Wish You Were Gone(20)

There was another call she had to make. For half a second, she thought about getting it over with now, but then no. This was not the time. She would go home, pour herself a glass of wine, and make a nice dinner for herself and her husband. Something simple. Easy. It was just going to take time, but soon enough they would get back into their regular rhythm. And then, everything would be fine. No, it would be better.





KELSEY


“Has anyone ever told you your room is a disaster?”

Willow didn’t look up from the roll of bubble wrap she was spooling out, unable to flatten it on the floor because of the piles of clothes, cards, books, and magic paraphernalia all around her.

“This is not news to me,” she said.

Kelsey sighed and pushed a pair of mud-stained cargo pants farther away from her thigh, wondering how Willow had managed to get them so dirty. She looked down into the box in front of her. It seemed properly packed, like nothing could get jostled or damaged; still, her chest felt tight. There was no air in here. She wished she could open a window, but just getting to the one behind Willow’s drafting table would take a certain adventurous spirit and lack of fear for one’s safety that Kelsey didn’t possess.

“You never brought over that last box of stuff,” Willow said.

“You were supposed to come over and pick it up.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Yes! You were,” Kelsey snapped, startling Willow. “You said you would come over around six and then you didn’t show. I still have the text, if you’re interested.”

“Fine! Whatever. What is this, Law & Order? So are you going to bring it over or what?”

“Are you kidding me? No way.”

Willow didn’t get it. If she’d come over that day like she was supposed to and gotten that damn box out of her house… Kelsey couldn’t even complete the thought. She shoved the package she was working on away from her in a huff.

“I don’t think we should do this anymore,” she said.

There. Finally. She’d gotten the words out.

Now Willow looked up. She was wearing wing-tipped green eyeliner today that made her look like a creature from another world. A dark fairy one.

“Why not?”

“Doesn’t it feel wrong to you?” Kelsey sat back on her butt, leaning on her hands, but her fingers sunk into something sticky and she sat up again, trying not to grimace. “And it’s not like I need the money at this point.”

Her mother was going to pay for Daltry—the application fee, the tuition—all of it. Or she would, once Kelsey got around to telling her she was definitely applying. There was no reason for her to be here right now, in this cave of a room with its garbage-dump styling. When Willow turned to the side, Kelsey grabbed the muddy cargo pants and wiped her fingers off on the relatively clean cuff.

“Oh, yeah? So does that mean you don’t want this?” Willow tossed an envelope to Kelsey. Carefully, she opened it. Inside was a thick stack of twenty-dollar bills. “Because I’ll gladly add it to my tally. Personally, I can use all the cash I can get right now.”

She said it bitingly, reminding Kelsey of all the things she had that Willow didn’t, then cut off a strip of bubble wrap and shoved it into a box. Kelsey sighed. The problem with having friends who were older was that they were always in charge. There was also the fact that part of her felt like she owed Willow this—that she would always owe Willow something. But she was keeping the cash. Willow had no clue what she’d sacrificed for this little project of theirs. She shoved the money in her bag, closed the flaps on the box, and reached for the roll of packing tape.

“Can I ask you a question?” Willow said.

“Is it about my dad?” Kelsey asked, rankled now.

“How did you know?”

“Because it’s all anyone wants to talk about anymore,” Kelsey said, zipping the tape across the top of the box. It made an awful, squealing noise that had begun to haunt her dreams. “And no, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But, the night of the accident… do you think if you’d come over here earlier—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Kelsey said again, and she added another loud, hair-raising strip of tape to punctuate her point.





EMMA


It wasn’t until Emma started looking for James’s briefcase that she realized she hadn’t seen it since the accident. Had one of the cops or their techs or whoever actually stolen it out of the car? It was a nice briefcase, given to James by the senior partner at the PR firm he’d worked for after college, when he’d left to start his own business with Darnell. But it was also monogrammed. It wasn’t like any random person could walk around sporting it without inviting questions.

There existed the possibility that it had been left in the car, which had long since been towed away and probably torn apart for scrap. Emma wondered how reputable the tow service was that Gray had hired to deal with it. As if Gray would ever hire someone who wasn’t reputable. Would they have called her if they found it? Probably.

So, Emma spent all day Tuesday searching the house and cleaning things up as she went. She started with Hunter’s room, thinking he might have grabbed the briefcase if and when it had come back from the police station, wanting it as a keepsake he could use himself one day. Of course, that had taken up over an hour as she compiled two baskets full of laundry and an armload of dishes, plus piles of random pens, notebook, papers, Post-its, and coins. For a responsible straight-A student, he’d always been kind of an organizational nightmare. Her little absentminded professor/home-run hitter.