You Can't Catch Me(61)

“Yeah. Wait, do you know something?”

“Sometimes the absence of something is something.”

Classic Liamism.

“What did you not find?” I ask.

“I can’t find any record of her going back more than four years.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Mario just got in touch. He’s the guy who helped me find Jackson Jessica.”

“We call her Five.”

“I’m sure she loves that.”

“Yeah, yeah. So why was he looking into Jessie?”

“I told him to look into both of them.”

“Jessie and JJ?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I worry about you. You’re putting yourself in vulnerable positions with people you don’t even know.”

“Please don’t raise your voice at me.”

“I’m sorry.”

My brain is whirring. “So, he found something?”

“Like I said, he didn’t find anything. No record of her until four years ago. That’s when she started working at that high school in Illinois.”

“There could be lots of explanations for that.”

“Not that many.”

“There weren’t any records of me until I left the Land of Todd.”

“Was she in the Land of Todd?”

“No.”

“So . . .”

“Okay. It’s weird.”

“You should go to the police.”

“So you’re always saying.”

“And you never listen.”

“Go to the police with what? We don’t know anything.”

“Come home, then,” Liam says.

A mosquito bites me. I crush it against my arm, my own blood oozing onto my hand.

“I will. Tomorrow.”

“And until then?”

“I’ll be careful.” JJ appears across the road. She’s waving at me. “I’ve got to go.”

“Call me later?”

“Of course.”

I hang up the call and stand. I wipe my sticky hand on my pants as I cross the road.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“We’re ready to go.”

“I need a few minutes. Why don’t you take your boards down to the lake and I’ll catch up.”

“You okay?”

“Just trying to figure this all out.”

JJ gives me a look, then decides to let it go.

When we get back to the tent, Jessie’s dressed in a pair of dark-blue shorts, a white T-shirt, and flip-flops.

“I have to get changed. I’ll meet you on the beach.”

I watch them pick up their boards and paddles and start down the path. Then I go into Jessie’s tent and zip the door behind me. Her suitcase is closed. I pull it toward me. I spread out her sleeping bag and dump out its contents. Clean clothes. The jeans and underclothes she was wearing earlier today. I check the pockets. There’s a folded piece of stiff paper in one of them. I pull it out. It’s the boarding pass for the ticket she bought to get through security.

It’s not in the name of Jessica Williams. Instead, it says Molly Carter.





PART III





Chapter 28

The Final Countdown

One of my clearest memories of Kiki post-LOT was the first and only New Year’s Eve we went out and celebrated together.

It was at a huge loft party in the Meatpacking District, not that far from Liam’s apartment, though he didn’t attend. It was one of those parties with hundreds of guests and cheap alcohol and people dressed up even though it wasn’t a dressy party. It cost fifty dollars a head, and they gave you a gift bag at the door with a bowler hat or a sparkly headband, and a necklace made out of letters that created the phrase NEW YEAR’S EVE over and over. There were noisemakers, too, those plastic horns that make obnoxious sounds that only children enjoy, or adults at a year-end party. And there were drinks included: a glass of “champagne” at midnight, and a strong punch for the rest of the evening.

Kiki didn’t want to go when I first brought it up, but I persuaded her. That felt like a metaphor for what our relationship had become since Todd died. Me persuading Kiki eventually. It was as if she’d used up whatever will she had by agreeing to leave the LOT in the first place. Anything else simply took too much effort. So, I had to persuade her, cajole her, threaten her, even, sometimes.

“You should learn how to live on your own,” I said to her six months after I’d brought her back from the Catskills. After years of having to share a room with another student at college, and now Kiki, I was ready for a room of my own, even if it was a tiny closet. But I didn’t tell Kiki that. No. I made it about her, her development, her progress.

She needed to go to real school, like I had, and live in a dorm and meet people. She needed to get her life into gear and do all the things I’d done, but without the year at Liam’s. I had Kiki on a faster timeline, and I’d been keeping Liam at a distance. I still hadn’t told him about Kiki. He had a few new escapees he was working with, not to mention his usual private detective business. It was a good thing, I thought then. I was growing up along with Kiki, leaving the nest, spreading my wings.