All the Missing Girls

by Megan Miranda

  I yanked all the clothes off the hangers in a desperate last-ditch attempt to find anything, the metal hangers colliding as they swayed. Until I became a girl sitting in the middle of a heap of musty clothes trying to hold her shit together.

  This is what you get for listening to the senile, Nic.

  This is what you get.

  I stood back up and took a deep breath to steady my hands, but the tremor still ran through my fingers. My head dipped down and I tried again, bracing my arms on the wall in front of me, my forehead resting on the plaster, my eyes focusing on the grains of wood below me.

  Dust on the floor, a bobby pin that must’ve been here since my mom was alive, and two tiny screws beside my left foot, kicked into the corner. If I were slowly losing my mind, where would I keep things? I tapped the screws with my bare toe, and as they rolled, I saw that the faces were painted white, like the walls. I checked above me—there was an air-conditioning vent missing its two bottom screws. The top right corner was only partially secured. I sucked in a breath and felt a surge of discovery, of hope. My shaking hands twisted the loose screw until it fell to the floor with the others, the vent hanging at an odd angle, the rectangular duct behind it now exposed.

  I couldn’t see in from this angle, but I reached inside and felt paper—notebooks with spiral binding. I pulled them out, letting them crash to the floor, a few loose-leaf sheets raining down on top. I stood on my toes, reached deep inside, and scooped what I could out of the vent. Papers and dust and notebooks littering the closet floor. How much deeper did this go? How far into this house did my father’s secrets seep? I imagined papers lining the spaces between the walls, like skeletons.

  I jammed the heap of clothes against the wall and stepped on top, pushing myself higher so I could see into the darkness. The vent cut at an angle, jutting upward at ninety degrees near the back. I’d reached for the few remaining scraps, my fingertips just grasping the corner of a yellowed page, when the doorbell rang.

  Shit.

  Shit shit shit.

  Not enough time. Not fast enough. Could they get a search warrant this fast? Would they know what they were looking for? Where to look?

  I froze, holding my breath. My car was out front. They knew I was home.

  The bell again, and the dull thud of someone knocking. I didn’t have to answer. Out for a walk; in the shower; picked up by friends. But did it matter if I was here or not? If they had a warrant, they didn’t need me to be present to gain entry, I was pretty sure.

  I moaned and shoved everything back into the duct. Crumpled the pages and threw them in as far as they would go. Then I replaced two of the screws, but the doorbell rang again and I fumbled with the third screw, so I shoved it into my pocket, then raced down the stairs, my hair a wreck, my clothes a wreck, as if I’d just stumbled out of bed.

  Good.

  I took a deep breath, made myself yawn, and opened the door.

  The sun stood behind Everett, who had his phone out, his hand raised to the door as if about to knock once more. He beamed as I threw myself into his arms with unrestrained relief. Everett. Not the police. Everett.

  My legs were wrapped around his waist and I breathed in his familiar scent—his hair gel and soap and starch—as he walked us inside, laughing. “Missed you, too,” he said. “Didn’t mean to wake you, but I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  I slid down his body, took in his jeans, his lightweight polo, the suitcase on the porch. “I’m surprised,” I said, my hands still on him—his solid arms, the strength of his grip—real. “What are you doing here?”

  “You asked for my help, and you have it. This is one of those things that needs to be handled in person. Also, I wanted an excuse to see you,” he said, his eyes quickly skimming over my disheveled appearance. His smile faltered, and he tried to hide it under feigned confusion. “Where did I put the suitcase? Oh, there . . .” He pulled his suitcase inside the doorway, and when he looked back at me, his expression was typical Everett, calm and collected.

  “So what do we need to do?” I asked, shoulders tense, a headache brewing behind my eyes.

  “I already stopped by the police station on the way here. Delivered the paperwork and demanded they cease all questioning with your father, pending evaluation.”

  I felt my entire body relax, my muscles turning languid. “Oh, God, I love you.”

