by A J Rivers
“I thought the epidural was supposed to take away the pain,” I say.
Bellamy definitely doesn’t look as if she’s not in any pain.
“Sometimes they don’t take full effect. It took the edge off, and she was able to rest a little bit, but then the pain came back. They don’t want to give her more medication if they don’t have to, so she’s getting through it,” Eric explains.
I go to Bellamy and run my hand over her sweaty hair. “Is there anything I can do?”
Without saying anything, she reaches up and takes my hand. Her other reaches for Eric. He and I look at each other and smile.
“Xavier’s log. Stardate… early August. Maybe later. I’ve lost track. Bellamy has been in labor for approximately four thousand hours. No end is in sight. Morale is dwindling. Supplies running low. God help us all.”
I put my phone back in my pocket.
“It was just a message from Xavier,” I say. “How are you doing? Need anything?”
“For this baby to be out of me,” Bellamy says.
“I would offer to squeeze you like a tube of toothpaste to help you along, but I don’t think that’s considered an appropriate tactic,” I say.
She nods. “I appreciate your willingness.”
“I’m going to go check on the guys. I’ll be back.”
“Tell them I really appreciate that they’re here, but they don’t have to stay. They can go home and rest.”
I lean down to kiss Bellamy on the top of the head, then rub Eric’s back encouragingly as I walk out of the room. This time when I get to the waiting room, I find Xavier facedown on the enormous teddy bear. Dean is sitting on the floor nearby, scrolling through something on his tablet, while Sam sleeps on a bed he’s crafted out of several of the waiting room chairs.
It looks a little bit like one of the vending machines exploded. One of the small tables overflows with wrappers and bottles from the various snacks and drinks they’ve bought since we got to the hospital. Another table has the remnants of at least a couple of trips to the cafeteria.
“Everybody hanging in there?” I ask.
“It’s a little touch and go,” Dean says. “How are things going with Bellamy?”
“Still working on it,” I say. “She really appreciates that you guys are here, but she knows you’re tired and it isn’t the most fun in the world to be here waiting. She says you can go home and we will let you know when the baby gets here.”
“No,” Xavier says, his head popping up from the bear. “We’ve been here this long. This is our reality now, and it cannot change until we have seen the conclusion. We can get through this. I can start the song again. Let’s do ginger ale.”
“Start it on the inside, Xavier,” Dean says. “I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”
Xavier’s face ends up right back in the teddy bear, and I lower myself down to sit next to Dean.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Looking through the pictures from Ashley’s social media again. I’ve run them through a reverse image search trying to connect them to something, but they aren’t coming up. Which means she took these pictures herself, rather than downloading them. So now I’m trying to isolate images in the back and on the edges to try to figure out where they might be,” he explains.
“Finding these places could be really significant,” I say. “Or it could mean nothing. That’s the thing we have to remember. Ashley was thirteen years old when she took these. Girls at that age tend to not make a whole lot of sense all the time.”
“That’s true,” he says.
“What about the poetry and captions she has on her page? Does any of them stand out to you? They seem to be fairly standard stuff for a young teen girl. Trying to figure out emotions, dealing with her identity. Some of them talk about having feelings for someone,” I say.
“But there’s nothing to indicate that might be this Prince Charming older man,” Dean says.
“Not directly. She talks about its being wrong that she wants him the way she does. But honestly, that could just mean he’s a friend’s brother. Making it forbidden would make it more dramatic for her. Which, of course, means more romantic,” I say.
“What’s romantic?” Sam mumbles in a somewhat croaking voice from his pieced-together bed.
“Nothing,” I say. “We’re just talking about Ashley Stevenson’s social media.”
He nods and starts the process of unfolding himself from the chairs.
The door to the waiting area suddenly flings open and Eric appears at it.
“Emma. Come on,” he says.
I jump up and rush after him to the room where Bellamy is now positioned in the bed. She reaches for us as we come in and Eric and I each take a hand on either side of her.
“You ready for this?” I ask Bellamy.
“Come on,” she says with a hint of a laugh. “This is nothing.”
It turns out Xavier was right to put the caveat in his greeting to Eric. It’s just before six in the morning when I go to the waiting room for the last time.
“Guys,” I say, “there’s someone who wants to meet you.”
The three tired, grumpy men follow me to the recovery room where they moved Bellamy just a few minutes ago. She’s sitting up in a fresh nightgown, cradling a little pink bundle in her arms. But as soon as they see her, the grumpiness is instantly gone.
“Hi,” Bellamy says softly, looking up from the baby’s face to them. “You can come closer.”
They all creep ahead until they are at her bedside, gazing into the peaceful tiny face.
“Everybody,” Eric says, reaching over from where he’s standing next to me at Bellamy’s head. “This is Emmabelle.”
Bellamy and I look at each other with teary smiles and I lean forward to rest my forehead against hers. I couldn’t believe it when she told me the name she gave her baby girl. It’s an honor I can barely put into words.
Sam and Dean coo over the baby, asking all the expected questions you ask after a baby is born. How long? How much does she weigh? Did she cry a lot?
