Everything You Are(33)

“Last text I heard from her, she said she was with you. That was, like, a whole week ago! Allie doesn’t lie. So what have you done with her?”

Braden thinks back. Monday. The first full day here in the house. “She went to school last Monday. She’s gone to school on all the school days.”

“She didn’t stay there. She left with Ethan before classes started, and then she texted she was here. With you. Getting acquainted, she said.”

“Ethan? You think she’s with him now?” Braden sounds unusually threatening, even to himself. A mistake. Steph’s gaze goes back to the wine stain. Her hand reaches into her backpack and emerges with a can of pepper spray.

Braden raises both of his hands, palms up. “Whoa! Easy there. I swear I don’t know where she is. She comes home in the evening and goes straight to her room. She gets up in the morning and leaves. If you feel the need to search the house for body parts, you go right ahead. The freezer is in the basement.”

Her hand tightens on the pepper spray. “You think I’m stupid? I’m not going into the basement. I’ve got nine-one-one all lined up, too,” she says. “No sudden moves.”

“You’ve been watching too many cop shows.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. You stay right there.” She backs out of the kitchen and into the hallway, pepper spray at the ready.

Braden follows at a distance as Steph opens doors and looks into rooms. Pepper spray is not a life experience he feels the need to undergo.

“Allie?” Steph calls. “Are you here?”

“I was joking about the body parts,” Braden objects. “Do you really think I’m holding her captive?”

“If you didn’t already kill her. We don’t exactly know anything about you, do we? Gone all these years. You show up and Allie goes missing. What am I supposed to think?”

He follows her up the stairs. She yanks open the door to Trey’s room, then freezes. “Oh. Oh no.”

Even beneath the thick coat of makeup, he can see she’s gone white. She sways a little, her breath coming in shallow gasps. Braden pries her fingers off the doorknob.

“Come away,” he says, very gently, his annoyance melting into sympathy. He has got to do something about that room; the shock of it is overwhelming.

Tears well up and spill down Steph’s cheeks, making black tracks of mascara and eyeliner. One hand comes up over her mouth to suppress a choking sound. Pressure grows behind Braden’s own eyes.

He closes the door. “Come away,” he repeats. She doesn’t recoil from his hand on her shoulder, and he steers her back down the stairs to the living room and into a chair. Gets her a glass of water. She lets him put it in her hand, but doesn’t drink, just sits there with silent tears making those black rivers down her cheeks.

“It’s horrible.” Steph’s voice is softened and subdued. “I mean, I knew, but I didn’t know. You know?”

Braden presses the heels of his hands into his eyeballs until white lights explode into his skull. “I know. You really haven’t seen Allie, at all?”

“Once. On Monday. I already told you. She came to school in the morning, but then she left with Ethan and she hasn’t been back.”

So many questions.

“What do you know about Ethan?” He tries to keep his voice casual, turning his back to look out the window.

“Not Allie’s type at all. Skips school. Parties a lot. She took off with him on the motorcycle that morning. She texted me in the afternoon, and I haven’t heard from her since.”

The fierce rush of protectiveness that floods through him is new to Braden. His fist clenches, and again he flashes to that instant of impact with a jaw.

His knuckles aching. Darkness, snow, a freezing wind cutting through his clothing. He’s not wearing a jacket.

Why on earth was he not wearing a jacket? Or gloves? He was raised inland, he knows about winter, isn’t stupid enough to wander around in the snow without the appropriate protection.

In the present, he takes a breath. Tries to corral his thoughts. Okay. Allie went off with Ethan a week ago today. She came home that night. She’s been home every night, so she hasn’t been raped and murdered.

“She said she was going to school. Every morning when she left,” he says, back to repeating the obvious.

“Didn’t you get a robocall?”

“A what?”

“A robocall. What kind of parent doesn’t know about that?”

Steph is starting to recover, which he should probably consider a good thing, but he has his doubts. She crosses the kitchen to the landline phone. Sure enough, a light is blinking. It was blinking this morning when he’d called Jo, but it hadn’t occurred to him to check the messages. None of them would possibly be for him. He doesn’t live here.

Without asking permission, Steph punches the button.

Alexandra’s voice comes on. “Allie? Call me. I’ve been trying to reach you. Braden, if you’re still there, and you’d better be, pick up the phone. Before I call the cops to do a welfare check.”

“You might want to call the lady,” Steph says, skipping ahead. The next message is also from Alexandra. But the one before that is, sure enough, a robocall, informing him that Allie is absent from school. Steph moves relentlessly through the missed messages. Two more from Alexandra, four from the school, and one from Lilian’s attorney, asking Braden to call to go over the will.