  He stood in the middle of the living room, taking it all in: the boxes stacked around the dining room and foyer, the rickety table and the screen door that creaked. The floor that had seen better days, the furniture that had been awkwardly pulled away from the walls for painting. And me. He was definitely looking at me. I pressed my palms to my hips to keep them still.

  “I told you I’d take care of it,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  And then it was just Everett and me in this place I thought he’d never see, and I wasn’t sure what to do next.

  His eyes skimmed over me one more time. “It’ll be okay, Nicolette.”

  I nodded.

  “Are you okay?”

  I tried to imagine what he must be seeing: me, a mess. I hadn’t showered since yesterday, and I’d been digging through closets all night. I’d had way too much coffee, and my hands kept shaking if they weren’t holding on to something. “It’s been stressful,” I said.

  “I know. I could hear it in your voice yesterday.”

  “Oh, crap, don’t you have work?” What day was it again? Thursday? No, Friday. Definitely Friday. “How did you get away?”

  “I brought it with me. I hate to do this, but I’ll be working most of the weekend.”

  “How long are you staying?” I asked, brushing by him to drag his suitcase—bigger than an overnight bag—away from the screen door.

  “We’ll see your dad’s doctors today, and hopefully they’ll have the papers we need by Monday. But I’ll have to go after that.”

  I thought of the notebooks in the vents. The door that wouldn’t lock. The missing people, then and now. “We should stay in a hotel. This place has no air, and you’re going to hate it.”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said. “The nearest hotel is at least twenty-­five miles away.” So he had checked, and he wasn’t counting the budget motel that definitely had vacancy on the road between this town and the next.

  “So, show me the place,” he said.

  Suddenly, I didn’t want to. I shrugged, marginalizing the house and all it represented—no longer thinking, That’s my dad’s chair, and my mom’s table, that once belonged to my grandparents, that she stripped down and refinished—instead turning it into a box of wood, trying to see it through Everett’s eyes.

  “It isn’t much. Dining room, living room, kitchen, laundry. Bathroom down that hall and a porch out back, but the furniture’s gone and the mosquitoes are killer.”

  Everett looked like he was searching for a place to put his laptop, specifically, the dining room table. “Here,” I said, shuffling the receipts and papers into piles, scooping things up and dumping them into the kitchen drawers I’d just emptied.

  He put his laptop on the cleared table, along with his accordion-style briefcase. “Can I work here?”

  “Sure. But there’s no Internet.”

  He made a face, then picked up a receipt I’d missed—Home Depot, the nearly illegible date highlighted in bright yellow—and frowned at it.

  I took it from his hands and balled it up like it was inconsequential. “Nobody’s lived here in over a year. Kind of wasteful to pay for Internet.” Not to mention we didn’t have an Internet line before that. Around here, service cut in and out from the satellite if there was an inkling of bad weather, and it wasn’t worth the annoyance for my dad. Most everyone could check email on a phone, but only one service provider worked, and it wasn’t Everett’s. “You could use the library? It’s near the police sta
tion. Not too far. I could drive you.”

  “This is fine, Nicolette. But maybe we can hit the library on the way to see your dad, so I can send a file.”

  “Are you sure? Because—”

  “I’m here to see you,” he said. “Not sit in a library. I missed you.”

  Now that he mentioned it, we hadn’t been apart for this long. Not like we went out of our way to never be separated, but I wondered if we’d just been stuck in the pull of forward momentum, never taking a step back or a step away. What would happen if we paused the track, took a breath?

  He missed me, sure. He wanted to help, sure. But I also had the feeling that his case was getting to him. Maybe he needed a break. Distance. I could hear that in his voice on the phone.

  “What did the police say?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Not much they can say. They didn’t look too happy to see me, but it doesn’t seem to be their top priority at the moment. I’m not sure his statement will help with the current situation.” He looked at me from the corner of his eye as he set up his work on the table. “Tell me about this missing girl. The posters are everywhere.”

  “I wouldn’t call her a girl, exactly, but her name is Annaleise Carter. Her brother saw her walk into the woods, and she wasn’t home the next morning. Nobody’s seen her since.” My eyes involuntarily strayed to the backyard, toward her property.

