All the Missing Girls(92)

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SHE HAD TO HAVE jumped out of the way. She had to have hidden. She had to have been killed in some other way—another car, another accident, throwing herself from the ledge to the rocks below. It cannot be that my dad heard us and knew it had been me. It cannot be that he found her after we left. Not that he took the body and moved it so I wouldn’t be found out, so my life wouldn’t be ruined.

Tyler promised I had done nothing wrong. And so it must be something else.

Otherwise, it’s too brutal in its simplicity.

Ten years later, and the past is still here. A picture shifting into focus. A memory gaining clarity. Something whispering to me in the dark: Look, Nic, do you see?

It was time to open my eyes.





The Day Before





DAY 1— Night

I was tired from the long drive and the visit with Dad, and dirty from an afternoon of housecleaning, but there was still so much to do. Be the responsible one, I thought. But I already was—I just wished Daniel could see that. I’d made promises, and trades, and decisions that Daniel could only begin to understand.

The sink faucet and the drain had turned brown with rust. I rummaged through Daniel’s box of supplies, poured the rust remover down the drain, listened to the crackle of the chemical reaction.

I slid the thick yellow gloves over my hands and took out the scrub brush, but the ring was twisted, the rock catching on the inside of the rubber any time I bent my fingers. I removed the glove, slid the ring off my finger, and placed it in the middle of the kitchen table, in my direct line of sight. Something to tie me to the outside, a reminder that I had moved on from Cooley Ridge.

I tackled the sink and the counters, vaguely satisfied with myself, meticulously scrubbing and buffing it all to a shine. The ringing phone was a welcome relief. My eyes had started to go blurry, and I wiped my arm against my forehead to brush the hair back, pulled one of the gloves off my hand. “Hello?”

“Hey. Sorry I’m calling back so late,” Everett said.

I sank into the kitchen chair, pulling off the other glove with my teeth. “No worries. I know you’re busy.”

“So, you made it.”

“I made it,” I said.

“How’s it going so far?” he asked.

“Pretty much as expected. Dad’s the same, Daniel’s the same. Dropped off the paperwork for the doctor. I’m tackling the house already.” I stood, doing a quick tidying up before heading upstairs.

“How long until you can list it?”

“Not sure. I don’t want to list it until everything’s fixed. First impressions are everything.” I saw that it was almost midnight and yawned.

“Get some sleep,” he said.

“I’m about to.” I turned off the downstairs light, backing out of the room. Turned to face the window, to see the trees and mountains illuminated in the moonlight as I stood in the dark. Goodbye, I thought.

And thought for a moment that I saw a flicker of light between the trees.

“I’m going to try to get my dad to sign the papers on his own. Doesn’t feel right, taking it out from under him,” I said.

“Well,” Everett said, his own yawn making me smile, “do what you need to do.”

“I always do,” I said.



* * *



TEN YEARS AGO, I’D stumbled through these woods, trying to get back home. Desperate for the safety of the walls—just make it home. As if that could prevent the inevitable. Dad’s car and Daniel’s car were gone, and I sprinted across the yard, holding my arm to my stomach, pain shooting through both. The porch light swinging, and the screen door creaking, and me gasping, alone in the house.

I was alone.

The rest of the night I can handle only in flashes. I’m not sure what that says, that I can stare back at Corinne for minutes on end but not at this. I have to come at it from the side, grazing pieces here and there. Not looking it directly in the eye. I’ve never told it before. This is the only way I know how.

I’m getting there.



* * *



STRIPPING OFF MY CLOTHES in the bathroom in a wild panic, trying to stop something I had no control over—furious that I could not—and the fury giving way to something quiet and hollow the moment I surrendered. When I remembered that the world would not bend to my will, that it never had, and it certainly wasn’t about to start now.

Turning the water on hot, leaving the clothes on the floor, folding up my knees and sitting in the tub, my head resting on my arms, my eyes squeezed shut, letting the water hit me everywhere.

Two days. It had been a hypothetical two days ago in Corinne’s bathroom, had just barely morphed into something real and hopeful in my mind, and now it was gone. Like it had never truly existed.



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DANIEL, KNOCKING ON THE door a while later. “Nic? Are you okay?” More knocking. “I can hear you.”

Holding my breath so I’d stop crying.

“Answer me or I’m coming in.”

The door handle turning, and a cold gust of air, and Daniel sucking in his breath as his shadow stood beside my clothes in a heap on the floor.

“Are you okay?”

Letting out the breath along with a sob. “No, I’m not okay.”