All the Missing Girls

by Megan Miranda

  He must’ve found her and . . .

  But no. Wait. I knew Annaleise had gotten away from him. Followed the river. Reached the motel and shimmied through the back window before calling Daniel again. From the hotel phone, because hers was in her purse.

  I didn’t understand. Why had she called Daniel’s house? She’d been trying to get away from him. Daniel was probably here, anyway. It made no sense. But I’d stood in that motel room, and I’d hit redial, and I’d heard the machine: Laura’s voice, cheerful and welcoming, dancing through my head: You’ve reached the Farrells . . .

  Laura. Not Daniel’s cell. Annaleise had called the house, knowing Daniel wasn’t there.

  She had called Laura. My hand rose to my mouth in sudden understanding.

  “It’s not Daniel,” I whispered. Tyler nodded, staring at the mess around him, but I wasn’t sure if he believed me or if he thought this was just me, hoping.

  But I could feel it all coming together—could see all the pieces lining up in reverse.

  Annaleise’s whole world was shrinking to a point, and this must’ve been the only card she had left. Her only way out. Tell Laura. Tell her about her dangerous husband, his dangerous family. No need for the blackmail pictures to come into it if she could convince Laura to come forward instead.

  Where’s your husband right now? I can tell you. Chasing me through the woods to keep me silent. He has my purse. My phone. It’s not safe for you. Someone in that house killed Corinne Prescott. You must know that.

  I tried to imagine Laura picking up the phone, listening to Annaleise. Would she believe her? Would she listen? Daniel had said Laura wasn’t home when he got back—that she’d probably gone to her sister’s place. That she was upset. She’d done that before, if rumors were to be believed.

  But what if she hadn’t? What if she’d answered that call and listened? What would she do?

  What if my brother had been telling the truth: that he followed Annaleise to the river, and then he lost her. His arm reaching out, fingers grasping the edge of her bag, and yanking. The handle breaking, the purse dropping, the buckle lost in the mud. All he had was her purse, her phone, her key. And he’d hidden it all, and waited.

  As the days passed and she didn’t reappear, he must’ve felt that net closing. All the secrets, threatening to shake loose—then and now. He used her key to check for evidence at her place, to go through her files, deleting himself from her history as the investigation gained force. Hid the key after in his desk just in case, where he figured Laura wouldn’t look—and where I’d found it. The only thing my brother had been trying to cover up was the rumored affair. He knew, as well as I did, what it could lead to.

  But somehow Annaleise ended up dead in a field of sunflowers. Just lying there.

  Daniel would’ve buried her. Brought the body to one of his abandoned sites. But Laura . . .

  I closed my eyes and saw it all sliding into focus:

  Laura picking Annaleise up from the motel—Where are you? I’ll come and get you—with Dad’s gun in the glove compartment. Laura driving her out toward Johnson Farm, away from town, just driving around—so we can talk—listening to Annaleise accuse her husband and her husband’s family. Laura, who had already started a list of slights. The rumors about Annaleise, or maybe more, that had made her leave Daniel for a while months earlier; and now this. This woman, threatening to take down everything Laura had planned. Laura, who was eight months pregnant and had an entire life stretching out before her: one that included Daniel. She was so close, she could see it. The life she wanted, the life she was owed.

  Laura, who could not dig a garden, let alone bury a body, but needed a place to get this woman away from her family.

  Daniel was right—I underestimated Laura. I underestimated how fiercely she loved my brother, my family, her future. I underestimated the lengths everyone here would go to for each other.

  I underestimated how much I wanted to come back.

  * * *

  TYLER LOOKED OUT THE window because the sirens were getting louder. A shudder ran through him.

  “I tried to get there first, Nic. I did get there first. I was trying to find the ring, but I heard the sirens, and I ran . . . I ran out of time.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. The sirens were closer, moving with purpose, and Tyler was trembling in the middle of the kitchen.

