with me. First the doctor asked about my family history, which was depressing but unrelated. Then came the When did it start question, and Everett answering about Annaleise—my neighbor—who went missing, and the doctor nodding like he understood. Stress. Fear. Either. Both. He scribbled a prescription for some anti-anxiety medicine and a sleeping aid and issued a warning about my mind getting duller, slower, if I didn’t start getting some more sleep. And the elevated risk for daytime blackouts the longer this went on, which was how Everett ended up with my keys.
You try sleeping, I wanted to tell the doctor. You try sleeping when there’s another missing girl and the police are trying to question your father, whether he’s in his right mind or not. You try sleeping when you know someone has been in your house. As if everything would settle down if I could just relax.
Everett was still holding me like I might float off into the atmosphere otherwise. “Come home with me,” he said. But where was home, really?
“I can’t. My dad—”
“I’ll take care of it.”
I knew he would. It was why he was here. “The house,” I said, gesturing to the broken-down boxes in the corners, the back door that needed fixing, all the items on my list that I hadn’t tackled.
He shook his head. “I’ll pay to have someone help finish up. Come on, you don’t need to be here.”
But I shook my head again. It wasn’t the organizing, or the fixing, or the cleaning. Not anymore. “I can’t just leave. Not in the middle of this.” This being the wide eyes of the girl in the poster, watching us all, on every telephone pole, in every store window. This being the investigation, just beginning. This being the darkest parts of my family about to be broken open yet again.
Everett sighed. “You called me for advice, and here it is: It’s not safe for you here. This place, the cops are circling it like goddamn vultures, grasping anything they can. They’re interviewing people without cause. It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s happening.”
Everett didn’t get why, but I did: Annaleise had sent a text to Officer Stewart’s personal cell the night before she disappeared, asking if he could answer some questions about the Corinne Prescott case. His return call the next day went straight to voicemail. By then she was already gone.
The cops were all from around here, had been here ten years ago when Corinne disappeared. Or they’d heard the stories through the years, over drinks at the bar. Now there were two girls, barely adults, disappearing without a trace from the same town. And the last-known words from Annaleise were about Corinne Prescott.
It made perfect sense if you came from a place like Cooley Ridge.
If the entirety of Corinne’s official investigation existed inside that single box I pictured at the police station, I’d imagine this was all the evidence you would see: one pregnancy test, stuffed into a box of candy and hidden at the bottom of the trash can; one ring with remnants of blood pulled from the caverns; cassette tapes with hours of interview reports to sort through—facts and lies and half-truths, wound up in a spool; Corinne’s phone records; and names. Names scrawled on ripped-up pieces of paper, enough pieces to pad the entire box, like stuffing.
Until recently, I imagined that this box was taped up and hidden in a corner, behind other, newer boxes. But now there’s the feeling that all it would take is a simple nudge for it to topple over, and the lid to fall free, and the names to scatter across the dusty floor. The box is exactly like it is in Cooley Ridge. The past, boxed up and stacked out of sight. But never too far away.
Open the top because Annaleise mentioned Corinne’s name and disappeared. Close your eyes and reach your hand inside. Pull out a name.
That’s how it works here.
That’s what’s happening.
Yes, I had called Everett for advice. For my dad. He could’ve told me what to do about the cops who were ambushing my senile father at his nursing home, but he hopped a plane three days ago and paid a ridiculous amount of cab fare and set up his own base of operations in the dining room. He showed up at this house and stood on the front porch because he said I’d scared him, and I loved him for it. I loved that he came. But I couldn’t dig through our history with him here. Couldn’t figure out what the hell had happened to Annaleise without dragging him into it.
My advice to him: Leave. Leave before we pull you down with us.
“It’s my family,” I said.
“I don’t want you staying here,” he whispered, pointing to the backyard that stretched as far as we could see, disappearing into the trees. “A girl went missing from right there.”
“I’ll take that prescription, and I’ll try to sleep more, I promise. But I have to stay.”
He kissed my forehead and mumbled into my hair, “I don’t know why you’re doing this.”
Wasn’t it obvious? She was everywhere I looked. On every telephone pole. In every store window. The same places I’d hung posters of Corinne, stapling them with a knot in my stomach, handing them out faster and faster, as if my speed could somehow change the outcome.
Annaleise on those posters now, with her huge, open eyes, telling me to open mine. Everywhere I looked, there she was. Look. Look. Keep your eyes open.