Don't Look for Me(87)

I look down and see Alice crying with relief. Not Annie. Alice.

I look down and see Daisy unconscious at my feet. The rock still in my hands.

The man runs toward us now.

We hear the sirens stop and voices call from the driveway.

“Here!” the man yells back. “We’re down here!”

Alice cries harder. I let the rock fall and I lean down to pick her up in my arms. She wraps her entire being around my body and I hold her tight.

“It’s all right,” I say.

Nicole comes now, out from the woods. She sees me and I see her. And I am floating in an ocean of love.

Just devastating, blissful love.

“It’s all right,” I say again.

And I think to myself, that maybe it is.





56


Seven months later





It was not easy to make the turn down Hastings Pass.

Nic had insisted on driving. She knew the way, she said. But that wasn’t the reason. That turn, this road, everything about this town had become a monster under her bed. The flashes came in nightmares. They came in daydreams as she ran, stopping her in her tracks. Stealing her breath. A flash of the inn, or the fence, or the woods.

She needed to face it. To look under the bed and see that there was nothing there. That it was just a town, and the people who had terrorized them were now dead or in prison.

Her mother held on to her shoulder as they drove past the Gas n’ Go.

“Are you okay?” she asked, though her eyes were on the gas station—the place where all of this started.

Jared Reyes had followed Daisy Hollander to Hastings after that summer in Woodstock. He’d been working in the kitchen—one of a string of odd jobs he’d taken after leaving the force in Worcester.

Then he’d found work in Hastings providing security for the company that owned the property behind the inn—the investors who had wanted to build a mental-health facility but were shut down by town protests. They owned the Gas n’ Go as well. Reyes monitored the security cameras at the station and looked after the property and buildings that had once been part of Ross Pharma. He used these positions to find his marks and run his cons, even after Watkins took him under his wing.

Nic smiled, nodded. “I’m okay,” she said to her mother. Though she had a knot in her stomach as they drove over the wave of hills, past the neglected cornfields on both sides. But it was different this time. The air was warm. The sun was shining. Green leaves covered the trees as they entered the town.

Mrs. Urbansky met them at the door of the station. She pulled Nic into her arms, then did the same with her mother.

“Oh!” she said. “What a sight for sore eyes!”

Chief Watkins appeared from the back office. He looked at them, her mother mostly, with gratitude. Molly Clarke had saved his life that day.

“Don’t they look wonderful!” Mrs. Urbansky commented.

Nic managed a new smile. She hadn’t thought about how they looked. Not one way or another. Her mother had let her hair go back to its natural chestnut brown. She’d cut it short as well, and changed her wardrobe. She wore skirts and loose tops and pretty much whatever she felt comfortable in. It was the way she’d dressed before Annie died. It was as though she was reclaiming herself, one small piece at a time.

And Nic, she thought she looked just the same. She was still running. Hadn’t changed her hair or her clothing. Those things hadn’t felt important to her. Her father had told her that her face had light. He stopped from saying the word that should have followed—again, your face has light again. But Nic knew what he meant.

Watkins led them to his office where they sat down across from his desk. Nic had a new flash now—back to that first day she’d returned to Hastings. His uniform with the short sleeves. The patches on his chest. The blue tie.

But today was not about finding her mother. Today was about resolution.

“You were very kind to come,” he said.

This was not their only stop. Her mother had a second meeting less than hour from now.

“It’s good,” her mother said. “Necessary, I think.”

Watkins tilted his head as though he wasn’t quite sure of any of that. But now that they were here, he seemed willing to do what he could to fill them in on the progress with the case.

“Have you read her statement?” Watkins asked.

Daisy Hollander had pleaded guilty to manslaughter for the murder of Jared Reyes. But that was all. She had a hearing later that month and had submitted a statement to the court as part of her campaign for a lighter sentence.

“Does anyone believe her lies?” Nic asked. “What she said about it being self-defense?”

Daisy’s story had been carefully crafted. Reyes had followed her to Hastings after that summer camp. He’d been obsessed with her, even though she didn’t even remember him.

That’s what she said in her statement—though other girls from the camp, women now, had started to come forward with statements of their own, statements about Daisy and Reyes being together the entire summer. About Daisy sneaking out of their cabin at night to meet him.

Daisy denied all of this.

According to her, Reyes followed her to Hastings and stalked her. She said she told no one because she was scared. She swore she was in love with Roger Booth and that she planned to stay with him and marry him, but Reyes wouldn’t have it. He kidnapped her and kept her a prisoner in that house for ten years. She was finally able to escape and had been in hiding, terrified because Reyes was a cop. She came back that day to try to save Alice.