All the Missing Girls(42)

Jackson got away with the things he kept hidden: I didn’t see her; she never found me; I don’t know what the message was about.

But only because I never called him on it.

Back then people wanted to believe him. Jackson Porter, he loved Corinne, he would never.

There was something about him when we were teenagers. Something about his appearance that made people want to believe him. He didn’t look honest, exactly, but his features made him seem trustworthy.

People saw his brown eyes, which were large and framed by eyelashes too long for a guy and made him seem like he was always listening even when he wasn’t. And his hair, which was exactly the same color as his eyes, something that seemed perfectly logical, that made you want to trust him. But it was more than that—it was the symmetry of him. Made him seem incapable of deceit. When Corinne disappeared and the questions began, I was seized by the sudden thought that Jackson could—and always had been able to—get away with anything.

And I knew he was lying.

I didn’t want to be in a room with him. Or talk about him. And it was this that Hannah Pardot seized on. Not my words but the distance I tried to put between myself and Jackson. This unwillingness to comment on anything Jackson said. To neither confirm nor deny. I switched to I don’t know, which was all Corinne had left me with anyway.

It didn’t matter in the end. Bailey cracked at the first tap, after hearing about the pregnancy test in Corinne’s bathroom. Filled that box with each of our betrayals and all of her fears. Told Hannah Pardot what she wanted to hear: Nic? She thinks she’s too good for this place. But she’s nothing without us. Nothing. And No, we didn’t know Corinne was pregnant, but it must’ve been Jackson’s, and that must’ve been what her voicemail was about, and Jackson didn’t want it, obviously. Bailey followed the pieces Hannah laid out for her, feeding her back the story she demanded: that Corinne was impulsive and reckless—she’d burned down the Randall barn, even—and I was still pissed about her hitting on Tyler at the party. And Daniel was always too harsh on me—emphasis on harsh. Jackson wasn’t going to forgive her this time, Bailey said. He told me so.

It was him. It had to be him. He didn’t want her or the baby.

Bailey made it a story, and since she was one of Corinne’s best friends, that made it real—everyone else adding layers over the top: I heard her throwing up in the bathroom; she didn’t wear those cropped shirts anymore, because obviously she was hiding it; she was ashamed. Jackson dumped her. The poor girl. That poor, poor girl. Brought it on herself, though, you know.

I don’t know what came over me when I found out. Why I pushed Bailey, why I yelled, why I accused her of ruining Jackson. Why I cared.

Because she did ruin him. That was the story people ultimately believed, even if no one could ever prove it. And that was why he was working at this bar, all alone. And why he never had a girl who stuck around. Now those same eyes with the impossibly long lashes made him seem like he was listening too much, eavesdropping, plotting. His appearance was too coincidental. The symmetry of him was the mask. And he, the monster behind it.

This bar was the safest place to put him.

“Why don’t you leave, Jackson?”

He didn’t answer. His tattoos rippled as he wiped down the bar between us. But I thought I knew. You wait for people here. For people to come back. For things to make sense.

“Why do you keep coming back?” he asked.

“I’m helping out with my dad.”

“So you’re only coming back for him?” He smirked again, avoiding my gaze.

I dropped onto a barstool. “Since when did it become socially acceptable to drink at breakfast?” I asked.

Jackson pressed his lips together, looking at me for a beat too long. “It’s after lunch.”

I checked the clock behind the bar, staring at the second hand jerking to a stop with each movement. I must’ve been out for an hour or two at the kitchen table. Trading time in the day for the sleep I wasn’t getting at night.

“What do you want, Nic?”

I drummed my fingers on the counter like my dad might do, then stopped myself. Held them flat. Willed them not to shake from the caffeine. “Do you know where Tyler works?”

“Same place he’s always worked.”

“You know what I mean.”

Tyler didn’t have an office. He and his dad used to work out of their home, where Tyler was happy to live until what I considered way past an acceptable age; he said he’d rather save the money.

“But then you have to spend it on a motel whenever you want to take a girl back to your place,” I’d teased him, standing too close.

He’d grinned and said, “I just take them to theirs.” And he’d taken me back to my place to prove his point.

But now he lived here. In an apartment above a bar. And I wasn’t sure if he still worked out of his parents’ house or was on site today.

Jackson threw the rag on the counter and motioned for me to follow him out of the bar, out of earshot. We stood in the vestibule between the front door and the staircase, and he leaned in close. “Stay away from him right now. Trust me.”

“What are you talking about?” I felt the men in the bar leaning closer, trying to hear—felt all the rumors that could come from this moment: Jackson and Nic, whispering about the case. Jackson and Nic, standing too close.