Come Find Me(80)

“The night of the crime,” the lawyer continues, “Elliot noted a bruise on his mother’s collarbone before she left the house, which she covered up with a scarf. He confronted her about it, asking if she had been hurt.”

I close my eyes, picturing it. Watching her in the mirror as she readjusted the fabric, examining her own reflection. I wonder if it was Elliot’s comment that finally tipped things; if my mother broke it off that night. If that’s what had Will so enraged, and had my mother running for her gun, for protection.

Elliot was the only one who could see the type of person Will was. He always saw more than the rest of us. He was always looking for signs.

“I remember the scarf,” I say, my voice scratching against my throat. “I didn’t know,” I say to Elliot.

The lawyer pauses, making a note. “Good,” he says. “Your statement will help.”

Elliot runs a hand through his too-long hair. “I pushed her to it. I set it in motion, that night, whatever happened.”

I shake my head. “He set it in motion.”

The lawyer looks between the two of us and continues. “The police have spoken with Hunter Long, confirming Elliot’s accounts,” he says. “Hunter can at least corroborate that Elliot confided in him his concerns about Will. Though Hunter has a history of running away, and he’s something of a flight risk as it is.”

    But Elliot shakes his head. “He won’t testify. Don’t make him. Something happened to him the first time he ran away, when he was staying at some shelter nearby. He won’t want his name in the public….”

Something rattles in my chest, but the lawyer continues. “The hope is it won’t get to that point, anyway,” he explains. “The evidence supports Will firing the first shot. Forensics has confirmed: the only fingerprints on the gun safe behind the wall were your mother’s.”

They go over the evidence in support of their case—that Elliot was surprised by the sound of the first shot and ran out of his room straight into a horrific scene. Overwhelmed as he was by the blood, and the reality in front of him, his memory fractured. He acted on instinct, facing a man holding a gun.

But Elliot will have to live with what he’s done. It’s all still terrible. That feeling, he said, was what made him believe that he was guilty of something. Was why he couldn’t look me in the eye.

The trial has been postponed, with the gun safe as new evidence; they found it, untouched, behind the wall panel. The lawyer says he expects some sort of deal to be offered, at the very least. They are presenting Elliot’s shooting of Will as self-defense, and are waiting to hear back from the DA’s office.

I expect Elliot to look relieved, but he doesn’t.

    And then I understand. Mom is still gone. None of this changes the past, or the present—though I hope it will help him move on.

It must be impossible, I think, to imagine a future when you can’t see beyond the walls that contain you.

“Elliot,” I say as we’re saying our goodbyes. “I’ll see you soon.”

He nods, but I stand there waiting until I hear his echoing See you soon.



* * *



—

On the walk back to the parking lot, I turn on my phone, but there’s still no reply.

“Joe,” I say, “I have to call Nolan.” Something about what Elliot mentioned, about Hunter and a shelter…I wonder if maybe Hunter can act not as a witness for Elliot, but against Mike.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Joe says, nudging my shoulder. I look up, and Nolan’s car is parked beside ours. He sits on the trunk, his feet resting on the faded bumper, and waves when he sees me looking.

I start walking faster, and when I’m close enough to see him clearly, he grins. “Sorry I’m late,” he says, and I smile.

He looks over my shoulder at Joe, strolling across the lot. “Should we introduce your uncle to the world’s best pizza?”





Agent Lowell sits across from me and my parents, on that same couch where Abby and her parents once sat, setting everything in motion again. He’s told us there have been new developments. Some questions, some answers, he said.

“Did he talk?” my dad asks.

It was Elliot who provided the missing link. Who let us know that Hunter Long had been in that shelter at the same time as Liam. That he might’ve known something about what happened two years ago.

Agent Lowell spreads his hands apart. “His mother brought him back in yesterday, and we were able to fill in a few more holes.”

Kennedy told me the police found Hunter, managed to convince him to talk after promising not to bring any charges, but he was still afraid.

“The timing adds up,” Agent Lowell says. “His mother says Hunter first ran off right after she remarried. He’d gotten into a fight with his new stepfather and disappeared for months. Hunter told us that soon after he arrived at the shelter, he noticed that one of the volunteers was taking money from the younger people who were living there. Money they should not have had. He realized they were working for him, most likely distributing drugs.”

    “Liam found out?” I ask. Mike had told me, leaning over me in the middle of the clearing above the quarry, that Liam didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut.