She ran her hands over the floral dress stretched across her stomach. “Three weeks.”
“Do you know what you’re having?”
Laura cut her eyes to me. “Girl,” she said.
“Any names picked out?”
Again with the look at me as it became obvious that I had not actually told Everett much about her. “Shana.”
“Pretty.”
She cocked her head to the side. “After Dan and Nic’s mom.”
Everett nodded too quickly and Daniel waved his arm toward the living room, rescuing us both. “Nic said you needed to send some emails?” Daniel led him to the couch and Laura dropped the act, her shoulders slumping as she rested against the wall.
“Is this a bad time? Are you okay?” I asked.
Laura pulled me into the kitchen, eyes wide. “Oh my God, Nic,” she said. She was like this—she believed that having the label of sister-in-law meant we were officially confidantes, neither of us having to earn it. Never mind that she’d ignored me all through high school and then after, until she’d started dating Daniel four years ago. It was like she’d suddenly decided we would become close, and was now determined to make it so.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
A timer over the stove started beeping, but Laura didn’t seem to notice. “The police were just here,” she whispered. She was nearly pressed up against me, and the timer was getting more insistent, and I felt a dull headache forming behind my eyes. Daniel finally crossed the room and hit the timer, frowning at the way Laura and I were standing.
“What did they want?” I asked, facing Daniel.
“Oh, you mean other than to push me into early labor?” She rubbed her stomach again, letting out a slow breath. “Have they been to see you?”
“Laura, what did they say?”
“Oh, they didn’t say anything. They asked. They demanded. They treated me like . . . like . . .”
“Laura,” Daniel warned.
Everett stood in the doorway, his laptop folded at his hip. “Everything okay?”
“You finished?” I asked, pulling away from Laura.
“It was just pressing send on a few emails.” His eyes moved systematically from me to Laura to Daniel.
Laura shifted her weight. “You’re a lawyer,” she said. “So tell me, is it legal to question someone for no reason?”
“Laura—” I didn’t want to drag Everett into this. I didn’t want this dragged into my life with him.
“Back up a second,” Everett said. “Are we still talking about your dad?”
Laura leaned back against the counter. “The police just came by here, asking me about Annaleise Carter. For no reason! Can they do that?”
His face tightened, then relaxed. “They didn’t arrest anyone, so they don’t have to advise you of rights. And you don’t have to talk to them. But they can still try.”
She shook her head at him. “Of course you have to talk to them.”
“No, legally—”
She laughed. “Legally.” She pushed off the counter, and she moved her hands to her lower back. “If you don’t talk, they’ll think you had something to do with it. Even I know that.”
“What did you say?” I asked Laura.
“There was nothing to say. It was Bricks, you know, Jimmy Bricks. Remember him? But also another guy, not in uniform. I didn’t know him. He’s the one who did most of the talking. He asked if we knew her, and of course we knew her, but not well. Bricks could’ve told him that. Then he asked when we last had interaction with her, and I wasn’t sure. Maybe church a few weeks ago? Maybe she asked about the baby? I don’t know. I barely knew the girl. Then he asked if Daniel knew her.”
“They’re just fishing,” Everett said.
“What about you?” I asked Daniel. “What did you say?”
“I wasn’t here,” he said, his jaw clenched, when I realized what exactly the police were after. Why Laura thought they might come to me next. Daniel. His name was getting dragged out of the box.
“You know what I thought when they showed up? I thought something had happened to Dan,” Laura said, her hands back on her stomach. She took a deep breath. “They shouldn’t be allowed to do that.” Her hands tightened into fists. “This is our life.”
Daniel rubbed her back. “All right. It’s done,” he said.
“It’s not done,” Laura said, her eyes glistening as she looked up at Daniel. “They’re just getting started.”
Neither of us had any words of comfort after that. We’d lived through it once before, after all.
Even though Annaleise had been our alibi, had corroborated my story that Daniel and I were fighting and he hit me, that didn’t clear him. In fact, that made it worse. By the time the story rolled through town, people wondered what else he did to me behind closed doors. Were those bruises on my back? What happened in that house without a mother, with a half-vacant father?
Were he and Corinne ever involved? they had asked. They’d asked him. They’d asked all of us.
Never, said Daniel.
Never, said Bailey.
Never, said I.
* * *
DINNER WAS BARBECUE CHICKEN and vegetables that Laura had grown herself. She’d also made the sweet tea, which Everett had obviously never tasted before. His eyes gave him away when he took a gulp, but he recovered well enough, and I squeezed his leg under the table.
“Sugar and liquor,” I said. “We take them very seriously.”
He smiled, and I thought maybe we would get through this all right. But it took only until the second gap of silence—knives sliding against the dishes, bread crunching in my mouth—for Laura to start up again.
“They should be looking at the workers from ten years ago, see if there’s any working the fair. I told them that. Two makes a pattern, right?” The ends of her long blond hair were centimeters from brushing her dinner, and I motioned my fork toward her plate. “Oh,” she said. “Thanks.” She brushed it back behind her shoulders.
