At the Quiet Edge(62)

After all, she hadn’t exactly transitioned smoothly through adolescence herself. By fourteen she’d been babysitting for neighborhood moms and using her money to buy clove cigarettes or wine coolers from older teenagers on the weekends. And she’d turned out just fine, hadn’t she?

She had to cover her mouth to smother a horrified laugh at that.

Everett was okay. He was good. She knew that was true because it had to be. And if Jones was somehow still nearby . . . The only danger to her was that he might tell Everett the truth, which meant she needed to gather up the guts to tell him herself.

Such a simple, impossible thing. Tomorrow, she thought. Or the next day. Just not tonight.





CHAPTER 21


Everett waited. He waited probably an hour until he heard his mom get ready for bed.

He listened to the sound of water as his mom washed her face in the bathroom. Her footsteps then went to the kitchen, and he heard the clink of dishes as she moved around. It seemed like forever until the lights clicked off in the rest of the apartment and her bedroom door closed.

He kept waiting after that, hoping the house would stay dark and quiet until he could be sure she was asleep. When he finally ran out of patience, he got up, tiptoed to his door, and closed it as softly as he could.

He got a flashlight from his bedside table, turned it on, then slid his hand beneath his mattress to feel around. He touched paper, then the point of something plastic, and finally he felt it: soft leather.

He tugged the notebook from its hiding place and climbed into bed.

The first pages were blank. It wasn’t until near the middle of the thin journal that any writing appeared, and that was all nonsense words. When he was little, he’d thought it was a special code for him, a message left from his father that he needed to figure out.

He didn’t remember much from that night. He’d been six or maybe five, and he’d watched his dad walk past his open door in the moonlight. When he hadn’t come right back, Everett had climbed out of his treasured race car bed, tucked his Winnie the Pooh under his arm, and made his way downstairs. There’d been one small light on in the kitchen, but his dad wasn’t there.

Then he’d seen a flash of brightness through a window. He must have crawled past the curtains, because he knew he’d stood there watching, the fabric wrapped around him like a butterfly’s cocoon. His dad had been digging in the backyard, illuminated by the super-cool forehead light he used when he was fixing things in the house.

The only other thing Everett remembered was his dad pulling something from his jacket pocket and dropping it in the hole. Then he’d looked up. Everett must have moved in some way, because his dad looked right at the window, and Everett had quickly dropped down to crawl beneath the curtains and run back to his bed.

Why? He wasn’t sure. It must have been the angry frown on his dad’s face. He’d waited to get in trouble, but it hadn’t happened. It had faded like a dream.

Now he realized his dad must have suspected it was Mom who’d been watching. And Mom who’d dug up the prize he’d buried.

But after his dad had disappeared, Everett had assumed it must be a secret treasure just for him, because he was the one who’d watched his dad bury it in the dark.

He knew from the way his mom talked about those days that he’d been inconsolable when they were forced to move. The bank had given them forty-eight hours to move out. But Everett didn’t remember that part. All he remembered was sneaking into the yard while his mom was crying on the phone. He went to the side of the shed where he’d seen his father, and Everett had dug up the secret his dad had left for him.

But it hadn’t been treasure. Or at least it hadn’t been meant for Everett.

Now as he looked over the long strings of handwritten numbers and letters, he recognized them as access codes or passwords. Something his dad needed to help himself. Something to do with money.

How long could Everett pretend to his father that he was looking for this book that was already in his hands? Days certainly, and probably weeks.

But should he even want to keep his dad close? Everett had been thinking about him so much that he’d forgotten all about Alex Bennick, and now look what had happened. His mom was hanging out with the man’s relative.

He shoved the notebook back under his mattress and fired up the tablet to open Discord.

There was no secret message waiting. After all, Dad didn’t want to have a conversation; he just wanted the book. He hadn’t even listened when Everett had started his story about the murders.

But Josephine had. She’d responded with all the exclamation points that Everett had deleted and included a whole line of OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG! He felt a little vindicated at the sight of it. It was creepy as hell that his mom had gone on a date with someone else named Alex Bennick. But Josephine had pointed out that if that Alex was forty or so, he would have been barely an adult in 1999, but if he hadn’t lived here, it didn’t matter.

She’d sent a message with another link too. This is so sad. People never even talk about these women anymore. The link took him to a Facebook post.

Crazy story: my aunt went missing twenty years ago, and I didn’t even know about it until LAST YEAR!!! Over Christmas break I heard my dad talking about his sister to another relative, and I thought he meant my aunt Lucy. He said no, he had an older sister named Mary who disappeared in 2001. Like, how had he never told me this???