“I’m so sorry,” he says. “My phone was off when I was at the jail. I didn’t get the message.”
I throw my arms around his back, and he doesn’t let go.
He holds my face between his hands, like my mother might do; his fingers are rougher, and strong. I close my eyes then, no longer trying to hold back the emotion.
“Did you see Elliot?” I ask when I pull back.
“Yeah. I’m sorry, Kennedy.” He shakes his head. “His memory, it’s in fragments. He remembers the sound of the gun. The feel of the recoil. When we asked him more about that night, he shut down.” Joe closes his eyes, like he wants to block it out as well. “But he confirmed the details about where the gun was kept. Hearing what you believe happened, he’s agreed, at least, to try hypnosis, or other therapy. To try to get the pieces back. We’ll have to wait to see what the forensics team pulls from the house. It’s been a long time, Kennedy.”
I had been hoping for a big miracle. For Elliot to suddenly remember. For everyone to automatically believe. But at least it’s something. At least it’s a start.
Joe puts a hand on my back, leading me away. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
I stare at the white sheets of the makeshift tent, moving in the breeze. Joe starts to walk toward the parking lot, where there’s a single officer stationed.
I stop moving, and Joe turns around. “Wait. I need to check on Nolan before we leave,” I tell him.
Joe pauses, his hands in his pockets, looking toward the tent, where they all must be waiting. “He’ll want some time, Kennedy.”
But I think about that, about the time I was in the hospital, when no one came for hours. And then when I was alone in Joe’s house, and still, no one came. All I had was time and space, stretching forever, an endless echo.
“No, Joe,” I say. “You’re wrong.”
Inside that tent is a shadow house, a place of horrors Nolan can only imagine. He’s coming face-to-face with it now; I know he is. All the things that might’ve been. The way his brother might’ve fallen, the way he could’ve twisted. What he might’ve called out as he fell. What Nolan believes he could’ve done to prevent it. The what-ifs will run through his mind, over and over. He will close his eyes, and he will see it.
He won’t notice the rest. The things I shut out for months. The people I didn’t see, right there, on the other side.
“I need to stay,” I tell him. Even if he doesn’t see me yet. “Will you wait for me?”
“Of course, Kennedy.”
As I turn away, Joe calls after me, leans in close so he’s speaking into my ear. “How did you find him? Just between you and me. How did you know where to look?”
I pull back, looking him in the eye. “There were clues in the signal. I told you. It was meant for us.”
I can see it in him, how he wants to believe me. I think he’s trying. I hope it lets him see.
There isn’t enough room at the service. Every seat is taken, and there are people standing around the walls, in a sea of gray and black. So that after, even though people are trying to speak quietly, I still can’t escape the constant buzzing, and I can’t pick any one face from the masses of people here to pay their respects, even two years later.
All these people who missed him. Who miss him.
A shadow has fallen over the house during the last three days, since we found Liam. Since the end.
People have been in and out—police officers, detectives, Agent Lowell—trying to make a case against Mike, all while the news vans have lined the street outside. A new type of chaos. I’ve been asked, over and over, to explain, with my parents sitting beside me. To remember exactly what Mike said to me, what we might be able to use for proof. But their words seem to come through glass, like they’re on the other side of some great divide.
Instead, my mind keeps drifting to that day, over and over. That morning at the sink, with the cut, the drop of blood, the razor clattering.
Why didn’t he tell me? I was right here. If something was on his mind, why didn’t he just say it?
It was Agent Lowell who finally explained, his words cutting through the haze.
“Nolan, I need you to understand, it’s all circumstantial,” he told me yesterday, after my parents left to handle some last-minute arrangements. “We’re holding Mike on an attempted murder charge against you, given your witness statement, alongside Kennedy’s. But is there anything else you can tell us? Something else he said to you about Liam?”
They have no proof. That’s what he was trying to tell me. That all we really have is a statement from me and Kennedy. Everything else is a connection we can see but not prove. The only one who knows for certain what happened that day is Mike.
Mike said Liam didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut, but that’s not true. Whatever was bothering Liam—his hand trembling over the sink—he kept it to himself. He came to the picnic. He must’ve run into Mike there.
We only have what we believe happened after: that Mike took Liam and Colby from the park, brought them to Old Granite Quarry, and pushed Liam over the edge. Then, noticing the video camera, he took the feed from it. And he kept it, for years, until he got word that a developer had bought the land. And then, to save himself, he sent that still-frame photo of Liam to his old girlfriend, Abby, in the hopes of nudging the investigation open again.
