What Lies in the Woods(49)

“You didn’t,” Ethan said sharply, and I glanced at him in surprise. “That is one thing you do not need to feel guilty about.”

“They didn’t have enough evidence to convict him.”

“That doesn’t mean they didn’t have enough to know it was him. Don’t waste any energy fretting over Stahl. He’s dead and the world’s a better place without him.”

His certainty would have been comforting, if I was capable of being comforted. But I was thinking of the letter now. “Even if that’s true, if Stahl didn’t attack me, it means that whoever did got away with it. Maybe even did it again.” To a girl who wasn’t as fortunate as me, I didn’t add.

Ethan rubbed a hand over his chin. “For now, let’s focus on Jessi. It’s been a long time, and Stahl sometimes drove with his victims for hours before he turned on them. She might have been from just about anywhere. We need to find out where she was before she disappeared.”

The we was more comforting than it should have been. “I think I recognize her,” I said. It had been bothering me since I saw the picture, that lingering sense of familiarity. “I can’t tell if it’s her that I recognize, or just the type, but there’s something there. And I never left Chester back then, so if I do recognize her, she was here.”

“Who’d remember her, around here?” he asked.

I sighed, realizing the obvious next step. “My dad might know,” I said. “And he won’t spread our business around town like just about anyone else would.”

“Then let’s start there.”

“You’re in for a treat. But we’d better wait until morning. This time of night, he’ll be past making sense,” I said. I shrugged into my sweatshirt and stood with my hands in my pockets.

“You can stay, if you want,” Ethan said. I gave him a skeptical look. “I’m a night owl. I’m just going to sit up catching up on editing. You could get some sleep with another body in the room.”

“That would be good,” I admitted. “I can sleep alone, I just…”

“Don’t get any rest doing it?” he asked. I nodded. It wouldn’t matter that I didn’t know him. Didn’t have any particular reason to consider him safe. I’d gone home with strangers for the chance to get a solid night’s sleep. At least I’d had a real conversation with Ethan. “I’m the same. Not the part about needing someone there, but sleep not being a friend when it does arrive.”

“Thus the night-owl habit.”

“And the borderline criminal amount of coffee I drink,” he confirmed. “Go ahead and get some rest.”

I made Ethan promise to wake me up when he needed the bed and then I took him up on the offer. With the sound of him clicking the keys and shifting in his seat, the constant tension in the back of my mind eased just a fraction. Enough for the exhaustion to come roaring in.

Sleep claimed me, and for once, I didn’t dream.



* * *



I woke with light hitting my eyes, still in the bed. I propped myself up on my elbow and found Ethan, asleep with his head on the desk, cradled in one arm. I shook my head at him and crept over to my shoes, pilfering his room key as I went.

Fifteen minutes later I was back with coffee and he was sitting up, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“I hope you like your coffee black and terrible,” I told him.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said.

“You should have woken me up,” I admonished, handing him a cup. He popped the top off to blow on it, steam coiling around his face.

“You needed the sleep more than I did.” He looked good rumpled. It made him look less earnest. I reached over and combed his hair back with my fingers, and he startled slightly at the touch.

I swayed back a step, keeping my expression casual. “I’m going to go shower and change. Meet you back here?”

“I’ll try to be presentable by then,” he said by way of confirmation.

At the door I paused and looked back. Ethan sat with his spine like a comma, hunched over his coffee, the blur of sleep still in his eyes.

“Thank you,” I said, and left before he could respond.



* * *



We drove up to the house around noon. When Ethan stepped inside, he went stock-still. I slid in behind him but didn’t shut the door. Being closed into that tiny space with another human being would have been too much—tipping Ethan from comfort to threat in the careful calculus of my brain. One of us would have ended up bleeding.

“This is…” Ethan said. I didn’t meet his eyes. I hadn’t warned him. It wasn’t that I was ashamed. More like I needed to see his shock to prove that it really was that bad. “Was it like this growing up?”

“You could still get around,” I said. I pointed at a stack composed of a broken file cabinet, an Easter basket, and assorted bulging bags. “There was a clear patch there where I played when I was a kid.”

“Naomi?” Dad called from somewhere in the back of the house. “That you?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” I answered. “Can I come in and talk to you?”

“No, I’ll come to you,” he hollered. Plastic bags rustled and things slipped and thunked, and then he appeared, climbing over drifts of junk with a spidery walk. He saw Ethan and scowled. “Who’s the pretty boy?” he asked.