“Dinner’s delicious,” I said.
“Pass the butter?” Daniel asked.
“They’re looking in all the wrong places,” Laura went on. I tried to catch Daniel’s eye, but he was focused on the chicken he was cutting from the bone, his expression unreadable. She pushed her chair a little farther out, twisting to the side. “Honestly, they should be talking to Tyler more.” My hand froze, my knife over the chicken. She leaned closer, conspiratorially. “No offense, Nic. But he was seeing her, and I heard he was the last phone call on record—”
Daniel put his cup down on the table a little too hard.
“Who’s Tyler?” Everett asked.
Laura laughed at him before she realized he was serious.
Daniel cleared his throat and answered for her. “A friend we grew up with. He was seeing Annaleise. He and his dad own a construction company, and they’ve been helping us with a few repairs.”
“You know, Nic’s Tyler,” Laura said, like that should clear it all up.
“Oh my God,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Ex-boyfriend, Everett. Tyler was my high school boyfriend.”
Everett smiled tightly at Laura. “Nic’s Tyler, huh?” Then to me, “And he’s helping with the house?”
“Oh,” Laura cut in. “But that was years ago. He’s good people. You’d like him.”
Daniel choked, coughed into the crook of his elbow, and Laura reached an arm for him. “Are you okay?”
My fork trembled over my plate, and I pressed my hands to my legs to still them. “You think he’s involved in Annaleise’s disappearance?” I asked. “Is that what you told the cops?”
“No, I didn’t mean to imply that. I just meant they should be asking him questions, not us. He probably knows more— Oh!” Laura gasped, grabbed my hand, and pressed it to her stomach. I froze, trying
to politely pull away, when something rolled, slowly and languidly, and I felt myself sucking in a breath, leaning closer, moving my hands, trying to find it again.
“You feel that?” she asked.
I looked into her face—a little rounder than pretty, balancing out Daniel’s harsh edges—and I felt in that moment how lucky this baby would be. Unlike my mother, Laura would live. And Daniel would know what to do, wouldn’t cower under the weight of responsibilities.
“This will be you guys someday,” Laura said, and I gently pulled back my hands.
Everett finally pretended not to hear part of our conversation, concentrating on his food. Daniel was doing the same.
“This is really good, Laura,” I said.
“It really is,” Everett said.
* * *
I CLEARED THE TABLE with Everett’s help. “Join me for a drink out back?” Daniel said to Everett.
“I’ll join you out back, but I’ll have to pass on the drink.” He grinned at me. “Nicolette took me out and got me toasted last night. You guys don’t mess around down here.”
Daniel laughed. “No, I suppose we don’t. Where’d she take you?”
“Murry’s?” Everett said. “Kenny’s?”
“Kelly’s,” Daniel corrected as I scrubbed the dishes in the sink. “You don’t say.”
I spun around. “Daniel, show him the backyard. Seriously, Everett, if you thought our view was nice? This place is amazing.
“Sit,” I told Laura as she tried to help.
“Thanks. I didn’t mean to get you into trouble with Everett.”
“You didn’t get me into trouble,” I said. “I just don’t talk about home much. Probably caught him by surprise.”
“Okay. Well, I’m sorry,” she said. “I was just shaken. From the cops showing up. And when I’m nervous, I talk too much.”
I nodded, and then I did something that surprised us both as she walked to the back door. I hugged her. My hands were soapy, and the ends of her hair held some crumbs, and I felt her abdomen pressing into my side. “You and Daniel will be fine,” I said, and when I pulled back, she nodded quickly, tears in her eyes. She cleared her throat. “You coming?” She motioned for the back porch, where Everett and Daniel were sitting under the light, watching the sunset.
“In a sec. Gotta use the bathroom.”
I grabbed my purse and waited in the hall until I heard the screen door bang shut. Now that the nursery was almost done, Daniel’s office was mostly a storage area under the stairs, about the size of a walk-in closet. I took out the manila envelope full of cash and used a pen to write Daniel’s name across it. I didn’t think Laura came in here much, but I figured I should leave it inside his desk drawer, just in case.
I owed Daniel money. But if I sent a check, he wouldn’t cash it. If I held it out to him, he wouldn’t take it. I probably could’ve given it to Laura, but I was pretty sure she didn’t know about it. Telling her now would only make her wonder what other secrets Daniel was keeping.
I hadn’t started paying it back for a long time, and it had been hard to scrape together, after rent and lease, on top of school loans. But I was staying here for the summer, and that kid paid me for the sublet up front, and if I let myself get a month behind on the car payment—just this once—I could leave this for him. Before the baby. All debts settled. All ties severed.
He’d given it to me before I left, out of some misguided sense of responsibility. He’d given it to me and let the garage sit, unfinished. For school, he said, and he told me to go. A good sister wouldn’t have taken the money. But he still had that broken nose, and it was hard not to remember. Hard to say no to his black eyes. He said he wanted me to take it. To have it.
Mostly, though, he wanted me to go.