If he was trying to pin Liam’s death on me, the photo would have to be sent to someone else. He knew Abby from two years earlier—she had been a big part of the search the first time around.
Mike had worked with my parents in order to keep an eye on any information about Liam that came through. He always knew exactly what was happening in the case.
But they can’t try a case against him on belief alone. They need something solid. Something real.
“Something happened at the shelter,” I told Agent Lowell, but I was sure I’d already said it. We’d been at this for two days, in one form or another, but it all blurred together.
“I know,” he said. “And we’re interviewing everyone we can, taking statements. But there’s been a lot of turnover, and people aren’t always willing to talk.”
Or able to.
I closed my eyes and pictured Kennedy, peering into the bedroom window that night. Or Elliot, jarred from his desk, walking out into the hallway. The way some details stick and others fade; how time slips.
My phone buzzed beside me on the couch. Kennedy, I was sure. Each morning for the last three days, there’s been a message waiting for me. Throughout the day, too. I never know what to reply, how to balance both things: the grief overwhelming everything, alongside the rest. Even though I never respond, the notes keep coming. Little things, just to let me know she’s there. And that one, the one I read with Agent Lowell sitting across from me, said she would be here today. At the service.
* * *
—
Every time I think I catch a glimpse of her, the crowd shifts and I lose sight. Every few steps someone else stops me to see how I am, to offer their support, or a memory. It’s the memories, each time, that pull me back. Like they’re giving me something. Something new. Two years later, and a piece of Liam still catches me off guard.
I’m in the middle of a circle of his friends, home from college, when someone steps aside, making space for Abby. Her eyes lock with mine, then drift to the side.
My throat tightens. I remember the last words she spoke to me as well. You are so cruel. I wanted her to be lying. I wanted her to be wrong.
“Abby,” I say, stepping closer, even though it’s crowded. With the number of people around us, talking, it’s almost the same as being alone.
She waves a hand in front of her face. “It’s okay,” she says, like she can tell exactly what I’m trying to say.
I shake my head. “It’s not.”
She looks ov
er her shoulder, to the pictures of Liam up at the front of the room. “No, you’re right,” she says. I can see her throat moving. “I just missed him so much,” she whispers, and it’s like she’s talking about something else. That day in the car, the one we’ve both tried desperately to forget.
“I know. Me too.”
A guy I’ve never seen before places a hand on her shoulder, and she looks up at him. “I’ll just be one moment,” she says, and then the pink rises up her neck.
I watch him go, but he doesn’t make it far. Just waits beside the wall, eyes scanning the crowd. Someone here not for me, or for Liam, but for her. “You have a boyfriend?” I ask. I can’t keep the surprise from my voice. But I don’t know what I expected—for life to just freeze for the rest of us?
She fidgets with her hair. “Yeah, yes. Five months now.”
I nod slowly, and she presses her lips together. “Oh. I mean, that’s good. He looks…” But I don’t know what to say. I don’t know anything about him, other than the fact that he’s not Liam. “I’m glad he came with you.”
“I’m sorry,” she adds, her eyes turning glassy. I want to tell her she doesn’t need to be sorry, that it’s a stupid thing to say to me. But then I think that maybe it’s not meant for me.
“He’d want you to be happy,” I say.
* * *
—
After Abby leaves, the crowd thins, and I’ve missed Kennedy. I drive home with my parents, feeling too cramped in the backseat, none of us sure what to say to one another.
The silence, when we walk through the front door, feels permanent. This is the way it will be from now on. Until tomorrow, at least, when the volunteers return, at my mother’s request. I didn’t understand. They all deserve to be found, she told me. I thought finding Liam would mark the end of something. A line that divided before and after. But I was wrong. Tomorrow, they’ll keep going.
But today, there’s just the silence. Just the three of us, in this quiet, empty house.
Mom drops her bag on the couch and steps out of her shoes. Dad takes off his suit jacket and stands facing that wall—all those eyes, looking back.
The phone rings, shattering the silence, and my mom jumps. For a while, they had the ringer turned off, letting the calls from reporters and friends alike fill up the voice mail.
It rings again, and my mom just stares at it, and it reminds me of when Liam first went missing, how they had been waiting for a call, any call, that would tell them their son would be coming home soon—and now that call will never come.
I answer the phone, just to get it to stop.
“Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?” The voice on the other end belongs to a woman who sounds about my mother’s age, maybe older.
“Yeah, I’m here,” I say. Last thing I want is for them to call right back if I hang up.
“I’ve been trying to get through for days. I saw on the news…” Her voice wavers with emotion.
I close my eyes, willing this call to go faster, to get this over with. A well-meaning stranger. Or worse.
“I live in Collins County,” she continues, which doesn’t mean much to me. “And my house, it backs up to Northridge Forest.” Still nothing. “I think I have something that belongs to you.”
In the end, it’s a lawyer I’ve never met who convinces Elliot to see me. To talk to all of us, to try to piece together his fragmented mind.
I’ve taken this drive before, and I’m just about to direct Joe when he swerves over to the exit ramp. I check my phone one last time before sliding it into my bag. My nerves are frazzled. The initial excitement about seeing my brother again has turned to fear, and the only person I thought could read between the lines of my message—Going to see my brother today—still hasn’t responded to any of my texts. It’s been two days since I saw Nolan at the service, and still nothing.
Joe eases the car into a parking spot, and suddenly I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what to say, how to act. Joe opens his car door; then, seeing I’m still sitting there, he closes it again.
“I don’t know what to say,” I explain, shaking my head.
Joe sighs. “He’s your brother. You’ll know what to say.”
But it’s been six months, and I’ve been out here, and he’s been in there, and it suddenly seems like an impossible distance to bridge.
Joe shifts in his seat so he’s facing me. “Okay, so, a few things. He’s lost some weight. His hair is ridiculous again, always half in his eyes; it’s driving me crazy.”
I raise my head and crack a grin, picturing the Elliot he used to be. Remembering the look on my mother’s face when he cut his own hair. The laughter I could barely contain.
“And,” Joe continues, “he’s scared.”
“But I thought you said the lawyer was optimistic—”
“He’s scared of what you think of him. That’s why he didn’t want to see you, all this time. What he remembers…” Joe looks out the window, like he’s seeing it, too, then shakes it off. “What he remembers is seeing you through the glass, with the gun in his hand. You are the one thing he remembers.” The one thing that breached the divide that night. That cut straight through to him.
I stare out the glass, remembering his expression. The line that divides his life as well.
“I’m ready,” I say.
When we finally make it through—leaving our things, all connections to the outside world—the first thing I see is the lawyer’s back, leaning across the table as he speaks.
But then there’s the sound of metal on metal as his chair pushes back and Elliot stands, looking over the lawyer. He is exactly like Joe said: skinny, in desperate need of a haircut. I can see the toll of six months in here. Six months alone. But none of it matters right then; I only see my brother.
His eyes, shadowed underneath, jump from Joe to me, and he holds my gaze, his expression softening. Whatever he was looking for, he must already see it.
“Hi,” he says, and the word makes me smile, despite where we are, and everything that’s happened. It’s the sound of his voice—a thing I didn’t even realize I’d been missing these last six months.
And then I hug him, even though I know we’re not supposed to, but that’s okay, because Joe was right—he’s my brother, and I don’t even have to think about it. I hear him mumble “I’m sorry,” over and over, until he takes a seat at the table.
“No,” I say, sitting next to Joe, across from Elliot. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you there.” I look up at him, across the table, through my blurred vision, and he’s shaking his head, like he doesn’t understand. “I’m sorry I left you in here.” That’s what I’ve been thinking, all this time. If only I had called his name that night, called him back to me. Let him know that I believed him right then—that he hadn’t done this. If maybe that would’ve brought him back, right away.
“I should’ve done so many things differently,” he says. “Before. After.” He shakes his head. “I missed you a lot, Kennedy.”
My eyes lock with his across the table, and it’s then I believe it: he will come back to me.
The lawyer walks us through the case, but Elliot keeps his eyes down on the table the whole time, his hands folded together, like he can’t bear to hear it. How many times, I wonder, has he had to endure this? The horrors he’s seen, which I can only imagine.
“Elliot was sitting at his desk, working on a project, and didn’t hear his mother and Will come home. The first thing he remembers is the sound of a shot,” the lawyer says.
Joe puts a hand on Elliot’s arm, as if to steady him. Just as he did for me.
The lawyer lays out the things Elliot must have told him, about the Will none of us ever saw. The controlling, manipulative version, who used Elliot’s grades and his status at school to undermine his concerns, who isolated our mother from her colle
agues—and us.
“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.
Come Find Me Page 24