  “You know her?”

  “Everett, you know everyone in a town like this. We weren’t ever friends or anything, if that’s what you mean. She’s younger than me, but she lived behind us.” I tilted my head toward the kitchen, and Everett went to the window.

  “I only see trees.”

  “Okay, well, not right behind us. But they’re our closest neighbors.”

  “Huh.” He didn’t pull away from the window, and that made me nervous. There were secrets in those woods—the past rising up and overlapping, an unstoppable trail of dominoes already set in motion. I shook my head to clear the thought as Everett turned around. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  The disappearing girls; the police and my father and the things he was saying; the papers in the closet that I had to get rid of before someone else came looking.

  “I lost the ring,” I said, my breath coming in shallow spurts as I tried to tamp down the panic. The sting as tears rushed to my eyes, and Everett going all fuzzy. “I’m so sorry. I took it off to box things up, and we were moving everything around, and now I can’t find it.” My hands started shaking, and he grabbed them and pulled me close. I rested my forehead against his chest.

  “Okay. It’s okay. It’s somewhere in the house, then?”

  “I don’t know. I lost it.” I heard an echo in the house, my ghost, maybe, another version of myself in these halls from another time. I pulled my hands back, balled them into fists. “I lost it.” Two missing girls, ten years apart. The fair, back in town. And all of us. Closing the gap of ten years like it was nothing but an inch. Just a blink. A quick glance over the shoulder.

  “Don’t cry,” he said, running his thumb across my cheek, wiping up the tears. Just a piece of metal, Tyler had said. Just money. “It’s insured,” Everett added. “I’m sure it’ll turn up.”

  I nodded into his chest. His hands pressed lightly against my shoulder blades. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I nodded again. Felt him laugh in his chest. “I never pictured you as a girl who’d cry over a lost ring.”

  I took a slow breath and pulled back. “It was a really nice ring.”

  He laughed for real, louder this time, his head tilted back, like always. “Come on.” He slung an arm over my shoulder as he walked up the stairs, luggage in his other hand. “Finish the tour?”

  I laughed into his side. “You’re going to wish you picked the hotel.” We stood together in the narrow hall that extended the length of the upstairs. One master with a bath, two other bedrooms, connected by a shared bathroom.

  “That’s my dad’s room,” I said, gesturing to the queen bed and the old armoire. I pulled Everett along, shut the door as we passed. “This one was Daniel’s,” I said at the next door, “but he took his furniture.” It had become a dumping ground of things my dad didn’t know what to do with: old novels, teaching material, boxes of lesson plans, dog-eared philosophy books, and notes written in slanted script. “We’re getting a Dumpster delivered next week. Moving on.” I cleared my throat. “This is mine.” The yellow bed looked drab. And the room looked way too small now that Everett was here. He didn’t like staying at my studio; I couldn’t imagine his feelings on this.

  “Maybe we should stay in the other room? It’s got a bigger bed,” he said.

  “I am not sleeping in my parents’ bed. I’ll take the couch if it’s too small for you.”

  He eyed me. Eyed the bed. “We’ll work it out later.”

  * * *

  EVERETT HELD HIS PHONE against the car window and muttered a sarcastic “Hallelujah” when we were halfway to Grand Pines. His phone dinged in response, downloading emails now that we were back in the land of the data plan.

  He scanned the surroundings quickly before diving into his emails. “We should come back in the fall. I bet it’s a sight,” he said. Tap, tap, tap from his cell as he typed.

  “Yeah,” I said, even though we knew we wouldn’t. Fall comes with a vengeance here after the leaves change—for two days, when the wind blows, they rain down in a storm, coating everything like snow.

  “It’s prettier in the winter,” I said.

  “Hmm.”

  “Except if you’re trying to get anywhere. Then this road feels like Donner Pass.”

  “Mmm.” Tap, tap, tap on the keypad, and a whoosh as his message was sent.

