Open House(17)

Haley wanted to cover her ears with her hands like a child. Why was he here?

“The things she said to me this one night we got together . . .” Chris went on, and Haley’s heart picked up speed.

“I didn’t realize you’d ever been more than friends,” she said.

“We weren’t,” Chris said quickly. “Trust me.”

“I don’t trust you,” Haley said before she could think better of it, but Chris didn’t seem to take it personally.

“I know what it’s like to lose someone,” he said, running his hand through his dark hair. “I think you know me and Josie lost our dad. Well, my dad, Josie’s stepdad. And Josie lost her mom, too. My dad didn’t treat Josie right after her mom died, because he never wanted her in the first place. He took stuff out on Josie, stuff that wasn’t her fault.”

“I’m sorry,” Haley managed. Maybe he wasn’t the enemy.

“Your sister was . . .” He started again, and when his voice trailed off, Haley waited. She’d learned how to listen in the hospital. You had to keep your mouth shut when you were with a patient; they couldn’t tell you what you needed to know if you were blathering on with advice and medical knowledge. Chris’s gaze went to the bookshelf, and Haley watched him scan the biographies. Finally he turned back to Haley and said, “That night we got together, your sister was so drunk, but the things she said were a little scary. I didn’t take advantage of her or anything, with her being that drunk. That’s not what I mean. I’m just telling you she was drunk so you understand she was telling me stuff she maybe wouldn’t have otherwise, and it was bleak.”

“Like what?” Haley asked, but Chris just shrugged, clearly agitated.

“I don’t remember all the specifics,” he said. “A lot of it was about how she couldn’t paint the same way at Yarrow, how her head wasn’t right. I remember she said she felt suffocated, but I didn’t really understand by what.”

Tears started somewhere behind Haley’s eyes. “Why are you telling me this now?”

The brochures fluttered as Chris clenched and unclenched his fist. “I’m just trying to figure out what the cops have,” he said, a twitch starting near his upper lip. “What they’re getting at with all these crazy questions ten years later.”

Haley didn’t answer him. “What did you tell them?” she asked instead.

“Nothing new,” Chris said. “I was at that party obviously, but so were a ton of kids. And everyone was messed up. Anything could have happened.”

Anything could have happened to that girl. There it was again. But Chris didn’t sound judgmental of Emma; he sounded like someone who understood that college was a fragile, precarious time. Blackout binge drinking, drugs, sex: Haley didn’t understand how parents of college students could sleep at night.

“Look, Chris,” Haley said. “I’ve never thought my sister killed herself. So you’re talking to the wrong person if you’re looking for reassurance that she wasn’t killed by one of your friends at the party.”

Chris’s cheeks flushed. “It’s not that,” he said. “Those people weren’t even my friends, except Josie and Emma, I mean.”

Haley thought back to Chris at Yarrow with his mop of black hair and dingy clothes. After Josie’s freshman year, Chris moved three hours east from their hometown to Waverly and worked in an auto body shop. He didn’t seem to have anyone else in his life but Josie. The problem, of course, was how he clashed with all the college guys Emma and Josie were friends with. Their lofty, academic egos fed his insecurities like a shot of sugar.

“That night we hooked up, your sister told me how tired and anxious she’d been; she kept saying she just wanted to go to sleep,” Chris said, breaking through Haley’s thoughts. “And I already told the cops all of this back then when they questioned me, but on the night she disappeared in the woods, she told me she was scared. But not of someone specific. She said she was scared at how everything was about to change.”

Haley felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. “Surely you couldn’t have taken those words for some kind of goodbye,” she said.

“In the moment I didn’t,” Chris said, his gaze still so far away, like he could still hear Emma telling him. “But in retrospect . . .”

“I’m sure it was easier for everyone, including you, to believe she did it to herself,” Haley said. “The school, all her friends. But not my family.”

“And maybe that’s why you’re so convinced she didn’t,” he said.

“Are we done?” Haley asked.

“I’m just saying, it’s normal to want to protect yourself.”

“I’m not normal,” Haley said. “I’ve never been, even before my sister disappeared. And I’m not sure what you want me to say. That it’s all in the past, and the cops are getting at nothing? I don’t believe that, but I get why you might want to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Do the cops think I did something to her?”

“Did you do something to her?”

Chris’s eyes flickered to the floor. “No. Though I suppose you have no reason to believe me.”

“I don’t,” Haley said. “Murderers usually lie.”