Come Find Me(15)

“Nolan?” My dad picks up so quickly I assume it was him.

“Hey, did you call me?”

“No.” He drops his voice. “It must’ve been your mother. Abby’s here, Nolan. With her parents.”

I’m squinting out the windshield toward the woods, trying to figure out what Abby and her parents have to do with anything. If maybe he had to call them to cover for him on the phones because I got the time wrong.

“I thought I had until the afternoon,” I say.

There’s this pause, where I think I can hear something else. Almost like static, cutting in and out. Until he speaks again. “You need to come home, Nolan.”



* * *



—

Nobody notices at first when I walk in the front door. Dave and Sara or Clara, the college kids who were here to volunteer, appear to be gone. Abby is wedged between her parents on our family room sofa, the three of them sinking together almost comically. My mom is in the chair across from her, and my father stands behind her, his hand on her shoulder. There’s a stillness here that seems heavy. I’ve seen it before. After the chaos, after the search of the woods and the search of his room and the police interviews, after everyone left, and we were all alone, facing the facts.

    Abby sees me first. “Nolan,” she says, and my parents turn around. This may be the first time she’s spoken to me since the incident in the car. Abby’s always been thin, but college seems to have sharpened her edges. Or maybe it’s just me that’s changed. I can’t look at her without feeling my stomach knot.

“Nolan,” my dad says. “Come sit.”

But I don’t. I stay exactly where I am, one foot out the door. “What’s going on?” I say.

My dad reaches an arm for me, like he’s trying to compel me closer.

“Dad?”

He shakes his head. “We don’t know,” he says. “Abby got an email, and we’ve just called Agent Lowell—”

“What?” I say, because none of this is making sense.

It’s Abby who speaks this time. “I got an email,” she says. “Last week. It said, I know what happened to your boyfriend, and—”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I swing the door shut behind me then, cutting her off. Making her jump. Firmly in this house now, I shake my head at her. Oh my God, the whole case is going to happen again, over a stupid email. “It’s probably a joke,” I say.

Her mother is holding her hand. They are mirror images, staring at me.

“Why would someone joke about that?” my dad says.

“Have you met the Internet?” I ask, walking closer. I know they understand. The number of tips that come in that are useless. More than that, that are careless.

I narrow my eyes at Abby. “Which email address?” I ask her.

    Her wavy blond hair hangs partly over her face, and she peers up from behind it, her eyes watering. “My college one.”

“Who would have your new college email, from something that happened two years ago?” And why would someone contact her, instead of me? Instead of my parents? The police?

“It wouldn’t be hard to find it,” she shoots back. “You can search for it on the campus website.”

“Dad,” I say, trying to appeal to him, but his eyes have this hyperfocused look I know too well. And my mom hasn’t moved since I walked through the door. I feel sick. It’s happening again, and I can’t stop it.

“Abby, enough,” I say, turning away from her and waving my arm at my parents. “Can’t you both see this is for attention? She was the grieving widow and everyone felt bad for her here, only she’s not here anymore, and now she’s no one.”

“Nolan,” my dad almost yells. My dad doesn’t yell. But this comes close.

Abby sucks in a quick breath. “You are so cruel,” she whispers.

Maybe that’s true, but someone had to say it. I was doing them all a favor.

I storm up the steps to my room. There is no reasonable explanation for my brother’s disappearance. That line has been exhausted. All she’s doing is cracking everything open again. God, does she not even notice the downstairs of my house?

I’m full of adrenaline, pacing my room. I need to do something. Emptying my bag, I hold the device up to Liam’s wall, but nothing happens.

    The signal is gone.

It’s just…gone.

I walk into his room—still nothing. I hit the side of the device, jarring the needle, and try again. Nothing. I start to worry I imagined the whole thing. That I conjured it into existence, from my imagination.

Hands shaking, I pull up the video I took earlier in the day, just to make sure it exists, that it happened.

As it replays, I let out a breath of relief—it’s exactly how I remembered it. The spike, the pause, over and over, in a pattern.

Then I hit Reply on KJ’s message and upload the video.

I write: Something’s happening here.





The room we’re sitting in could use a makeover. There’s a table with plastic chairs like from a school, where Joe and I sit on one side and a man with brown-gray hair wearing wire-rim glasses and a brown suit jacket sits on the other. His tie is crooked, off-center and twisted, and I keep getting the urge to reach across the table and fix it for him. He introduced himself with a couple of letters, followed by what was obviously a last name, but I missed it.