  “There’s a monster out here,” I said.

  “Mmm. Wait. What?”

  I grinned at him. “Just checking.”

  * * *

  THE WOMAN WORKING THE reception desk of Grand Pines started preening when we walked in the front door. Back straight, hair flipped, chest out. I was used to it, the unconscious way people reacted to Everett.

  Everett is old-money Philadelphia. His whole family is that way, like old stately buildings and cobblestone and ivy. And as with the Liberty Bell, the imperfections only make them more interesting. More worthy of the life that fate has bestowed on them. Everett can hold court, quite literally—even with his friends, even with me. It’s a spell, a beautiful spell, the way he’s assertive without being bossy, confident without being smug. I imagine his family members were taught this line to walk as they were taught to crawl—Know thy classics and thy beer. Finely tuned, all of them, with a father to disapprove instantly if they veered off course.

  I stood confidently by Everett’s side as he marched into Grand Pines. They never stood a chance, and I knew it.

  As he walked off to see the director, the woman behind the desk raised an eyebrow at me, then the corner of her mouth, as in Nice.

  I nodded. I know.

  But then her eyes assessed me, like she was picking me apart, and I felt the clothes that didn’t fit right, and my hair that wasn’t done, and I knew my hands were probably still trembling from the caffeine.

  “I’m here to see my dad. Patrick Farrell,” I said.

  “Okay, sure,” she said, picking up the phone.

  The nurse I’d seen on the first day led me to the common room, where Dad was playing with a stack of cards, some game that looked like solitaire but didn’t seem to follow any rules I understood.

  “Look who I found, Patrick. Your daughter.”

  He looked up, smiled big and real, and I felt my face doing the same. “Hi, Nic.”

  Such a simple, beautiful sentence.

  “You sure are popular today,” the nurse said, leaving us.

  I grabbed her arm as she walked away. “Who was here? The police?”

&nbs
p; “The . . . what?” She stared at my fingers on her sleeve, and I quickly released her. “No, the man who comes for lunch.” She brushed her hand over her arm, smoothing out the wrinkles.

  “Daniel?” I asked, looking from her to my dad.

  She shook her head. “No, the other one. Patrick, who’s the man who comes to lunch on Fridays?”

  He drummed his fingers against the table and stared past me, a slight grin. “I can’t tell you that, Nic.”

  I grinned at the nurse like I thought this was cute. Funny, even. “Who was here, Dad?”

  “I’m not supposed to tell you.” He had the audacity to laugh.

  The nurse winked at my dad, then turned to me. “Good-­looking guy. Blue eyes, brown hair, always in jeans and work boots . . .”

  I swung my head back to my father, who was chewing the inside of his cheek. “Tyler?” I asked.

  The nurse patted my dad’s shoulder and walked away. He’d scooped up the cards and was focused on dealing the stack between the two of us. I had no idea what to do with my hand. He played a king and seemed to be waiting for something from me.

  “Why the hell does Tyler come here?”

  “Why wouldn’t Tyler come? Did you lay exclusive claim to rights of friendship with Tyler Ellison? Your turn,” he said, gesturing to my cards.

  I threw down an ace, tried to relax my shoulders, to keep this conversation from sliding away from him too quickly. “Ha. I didn’t realize you guys had so much in common.”

  Dad frowned as he picked up the stack, then played a five of diamonds. “Pay attention.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing. Tell me what Tyler wants with you.” I stopped playing, trying to hold his focus.

  He shrugged, avoiding eye contact. “He doesn’t want anything. He just comes.” He gestured to my hand until I threw out a random card. “He’s a good kid, Nic. I think he likes the food.” He looked around the room, like he was momentarily confused. “Or maybe the young nurse over there who works Fridays. I don’t know. But he comes for lunch.” I peered over my shoulder, saw the nurse lingering near the front desk through the doorway. She was shorter than me, her scrubs were nondescript, and her lipstick veered well outside the line of her lips, but she was attractive. Her hair was dark and neat. She was young. Perky.