All the Missing Girls(26)
He’d given it to me before I left, out of some misguided sense of responsibility. He’d given it to me and let the garage sit, unfinished. For school, he said, and he told me to go. A good sister wouldn’t have taken the money. But he still had that broken nose, and it was hard not to remember. Hard to say no to his black eyes. He said he wanted me to take it. To have it.
Mostly, though, he wanted me to go.
* * *
I PULLED OPEN DANIEL’S drawer, pushed the stack of notepads to the side so he’d see the envelope in the bare spot beside them. But the light from the hall caught on something in the back corner. A flash of silver. The gleam of a key. I looked over my shoulder, then reached deep inside. It looked like a house key, and it was attached by a simple ring to an engraved silver key chain, the loops and swirls coming together in an artistic rendition of the letter A.
Please, no.
I heard laughter from outside. The screen door creaking open.
I took the key. Left the money on top of the desk and slid the key into my pocket.
“Everett?” I called. “I’m sorry, I’m not feeling well.”
They slowly made their way back inside, discussing when we might next be in town. Daniel took a business card from Everett, promising to call if he ever needed anything, anything at all. Everett put a hand on my arm as we walked in the twilight to my car. “That was fun.”
“Liar,” I said.
I cast a quick glance back at Daniel, who watched us from the front window.
The A could stand for anything, I told myself.
The key could be for anywhere.
It didn’t have to mean anything. It didn’t have to be my brother.
* * *
“SO WERE YOU EVER going to tell me about this Tyler guy?”
If the drive were a straight line on a map, it should take only five minutes. But the roads weaved unnecessarily, cutting around forest and mountain, and it would probably take us closer to twenty.
“You’re not about to grill me on ex-boyfriends, are you?” I checked to see if he was kidding. “Oh, you are.”
“Stop trying to be cute,” he said.
“There’s nothing to tell, Everett.”
“That’s not what Laura thought.”
“This is how it is here. Gossip from ten years ago is still relevant. Because nobody ever leaves.”
“But you did.”
“I did.”
He frowned, unconvinced.
“We were just kids, Everett.”
He stretched and leaned his head against the window, and the side of his mouth quirked up. “Did you go to prom with him?”
“Stop,” I said, but he was teasing, and I was laughing. “No prom.”
“Lose your virginity to him at sixteen in the back of his pickup?”
“You’re such a jerk.”
“Because I’m right?” Huge smile.
“No,” I said. Seventeen. In his room. On his bed that was just a mattress and box spring, with the extra blanket he pulled from the couch because he knew I liked it warmer. It was my birthday, and his hands shook on the buttons of my dress, and I put my hands over his to still them, to help him.
The car was too cramped, too hot, and I rolled our windows down, the air running through my hair like a memory I couldn’t grasp.
“A lifetime ago, Everett.”
* * *
I PARKED THE CAR in my driveway, letting the headlights illuminate the empty porch. “Okay, so could this Tyler guy have done something to Annaleise? What do you think?” Everett asked.
God, were we really still talking about this? I turned off the car, the night dark and alive. “Nobody knows if anything even happened to her. Her brother saw her go into the woods. Nobody knows if she came back. Maybe she did. Maybe she left on her own.”
“But could he have?”
Could he have done it? That was quite the question.
He seized on my pause. “I don’t want you staying here by yourself anymore.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Your ex was the last call on record to a girl who disappeared from the woods in your backyard. And he’s been working on your house.”
“Tyler wouldn’t hurt me,” I said as we walked inside.
“People change over the course of ten years, Nicolette.”
“I know that,” I said. Except not really. Not really. People were like Russian nesting dolls—versions stacked inside the latest edition. But they all still lived inside, unchanged, just out of sight. Tyler was Tyler. A man who would never hurt me, I had no doubt. But a man who also once loved it when his girlfriend hung off the edge of a Ferris wheel, a man who pushed Corinne in full view of a party and never made excuses for it.
I checked the kitchen chair, wedged under the back door. Was it off just a bit? To the side? Was this exactly how I’d left it?
“You okay?” Everett called.
I felt electricity everywhere. In the air, in the walls. “Just thinking,” I said.
“Come to bed.”
“Not tired,” I said. I watched our reflection in the window. Everett coming closer. His hand brushing my hair over my shoulder. His mouth pressed to the skin of my neck. “Come to bed with me,” he said again.