A Flicker in the Dark(72)

I remember the vague familiarity of seeing Aubrey’s MISSING picture. That nagging feeling that I knew her, somehow. And now I know why. She was there the day we visited the Stables. She was there when we had toured the grounds, when we had booked the venue for our wedding. I had seen her. Daniel had seen her.

And now, she’s dead.

My eyes move from Aubrey’s face to the face of her parents. The parents I had seen on the news almost two weeks ago. Her father had been crying into his hands. Her mother had been pleading into the camera: We want our baby back. Next, I look at her grandmother. That same sweet woman struggling with that iPad, trying to calm my fabricated fears with promises of air-conditioners and bug spray. I imagine the fact that Aubrey Gravino came from a locally famous family was mentioned in the news at some point, but I hadn’t known that. After the discovery of her body, I had been deliberately avoiding the news. I had been driving around town with the radio turned off. And once her headshot was replaced by Lacey’s, that detail no longer mattered. The media had moved on. The world had moved on. Aubrey was just another vaguely familiar face lost in a sea of other faces. Of other missing girls just like her.

“Doctor Davis?”

I hear a knock and look up from my laptop, at Melissa peering at me from behind the cracked door. She’s in running shorts and a tank top, her hair pulled back into a bun, and a gym bag flung over one shoulder. It’s six thirty a.m., the sky outside my office just barely starting to morph from black to blue. There’s something inherently lonely about a morning spent awake when nobody else seems to be—being the one to turn on the coffee, the only car on an abandoned highway, arriving to an empty office building and flipping on the lights. I had been so engrossed in Aubrey’s image, so deafened by the absolute silence surrounding me, I hadn’t even heard her come in.

“Good morning.” I smile, waving her inside. “You’re here early.”

“I could say the same for you.” She steps inside and closes the door behind her before wiping a bead of sweat trickling down her forehead. “Do you have an early appointment today?”

I sense a panic in her expression, a fear that she had overlooked something on my calendar and now, here she was, showing up to work in gym clothes. I shake my head.

“No, I’m just trying to catch up on some work. Last week was … well, you know how it was. I was distracted.”

“Yeah, we both were.”

The truth is, I couldn’t stand to be in the same house as Daniel for a minute longer than necessary. Sitting in that kayak, the water bobbing us gently as I stared at Cypress Stables in the distance, I had finally allowed myself to be scared. Not just suspicious … scared. Scared of the man who was sitting right behind me, my neck within grabbing distance of his hands. Scared of sharing a roof with a monster—a monster that hid in plain sight, like that alligator gliding across the surface of the water. Like my father twenty years ago. Not only did I have the necklace nagging at my conscience, Cooper’s distrust, and my mother’s warning, but now I had this. I had another dead girl linked to me—linked to Daniel. And just like I had been keeping secrets from Daniel, in that moment, I was positive that he had been keeping them from me, too. Cooper was right—we don’t know each other. We’re engaged to be married. We’re living under the same roof, sleeping together in the same bed. But we’re strangers, this man and I. I don’t know him. I don’t know what he’s capable of.

“I’m getting a bit of a headache,” I had said to him then, not exactly lying. A wave of nausea was rolling through my stomach as I stared at that house in the distance, at those empty rocking chairs being pushed by phantom legs. I wondered if Aubrey had been wearing the necklace at that very moment, the necklace that was now tucked away somewhere in my home. “Can we turn back?”

Daniel was quiet behind me; I wondered what he was thinking. Why did he take me there? Was he gauging my reaction? Was this part of the fun for him—dangling the truth in front of me, just barely out of reach? Was he warning me? Does he know I know? I thought back to my conversation with Aaron, about Cypress Cemetery holding some kind of special meaning. I should have put it together sooner. I first saw Aubrey at Cypress Stables, and her body was found in Cypress Cemetery. I didn’t think anything of it before—that name is so common—but now, like Lacey’s body showing up behind my office, it seems too coincidental. Too perfect to have been left to chance. Did Daniel want me to recognize Aubrey when her body was found? Or was he genuinely confident enough to show me another piece of the puzzle and expect me not to see the bigger picture that was starting to form?

“Daniel?”

“Sure.” His voice was offended, quiet. “Sure, yeah, we can turn back. Everything okay, Chlo?”

I nodded my head, forced myself to peel my eyes from the farmhouse and focus on something else. Anything else. We paddled back to the landing and rode home in silence, Daniel with his eyes on the road and his lips pursed shut, and me resting my head against the window, massaging my temple with my fingers. When we pulled into the driveway, I muttered something about a nap before retreating to our bedroom, locking the door, and crawling into bed.

“Hey, Mel,” I ask now, looking up at my assistant. “Can I ask you a question? It’s about the engagement party.”

“Sure.” She smiles, taking a seat opposite my desk.