  “No, it’s not okay.” His hands shook. Did he touch her? He must have. “They found—” He ran both hands down his face.

  “They found the ring?” I asked, my vision turning hazy.

  He shook his head. “A letter.”

  “She sent a letter?”

  “No. No. It was tucked inside her waistband. I didn’t see it. I heard the sirens and I ran.”

  “So then how do you know?” I asked. He had run, he said. And it looked like he had driven straight here.

  “Everyone knows!” he said. “Jackson called just before I got here. To make sure I’d heard.” He winced, dropped his head in his hands. “To make sure I’d heard about the piece of paper folded over and addressed to the Cooley Ridge Police Department.” He fixed his eyes on me. “No envelope. Like she meant to leave it for them somehow. An anonymous letter.”

  I pictured the blank pad of paper from the hotel, imagined her scrawling a note in desperation. Pictured her tucking it away when Laura pulled up to get her, saving it for later. “What did it say?” I whispered. All the terrible possibilities echoing in my head. All the reasons Daniel had just called in a panic, telling me to get out.

  Nothing keeps in this place.

  Tyler paused. Lowered his voice. “That they could find the body of Corinne Prescott on the property of Patrick Farrell. Advising them to take a hard look at Nic Farrell and Tyler Ellison.”

  I felt my body start to tremble, mirroring Tyler’s. “Oh, God.”

  Annaleise had not meant to be tied to the letter. An anonymous note and Laura. She was counting on both in a desperate effort to come out unscathed.

  “Listen, I’m sure someone saw my truck. The family who found her was waiting out on the road. Even if they didn’t see me, someone saw the truck. They can place me in the field. I’m covered in pollen. It looks bad. I need to go. I have a cabin in Tennessee. It’s not registered under any name, just this place I built on my own a few years back. I need to disappear for a while. I set it up this weekend just in case.”

  Tyler had been in the field of sunflowers with Annaleise’s body, with a note implicating us. Maybe he could explain away Annaleise. Maybe he could even prove it. But not without revealing what had happened ten years ago. Corinne comes back to us.

  To me.

  His truck, which I had been driving. He’s always known. But he let me believe that I wasn’t at fault. That something else must have happened to Corinne on the side of the road after we left. He let me believe I was innocent.

  The box is full of lies, but none of them has the same type of power. There is nothing more dangerous, nothing more powerful, nothing more necessary and essential for survival than the lies we tell ourselves.

  I stuck my finger in his chest, a desperate plea rising in my throat, coming out in a gasp. “You swore I didn’t kill her. You promised I didn’t do anything wrong. You swore.”

  His eyes closed and he took a slow breath—time stretching, pausing, giving me one more moment, just one more. “You didn’t, Nic. She threw herself in front of the truck. She killed herself. She did it.”

  There’s a moment when you know, Everett said. When you can’t explain it away anymore. And you can never go back.

  Up until the moment I saw those pictures, all the possibilities could still exist. She left. She ran away. Someone else hit her. She jumped.

  She jumped.

  I believed she would do that. Hearing her whisper at the top of the Ferris wheel. Seeing her step out in front o
f my car. After Hannah Pardot broke her open, I believed it even more. Corinne Prescott was the most deliberate person I knew. She would’ve done it.

  But it had been me—me behind the wheel, Corinne dead, and Tyler the one who would pay for it.

  “Get out of here, Nic. Right now. Drive straight back to Philadelphia. There’s still time. Don’t look back.”

  No, I suddenly saw what I needed to do.

  How to ask for Cooley Ridge to let me come back. How to pay my very last debt.

  It’s your turn now, Nic.

  “You were never at Johnson Farm,” I said. “Whoever saw your truck is wrong. You’ve been here. Listen to me, Tyler. Listen, and do exactly what I say.”

  * * *

  THE SIRENS GREW INSISTENT, but Tyler was wrong, we had time. I could make time work for us. Right now it could save us.

