All the Missing Girls(57)

I nodded. I didn’t know it then. But I did now.

“God, I should’ve said yes. I think about that all the time. I was just some stupid kid. I should’ve said yes, and she’d be here still.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I trust you.” He stayed where he was, but his smile made him seem closer. “Because I’d never tell anyone how one night last week, Tyler comes back from a date, sits at the bar, and then your brother comes in and buys him a round and asks him to please leave you alone in no uncertain terms. And then Tyler’s phone rings, and he gets this big-ass smile and says to Dan, ‘You really should be having this talk with her.’ And he picks up the phone right there, right here, right in front of Dan, like he’s gloating. ‘Hey, Nic,’ he says, and then his face falls, and he tells you to calm down, and he leaves his drink on the bar and gets the hell out of here, and your brother follows a few minutes later. They both tear out of the parking lot on their way to you, and then Annaleise goes missing.”

My hands shook under the bar. My entire body on edge. “It’s not—”

“I’m sure it’s not,” he said. “But you know how shit gets around here. You hear a story like that, or like Corinne begging me to take her back when she’s pregnant with someone else’s kid—you say something like that, and it’s over.”

We were silent, pretending to go about our normal activities, like he hadn’t both threatened and confided in me. And then I started to laugh. “I hate this place.”

“You miss it,” he said.

“I miss it like an ex-con misses the other inmates.” Like the ice after the fist. They come in pairs.

“Think you’ll ever move back?”

“Never,” I said. At Jackson’s look, I added, “I’m getting married. To a guy in Philadelphia.”

“Does Tyler know this?”

“Yes.”

“But he’s the one you called after midnight . . . No, you’re right, none of my business.”

I caught a stanza of Poe heading up his forearm, a line from Kerouac slashed across his wrist. As though he had mined my father’s old books, borrowed words, and hidden beneath them. “I gotta go. Thanks for breakfast.”

“It was good to see you, Nic.”

I stopped at the door, turned to see Jackson still watching me. “She’s dead, Jackson,” I said.

“I know,” he said.



* * *



I DROVE BY TYLER’S parents’ place on the way back; his truck wasn’t there, either. For all the time we spent together, I didn’t know them well. Tyler wasn’t the type to bring a girlfriend home for dinner. We stayed indoors only in bad weather. We always had his truck, and there were the woods. On first glance, it may seem like there’s nothing to do here, but honestly, the world is yours. And the woods were ours. The clearing where we’d set up a tent. The caverns if we were with friends. And the river. We spent a lot of time down near the river, lying on our backs, fingers loosely linked.

The river cut between our homes, which now seemed more metaphorical than physical. I could get to Tyler’s from my own place if not for the river. Technically, it was possible to cross in the narrow section on one of the trees someone had dragged across. But it was out of the way and tricky in the dark. One misstep and you were over. The water cooler than you expected, the rocks sharper, the night indifferent to your plight.

No, it was better to take his truck to the drugstore and go from there. Much shorter, too.

I passed that drugstore on the way back home, and then the elementary school, the police station, the church, and the graveyard. I felt myself getting light-headed at the stoplight, holding my breath until the light turned green.



* * *



I DIDN’T GO IN my house or the garage; I’d accidentally left the door ajar when I’d left with Jackson in a hurry. I trekked out to the hill behind my house, looking down into the valley, imagining all the possibilities that could’ve happened out there. The Carter property was to my side, beyond the dried-up creek bed—I could see a sliver of white from the remodeled garage in the distance; the river farther in the distance, now hidden. In the winter, when the leaves fell, and depending on the angle, you could catch a glimpse. Now all you could hear was the low, steady rumble. We could hear it more after a few days of rain.

I used to find Daniel up here sometimes, though I’d thought this spot was mine alone. My haunts, my places, probably belonged to every child who ever lived here. Annaleise must’ve sat here, too, surveying her world. She must’ve stumbled upon the clearing with the fort that I thought belonged to us. She must’ve known all the paths through the woods, all the places to hide, just as I did.

I followed the one I knew best—the one that cut a straight path to the clearing. I used to think the downtrodden underbrush, the exposed dirt, was from the wear of my steps and Daniel’s over time, but it probably was begun years earlier and would continue years after.

There was the tree with the hole in the trunk. I stuck my hand in, pulled out a few acorns and a collection of stones we’d stored there years earlier. There was the spot in the corner, the flattest surface where Tyler and I would pitch his tent. There was the joint between two trunks where Daniel and I collected long branches in case we needed to ward off outsiders.