All the Missing Girls(51)

Nothing about the list of things that needed to be voiced: our dad’s growing distance, the fact that Daniel was dropping out of school, about what would happen to us after Mom died. No, we argued about how close we parked to other cars, about scraped metal and whether I was running late or he was early.

This was how we got through. This was the story of me and Daniel.

“I already called out of work for the day,” he said. “I’ll lend you a hand. Make some progress.”

The meaning underneath: that I had not made any on my own.



* * *



I SAW IT FIRST. That things were not how I’d left them. I stood in the entrance, unmoving, as Daniel brushed by me. “He came in,” I said.

Daniel spun around. “What? Who?”

I slammed the door and leaned against it, my breath coming too fast. “That cop. He came in the f*cking house.” I pointed to the dining room table, scattered with chaos, but my chaos. I’d been sorting things into boxes not by item but by time period: things from my childhood, newer things that I’d never seen, and things I could tie to the memory of eighteen—to when Corinne disappeared. And the items I wasn’t sure, scattered across the top of the table.

But those items weren’t grouped how I’d left them. Things had been rifled through and moved. The home renovation book that I’d found in the kitchen drawer, dog-eared, and left on the table, now open to the marked page when I’d left it shut. Receipts with the dates worn off, reshuffled into the wrong piles.

“How can you tell? This place is a mess.”

“He was here, Daniel. Things have been moved. I swear it.”

His eyes met mine, and we stared at each other, into each other, until he said, “Check the house.”

I nodded and took the steps two at a time to my room. If the cop was looking for signs about Tyler, shouldn’t he have checked here? But the room was just as I’d left it. Even the top drawer that I hadn’t closed in my rush to speak to the cop. Dad’s room was mostly bare, and the closet was sparse—slippers on the floor, empty metal hangers, a few work clothes.

But Daniel’s room—the one with Dad’s old things—had been searched. Boxes moved and stacked, papers left out, without any attempt to hide it.

I heard Daniel’s footsteps coming up the stairs, down the hall, and then I could hear his heavy breathing over my shoulder. “What is it?” he asked.

“Here. Someone’s been through here,” I said.

Daniel looked at the mess. His old room. Our father’s mess. “Not someone looking into Tyler, then,” he said.

“No,” I said.

Daniel placed his hand against the doorjamb too gently. Since the fair, he never slammed his fists into walls, or kicked at the ground or his car. Lest somebody see him do it. See a pattern. But he was trying too hard, spilling outside his skin, holding himself too still. He spun silently and went back downstairs.

I followed, watching him check the windows, pushing until he was sure the lock was in place.

“Did you lock up?” He turned on me. “Because there’s no sign of forced entry, Nic.”

“I did,” I said slowly. “But the back door lock is broken.”

His eyes widened, and he mumbled under his breath, striding through the kitchen, checking for himself. He pulled on the handle and it gave, just like I’d said it would.

“I told you,” I said, hands on my hips.

His hand was on the knob, twisting, twisting, in case there might be a different outcome. “It was broken before? Before you got here?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Am I sure? Yes, I’m sure, Daniel. God!”

His face had turned so red with the anger he was holding in that it started to go the other way, blotchy spots of white breaking up the rage. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you get it fixed? What the hell are you even doing here?”

“What difference would it make? Come on, Daniel, is a stronger lock going to stop someone determined to get in?” Be rational. Be calm. Everett’s words, but they were useless in my family. This was how we worked.

“No, Nic, but it would be proof. A broken window, fingerprints on the glass . . .”

“Oh, give me a break. Nobody’s going to waste resources on a home breakin for a house we’re not living in where nothing went missing. They’ll blame it on kids. Nobody. Cares.”

“Oh, somebody cares,” he said.

I swallowed. Took a deep breath. Tried to focus, searching for a reasonable explanation. “Maybe it was Tyler,” I said. “He still has a key from years ago—”

Daniel made a deep sound in his throat, though I didn’t know if it was for me or for Tyler.

“Maybe he was going to fix the air-conditioning. And maybe—”

Daniel threw his hands up, took a step closer. “What? He got distracted by piles of junk and wasted his day going through Dad’s things in my old room?”

“Asshole,” I mumbled. I flipped the switch in the foyer to check the air-conditioning, because God if I didn’t want it to be true. The other possibilities nauseated me. Made me feel like someone had poked that box in the police station too hard, and it had sprung a leak, and the names were circling, caught up in a whirlwind, vicious and desperate.