  I could see it so clearly, the debts I was meant to pay. Ten years. That’s the cost. That’s the trade. Corinne has weighed and assessed and assigned it a value. The ten years I’ve fought for. That’s what was owed. Like it’s a blink. Like nothing.

  Pay your debts, like everyone else.

  My father for hiding her body. Jackson for not taking her back. Tyler, my enabler.

  The fairness of it all, the give-and-take, like a ledger of rights and wrongs. I could feel her in this house. How could I not see it before? Of course she had been here. Of course.

  And it was so clear that I would do it. I would pay. But not for Corinne.

  “Get in the shower,” I said.

  “Nic, it’s too late—”

  “Leave your clothes in the bathroom and get in the shower.”

  “It’s the middle of the day, and it’s not my house. This makes no sense. I came to say goodbye.”

  I gripped his arm. “I know you did. And I’m telling you to get in the goddamn shower, Tyler. Please trust me.”

  I used a paper towel to wipe up the mud he’d trailed through the kitchen, as the sirens got closer. They were coming here. They were coming for us. “Run,” I said. And he did.

  I left his work boots in the back of Dad’s closet, as if they were his. Took the key in the slipper and tossed it into the vent, as far as it would go.

  Then I ran to my bathroom. His clothes were on the floor, like I’d asked. I picked them up and ran them down to the laundry room with a pile of my own clothes, starting the machine. Tyler’s clothes from last week were still in my dresser drawer, and I threw them on the floor of the bedroom. Slid out of my own and left them on the floor, too.

  “Okay,” I said, stepping into the bathroom. “Everything’s okay.”

  The first thing they see is everything. The first thing we say. An investigation lives and dies by first impressions. The story takes a life of its own from there.

  The first thing they need to see is me and Tyler coming out of the shower together. It’s the story they wanted in the first place. The motive they wanted to nail Tyler with. Me and him together and Annaleise dead because of it. Now jealousy would be Annaleise’s motive instead.

  * * *

  I HEARD THE KNOCKING, could see the lights coming through my bedroom window from the bathroom, flashing red and blue against the far wall. I grabbed a towel, wrapped myself in it, handed one to Tyler to do the same. I threw on a bathrobe, padded down the stairs, and opened the door to Mark Stewart, Officer Fraize, Jimmy Bricks, and that guy from State—what was his name? Detective Charles? It didn’t matter. It really didn’t.

  Water dripped from my hair in the silence that followed. Mark Stewart blushed, looking away from my robe.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Did something happen? Is my dad okay?”

  Tyler came down the steps behind me, dripping wet, buttoning his pants. “What is it?” he asked. He, too, froze. “What’s going on?”

  “Nic. Tyler.” Officer Fraize nodded at each of us.

  The detective was frowning behind him. “I thought you hadn’t been seeing each other,” he said.

  I folded my arms across my chest. “Hardly seems like any of your business.”

  “Lying during an investigation . . .” His words trailed off as a car pulled up behind them. I craned to see Daniel’s car over his shoulder.

  “Why is Daniel here?” I said. “Is anyone going to tell me what you’re all doing here?”

  “We have a few questions. We’d like permission to take a look around,” Detective Charles said.

  Tyler put a hand on my shoulder. “What’s this about?”

  “I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news,” Bricks said. “We found Annaleise. She’s dead.”

  Tyler’s hand curled into the fabric of my robe. “So you came to question me?” he asked.

  “No,” he said. “That’s not why we’re here.” Detective Charles looked over his shoulder again, at Daniel jogging toward us, at Tyler’s truck parked behind mine. “When did you get here, Mr. Ellison? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  I tried to calculate how long it had been since Everett had left. Tried to give Tyler as much of an alibi as possible. “About an hour ago? Maybe more?” I said, peering up at Tyler. His eyes locked with mine, his lips slightly parted, like he was watching the story in my head playing out, becoming real.

  He nodded. “Yeah. About then,” he said.

