Last Girl Ghosted(63)

What would I say if Wren Greenwood wrote to Dear Birdie?

Dear Birdie,
I can’t forgive my father for killing my mother and my brother. I’ve been hiding from that horrible night, from him, from myself ever since.
I’d tell her to face down her demons, including her father. I’d tell her to confront the past and take back her name. Funny how I can never take my own advice.

“I hear he helps other people now,” says Jones. He rises and walks over to the window, plays with a latch that seems loose.

“What do you mean?” There’s a constriction in my throat, my chest.

“He’s like a prison preacher now.”

“You’re telling me that he’s found God.”

“He’s found something,” he says. “He gives a mindfulness and meditation class. He advises. He counsels death row inmates.”

The idea of this twists in my center. He should be dead. My mother and my brother, they should be alive. He shouldn’t have this chance to redeem himself by helping others.

“How do you know this?” I ask.

“I keep tabs on the people I help to send away, the people I help, my clients. I like to know how things unfold.”

“Do you keep tabs on me?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says.

He turns to face me with an easy smile, folds his arms around his middle. The light coming in from the window reveals how he’s aged more than I thought at first glance—the lines on his face a little deeper, a slight sag at the jaw. He’s still good-looking, though. For an old guy.

“My judgment in your case,” he says. “Maybe I didn’t make the right decisions for you. We broke the law. We stole a girl’s identity. We forged paperwork. It was wrong.”

Regret. It comes for all of us sooner or later. What might have been. What we might have done differently.

“You did what you thought was right. I know that. And it was right. I wasn’t dogged by media, or stalked by fans of mass murder, or hunted down by true crime podcasters. As far as everyone knows, I died that night. And in a way I did. Anyway, I chose. I wanted a new name, a new self.”

“But you were just a kid. You weren’t really able to make an informed choice.”

“So, if you’d followed protocol, then what? I’d have gone to foster care. An uncertain fate if ever there was one.”

He bows his head, keeping his eyes down.

“Instead, you gave me a new way forward and helped me to choose a new name and took me to Miss Lovely.”

Miss Lovely, the proprietor of The Blue House Inn. Back then she ran a group home for kids.

After my world exploded, she offered me a safe place to live, homeschooled me until I took my GED, helped me apply to college. There were other kids, too, over the couple of years I was with her, who came and went. A runaway she found at the bus station who stayed a few nights, then left with all the money Miss Lovely had hidden in a jar in a high kitchen cabinet. There was another boy whose mother had passed, and whose father was in rehab. He was quiet, read a lot. He wasn’t there long, didn’t say much.

I barely remember him or anything about that time. I was in a fog of grief. But Miss Lovely took care of all of us with kindness and laughter. She taught me to cook, to sew, how to make a bed like a soldier. She’s gone now, too. Her daughter, who was already grown when I went to live with Miss Lovely, owns the inn now, hires out its operation and management. She never sets foot in The Hollows.

“She was good to me. Miss Lovely. And Dr. Cooper, too. They helped me to heal, build a life.”

“Yes, but Maggie was right. You can’t hide from the truth.”

He walks over to the article on the desk, holds it up to me.

“Maybe not,” I concede, taking it.

“What else can I do to help now?” he asks.

Jones Cooper is a native son of The Hollows. He knows how it works, its history, has access to all its dark passages. Maybe that’s why I’m here. He’s the guide I need to this place. If what’s happening now is in any way connected to what happened to me then, Jones Cooper is the one to ask.

I tell him about the dark web, about the man who helped me create Wren Greenwood online, and bury all traces of my past, how I reached out to him to see what he knew, what he could find. I tell him about the money I paid, and how I’m waiting now. He doesn’t like that, gives me a frown.

“The dark web,” he says. “Is that a thing? I thought it was an urban legend.”

“It’s very real.”

“I don’t get it.”

There’s a deep gulf between our generations. I’m a tech native; he’s a late and reluctant adopter. His desktop is ancient with a huge screen and a hulking CPU on the floor. There’s a flip phone on the coffee table.

I explain it to him. “It’s a part of the internet that’s untraceable. On the conventional web using servers like Safari or Chrome, you leave a digital trail that anyone can find. But on the dark web, accessed by Tor, no one can detect your activity. It’s a black market for—anything. Guns. Drugs. Hired killers. Identity change. There are people who can get you anything, help you do anything.”

He raises his eyebrow, the skeptic.

“And this guy Adam—you met him online, too.”

“Right.”