* * *
I PULLED OPEN DANIEL’S drawer, pushed the stack of notepads to the side so he’d see the envelope in the bare spot beside them. But the light from the hall caught on something in the back corner. A flash of silver. The gleam of a key. I looked over my shoulder, then reached deep inside. It looked like a house key, and it was attached by a simple ring to an engraved silver key chain, the loops and swirls coming together in an artistic rendition of the letter A.
Please, no.
I heard laughter from outside. The screen door creaking open.
I took the key. Left the money on top of the desk and slid the key into my pocket.
“Everett?” I called. “I’m sorry, I’m not feeling well.”
They slowly made their way back inside, discussing when we might next be in town. Daniel took a business card from Everett, promising to call if he ever needed anything, anything at all. Everett put a hand on my arm as we walked in the twilight to my car. “That was fun.”
“Liar,” I said.
I cast a quick glance back at Daniel, who watched us from the front window.
The A could stand for anything, I told myself.
The key could be for anywhere.
It didn’t have to mean anything. It didn’t have to be my brother.
* * *
“SO WERE YOU EVER going to tell me about this Tyler guy?”
If the drive were a straight line on a map, it should take only five minutes. But the roads weaved unnecessarily, cutting around forest and mountain, and it would probably take us closer to twenty.
“You’re not about to grill me on ex-boyfriends, are you?” I checked to see if he was kidding. “Oh, you are.”
“Stop trying to be cute,” he said.
“There’s nothing to tell, Everett.”
“That’s not what Laura thought.”
“This is how it is here. Gossip from ten years ago is still relevant. Because nobody ever leaves.”
“But you did.”
“I did.”
He frowned, unconvinced.
“We were just kids, Everett.”
He stretched and leaned his head against the window, and the side of his mouth quirked up. “Did you go to prom with him?”
“Stop,” I said, but he was teasing, and I was laughing. “No prom.”
“Lose your virginity to him at sixteen in the back of his pickup?”
“You’re such a jerk.”
“Because I’m right?” Huge smile.
“No,” I said. Seventeen. In his room. On his bed that was just a mattress and box spring, with the extra blanket he pulled from the couch because he knew I liked it warmer. It was my birthday, and his hands shook on the buttons of my dress, and I put my hands over his to still them, to help him.
The car was too cramped, too hot, and I rolled our windows down, the air running through my hair like a memory I couldn’t grasp.
“A lifetime ago, Everett.”
* * *
I PARKED THE CAR in my driveway, letting the headlights illuminate the empty porch. “Okay, so could this Tyler guy have done something to Annaleise? What do you think?” Everett asked.
God, were we really still talking about this? I turned off the car, the night dark and alive. “Nobody knows if anything even happened to her. Her brother saw her go into the woods. Nobody knows if she came back. Maybe she did. Maybe she left on her own.”
“But could he have?”
Could he have done it? That was quite the question.
He seized on my pause. “I don’t want you staying here by yourself anymore.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Your ex was the last call on record to a girl who disappeared from the woods in your backyard. And he’s been working on your house.”
“Tyler wouldn’t hurt me,” I said as we walked inside.
“People change over the course of ten years, Nicolette.”
“I know that,” I said. Except not really. Not really. People were like Russian nesting dolls—versions stacked inside the latest ed
ition. But they all still lived inside, unchanged, just out of sight. Tyler was Tyler. A man who would never hurt me, I had no doubt. But a man who also once loved it when his girlfriend hung off the edge of a Ferris wheel, a man who pushed Corinne in full view of a party and never made excuses for it.
I checked the kitchen chair, wedged under the back door. Was it off just a bit? To the side? Was this exactly how I’d left it?
“You okay?” Everett called.
I felt electricity everywhere. In the air, in the walls. “Just thinking,” I said.
“Come to bed.”
“Not tired,” I said. I watched our reflection in the window. Everett coming closer. His hand brushing my hair over my shoulder. His mouth pressed to the skin of my neck. “Come to bed with me,” he said again.
I focused on the distance past our reflections, beyond the trees. “Not tired,” I said again.
I felt the weight of the key in my pocket, the ridges pressing up against my skin—all the possibilities, existing all at once.
The Day Before
DAY 12
There was something in this house.
With the skeletons, my dad had said yesterday. He hadn’t been making any sense, but if people got desperate enough, they might try to find meaning in his twisted thoughts, just as I was. And then I wouldn’t be the only one searching.
I had called Everett for advice about my dad, and he’d said he would handle it. But he was in Philadelphia and I was here, and I hadn’t heard from him since yesterday’s phone call. If Everett couldn’t tell me how to get this to stop, they’d eventually search this house, just like I’d been searching all night. Until I realized what Dad must’ve meant: the closet. He’d meant his closet. I’d already gone through mine. And Daniel’s was completely bare.
He meant here, in the unlit closet off the master bedroom. He had to.
But all I could find were his old work clothes that he’d never use again, and the ratty slippers that I really needed to toss, and a few coins scattered across the wood floor, strewn with dust.
All the Missing Girls Page 8
