It's One of Us(67)

Now she wonders if they influenced him somehow. Gave him drugs. Challenged him to drop down into the gutter with them.

It’s their fault. Not his. Not hers.

They climb the two flights in silence. Scarlett gets to the door first, knocks hard. It is 6:15 a.m. These are college students. Chances are they will still be asleep, having rolled home only a few hours earlier.

Kids still did that, right? Get out from under their parents’ thumbs and turned into booze-soaked loons for a few years until they figured out how boring it is waking up feeling like crap all the time?

“Coming,” a girl’s voice trills. The door opens to reveal a willowy girl dressed in yoga clothes, hair up in the same type of messy bun Scarlett is sporting. Like they watched the same Instagram Reel on how to pull it up, fold it over, secure, fluff the front...

“Can I help you?” she asks, chipper as a puppy. Not the hungover slouch Darby was expecting.

“We’re looking for Peyton. Is he here?”

“Peyton? I don’t know anyone named Peyton.”

A young man Darby recognizes joins the girl, looping an arm possessively across her shoulders. He, too, is dressed in workout clothes, his eyes clear, breath minty fresh, beard trimmed, hair twisted into a small bun on top of his head. Darby scolds herself internally for a moment for making assumptions, but Scarlett charges in.

“Peyton Flynn lives here, doesn’t he? Or do we have the wrong apartment?”

“Hi, Mrs. Flynn,” the boy says. “Peyton moved out, a while ago.”

Darby’s heart quite literally stops for a moment, then rages ahead, dumping so much adrenaline into her system she has to take a few quick breaths to control it. It’s the same feeling she gets when they have a code blue at the hospital, everyone charging toward the room in question to try and save a life.

“What do you mean, he moved out? David,” she adds, the boy’s name finally penetrating her senses.

“Yeah, it was pretty uncool of him. He took off in July.”

July? It is September now. Where in the world has her boy been living? “But the lease was signed through December of this year.”

“Yeah, I know. I had to scramble to find another roommate who was taking summer school and needed a place and would stick around through fall semester.”

“Did he tell you where he was moving?”

“No. He came home one night just rocked out of his mind and took off the next day. He looked like he’d been in a fight. I haven’t seen him since. I’ve been keeping his mail. You should probably take it. There’s some stuff from school in there. Hold on.”

Darby can’t meet Scarlett’s eyes. Peyton has been lying to her for months, apparently.

The willowy girl moves deeper into the apartment, away from the drama. Darby can hear whispers. David comes back to the door alone and hands her a brown Whole Foods bag full of mail.

“Did he leave his furniture?” Scarlett asks, and David shakes his head.

“No, he packed everything up into an old van and bounced. Sorry I can’t be more help. Gotta go, we have a class. Willow is a yoga teacher.”

The willowy girl is named Willow. Of course she is.

Darby thinks she might just be losing her mind a bit.

“Thank you,” she says numbly, and follows Scarlett back to the car. Darby leans her arms on the doorframe and her head onto her arms. Scarlett riffles through the bag of mail like a terrier after a rat. She rips open an envelope, thrusts the paper toward Darby’s nose.

“He dropped out of school, Mom. This is confirmation his tuition refund is being processed.” Finally, finally, Scarlett loses it. The tears course down her face. “Why would he lie to us?”

Not to you, Darby thinks. To us. What small comfort that tiny word brings.

“I don’t know, honey,” she says, gathering her weeping daughter in her arms. “I don’t know.”

Scarlett hiccups and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. Darby automatically reaches into her pocket for a tissue. Scarlett wipes her face and gives a great, shuddery sigh.

“So now what do we do?” she asks, infuriatingly calm for a girl who’s just had a massive breakdown in an apartment complex parking lot.

“I don’t know. But it’s only a matter of time before someone sees that sketch and recognizes him. Maybe we need to go to the police.”

“Oh my God,” Scarlett mutters. “This isn’t happening. Try him again.”

Darby calls, again. No answer, again.

She stashes her phone in her pocket. “All right. Let’s go back home. We can discuss what we should do when we get there.”

They are on the outskirts of Nashville when her phone rings. Hope flares—Peyton, please be Peyton—but she doesn’t recognize the number. The car’s system picks up the call, and Darby reaches over and presses the phone button on the steering wheel.

“This is Darby Flynn,” she says.

“Mrs. Flynn? My name’s Detective Osley. I’d like to talk to you about your son.”



32


THE WIFE

Olivia wakes to the sound of beeping, and the heady, unwelcome stench of lilies. It takes her a few moments to piece her world back together.

IV. Bright light. People bustling about. Hospital.

Her throat is sore.