All the Missing Girls(98)

He’d seen someone die.

And what had I done? he wanted to know. So many things. I’d killed Corinne—it was the only explanation remaining, no matter whose fault it had been. Abandoned her on the side of the road. Lied to the police then and now. Lived with her underneath my house. Run away from Tyler and home because of it. Left them all to pick up the pieces.

But I didn’t owe Everett that truth.

Pay your debts, she insisted. Pay them all.

I thought of my apartment with the painted furniture and the desk with my nameplate, waking up and feeling for Everett beside me in his darkened room.

“I slept with Tyler,” I said.

Everything about Everett hardened, and I realized this was a blindside. Not something he’d anticipated. I waited for seconds, moments, as it sank in.

“Tell me again,” he said.

I backed up, felt the cold, impersonal wall. “I slept with Tyler,” I said again, my heart pounding, my skin tingling.

Tyler was outside, and it was just us now. I waited to see what Everett might do. If he was going to rush out front and hit Tyler. Grab my shoulders and shake me. Call me words that would burn in my memory. But he closed his eyes and lowered his head as he backed away. Everett wasn’t like that. He wouldn’t kill, or move a body, or lie to take the heat or blame. He was a better person than the rest of us.

“I’m going to be sick,” he said.

Let us both believe it was because I’d been unfaithful.



* * *



HE CALLED A CAB—HAD to ask for my phone because he didn’t have a signal—and even speaking those words seemed to kill him. He didn’t look at me during the wait, didn’t speak to me as I sat across the table from him, drumming my fingers.

We heard the car pull up. He grabbed his luggage, headed for the entrance, didn’t look at Tyler as he walked through the door. Not a violent bone in his body.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I stood at the top of the porch beside the screen door.

No, I was wrong. As he was leaving, he took my upper arm in his hand and whispered in my ear, something about how he had really loved me, and something more, like How could you or I hope you’re happy—some empty platitude—but I couldn’t hear him clearly because I was focused on his fingers, digging and digging into my skin, grinding into the tendons, pinching a nerve, my knees giving slightly as my mouth opened in silent pain.

He left, and the bruise was already forming.



* * *



I SAT BESIDE TYLER on the steps, watching him go.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Come on,” I said. “Come inside.”

They’d be back. That’s what Everett had said. They’d be back with a search warrant, and they were watching us now. As soon as the door shut behind us, I leaned in to Tyler, felt his arms slowly come up around me. “There’s a key in the vent. I need to get rid of it,” I said.

Tyler and I decided we’d flush the key, using a plunger to make sure it wouldn’t float back up. But first I studied the intricate pattern of the A of the key chain, and I told him I’d found it at Daniel’s—told him everything I believed about Daniel and Laura. I whispered all of it under the sound of running water as he scrubbed the mud from his boots.

I noticed now that there was a thin line bisecting the key chain, and I instinctively pulled the two halves in opposite directions. A lid slid off, revealing a flash drive.

My ring for the flash drive. In the end, it turned out I’d paid that debt, too.

I wondered when Annaleise had felt that unbreakable thread growing between her and Corinne. If it was after she saw the pictures. If it was before. If it started all the way back that night at the fair.

I imagined Corinne looking away after Daniel pushed her back, and Annaleise standing there watching, their eyes locking for a moment too long. I imagined Annaleise seeing Corinne cry, all alone, maybe, something I’d never witnessed. Or maybe Corinne looked deep into Annaleise and saw something dark and appealing inside. Something that bound them together.

Or maybe it was brief and one-sided, like most moments we assign weight to. Maybe Corinne didn’t even notice her standing there, but Annaleise saw something she needed. A likeness or a comfort. That even Corinne might fall. Even the strong are lonely. Even the adored are sad. I hoped she loved her in that moment—when no one else did.

Or maybe it wasn’t until later. When she saw the photos shifting back into focus.

I know what it’s like to leave, to come back, to not fit. To feel that distance between you and everything you’ve ever known. But Annaleise couldn’t find a place out there. Couldn’t let go enough. A lonely kid, a lonelier woman. She came back to what she knew.

You want to believe you’re not the saddest person in the world.

Annaleise found her there, in the pictures. The sad, lonely girl. She found her in the old, dark photograph, covered in a blanket. But still she wanted more. To find her in Jackson and Daniel, Bailey and Tyler. To pull her from my father’s guilt. One more thread when I showed up. To take her from me.

I pictured Annaleise staring deeply at the image of Corinne’s limp body with fear, with longing. Am I you? she asks. Is this what we become? How we fade away and disappear?

The woods have eyes and monsters and stories.

We are them as much as they are us.