  Daniel pushed his way through the crowd, tried to hide his surprise as his eyes darted between me and Tyler, both of us dripping wet, on display. “Everett’s on his way back,” he said. “I caught him just as he was getting to the airport.”

  My stomach hollowed out, and I felt Tyler tense beside me.

  Daniel turned to the detective. “Our lawyer told us not to talk. Not to let you in.” He held up his hands—Not my call, just following orders—“Sorry.”

  * * *

  I LEFT DANIEL AND Tyler on the porch with the police while I got dressed, cracking open my bedroom window. I heard steps on the porch as Bricks and Officer Fraize circled the house, pausing to peer inside the windows. Eyes, eyes everywhere.

  Detective Charles was near the garage, also peering in the windows, occasionally crouching low to examine something on the ground. My heart was pounding, and I couldn’t even ask Daniel about Laura, as he was busy keeping watch on the front porch.

  It wasn’t long before Everett’s cab returned, leaving him halfway up the driveway. He froze as he exited the taxi, then took a second collecting his luggage. Composing himself, I knew. Processing the scene. His fiancée’s brother and another man on the porch. Two police cars and an unmarked car along the road. Officers in and out of uniform, circling my property.

  I stepped outside, and Everett’s eyes swung toward mine with the creak of the screen door. He introduced himself to the police, all businesslike, very curt and Philadelphia, which wasn’t the best approach, honestly, but it got the point across. “Do you have a warrant for the premises?” he asked the detective before acknowledging me. Business Everett. Efficient Everett.

  “We’re in the process of securing one,” he said.

  “So that would be no, then,” Everett responded.

  “We’d like to ask them some questions. You’re free to sit in. The warrant will be granted, I can assure you.”

  “Great. Then at that time, you can come back. They’re not answering, and you all need to back up. Off the property, gentlemen.” To me, “Get inside, Nicolette.” Nobody moved, me included. “Okay, or stay on their property and I’ll file a complaint with the state.”

  That’s not how it’s done around here. It makes us look guilty. Appearances are everything.

  “It’s not my property,” I said. “Not yet. I don’t know what my dad would want—”

  “Nicolette,” Everett snapped, “get in the house.”

  Bricks raised his eyebrows but backed away. The group walked slowly toward their cars. But they didn’t leave.
The unmarked car remained on the street; Officer Fraize spoke to the detective through the window.

  “Inside,” Everett said, motioning for all of us to follow him. “And you are . . . ?” he asked as the door shut behind him.

  “Tyler Ellison.” The silence that followed was long and excruciating, until Daniel started pacing, pulling Everett’s focus.

  “They’re not leaving,” I said.

  “They’re waiting for a warrant to come through, and in the meantime, they’re making sure you don’t ditch anything. Jesus Christ,” Everett said, dropping his bags near the door. “Care to fill me in on what started this shit storm? I just left, for fuck’s sake.” The prescriptions were unopened on the table, and I saw him taking that in, and my wet hair, Tyler’s bare feet.

  “They found Annaleise’s body,” I said. “She was shot.” I saw Daniel tense. “And she had a letter. Accusing us in Corinne’s disappearance.”

  “Accusing who?” he asked. “Your dad? Or all of you?”

  “It’s complicated, Everett.”

  “Try me,” he said.

  I couldn’t look at his face. I could tell he wanted to understand. I could tell he was still hoping.

  But you have to pay your debts.

  I turned to Daniel, who was standing against the wall. “You should go home. You should check on Laura,” I said. I wondered if he knew. If he suspected. He must know the key was missing from his desk; maybe he just assumed Laura found it and took it, silently punishing him. She’d been out that night, after all. I wondered if he’d ask. Or if he’d go home and check his gun. If he’d say anything at all.

  I walked over and hugged him. “Thank you for coming,” I said. And then, with my mouth pressed close to his ear: “You went home after the bar. Laura was there. You were together.” He moved his hands to my back, pressing his head closer to my shoulder to show he was listening. “Make sure Dad’s gun is never found.”