But I notice Xavier is standing in silence, staring at the baby with his head tilted slightly to the side as if he can’t quite process something.
“You alright, Xavier?” I ask.
He doesn’t look at me but steps up closer to the edge of the bed and reaches his hands out toward the baby. When Bellamy doesn’t immediately move, he wiggles his fingers at her to urge her. She glances at Eric, then carefully places the newborn into Xavier’s hands. He takes her gently and cradles her as he walks across the room to the window at the far side.
Adjusting her position, he leans Emmabelle against his chest while supporting the side of her head so they can look out the window together.
“You see that?” he asks softly. “That’s the sunrise. I wanted you to see the very first sun on your very first day of life. I always like to watch the sun come up on my birthday and I’m honored to share it with you.”
My eyes widen and snap over to Sam, then to Dean. He looks just as surprised as I feel.
“Xavier?” I say.
He turns away from the window with a serene look on his face. “Hmm?”
“Today is your birthday?”
He nods and holds the baby up slightly to display her. “Our birthday.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” I ask.
He shrugs as he settles her onto his shoulder and rocks her tenderly. “Turning another year older doesn’t seem like an accomplishment that needs celebrating. She was just successfully born. That’s worth celebrating.”
Dean crosses the room to him.
“Xavier, another year with you on this earth is definitely worth celebrating.”
“Absolutely, it is. And after everything you’ve been through, the fact that you’re here right now is even more worth celebrating.”
“It is?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “We have to do something special. Think of something you’d like to do.”
He nod
s. “I will.” He looks at Emmabelle again. “Maybe when you’re a little bigger we can have a joint birthday party. How about unicorns?”
I smile. That seems appropriate.
Twenty-Four
I’m on the phone with my father as we get back to the house a couple hours later. He’s upset he missed the baby’s birth, but work took him out of town for a few days.
“Bellamy will bring her over to meet you when you get back,” I tell him.
“Good. I can’t wait to see her. How’s everything else?” he asks.
I let out a breath. “Still sifting through things. In all the cases.”
“It will come together,” he says. “You’ll figure it out.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“You sound exhausted. Get some sleep. I’ll see you in a couple days.”
We get off the phone and I kick off my shoes. Without a word, Xavier heads toward the back of the house and disappears into my bedroom. He’ll sleep in there while Sam and I take over my father’s room and Dean crashes on the couch. I’m exhausted. I know I should be heading right to bed, but I can’t make my brain quiet down.
I suddenly realize I haven’t eaten anything since before we even showed up to the hospital, with the exception of a couple of chips I snagged from Sam during one of my forays into the waiting room, so I head for the kitchen. I don’t have it in me to cook a whole meal. Thank goodness for the frozen burritos my father thinks are delicious, even if his doctor tells him he really shouldn’t be eating them.
I microwave a stack of them and bring them into the living room. Just as I’d expected, Dean is sitting on the couch with his tablet on his lap. Sam is in the chair to the side, leaned over so he can see the screen. I set the plate on the coffee table and go back for drinks.
“What do you think?” I ask Sam, nodding toward the screen.
We don’t even have to talk about not going to sleep or diving right back into the case. It’s obvious we’re all on the same page.
“Do you remember when we were teenagers and there was that abandoned drive-in the next town over?” he asks.
I nod as I hand him his drink. “Yeah. That’s where everybody went to hang out until we got caught and they put up the fence.”
“Right. These places have that same kind of feeling, though. They don’t seem to be just random places or places she might have visited once,” he says.
“That’s what I thought, too,” I say. “They feel significant. Dean, did you notice anything new about them?”
“There’s definitely at least one building. This hazy coloration on the side here looks like brick. But that’s all I’ve been able to really narrow down right now. I’m not familiar with the area, so it’s harder to come up with ideas of what it might be,” he says.
For the next half hour we eat our way through the burritos and talk about the case, trying to piece together anything we can. It’s leaving us stumped, and that’s frustrating as hell. We’re getting ready to call it a night when Xavier wanders down the hallway back into the living room. He looks as if he’s still most of the way asleep.
“The only way two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead. The internet never dies,” he says. “Emma, I want to ride a roller coaster for my birthday.”
“Okay, Xavier,” I say.
He turns and goes back to the bedroom. Dean and I look at each other.
“Holy shit,” Dean says.
I nod and grab my computer. Logging into Ashley’s social media, I scroll through until I find the names I’m looking for.
“Both are old accounts,” I point out. “Neither Vivian or Allison has posted on these accounts in a couple of years.”
“Probably moved on to newer and better things,” Sam says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Without Ashley.”
“Let’s see what kinds of secrets they’re keeping,” Dean says.
We go back through the accounts until we get to around the time Ashley disappeared, and we scrutinize the postings.
“Nothing,” I say after going through Allison’s page. “As in, literally. There are no posts for three days. That doesn’t make sense. She was all over it before that. And then after.”
We go through Vivian’s account and see that there are a few more postings than Allison’s, but nothing that seems to make any connection. I’m disappointed until I notice a comment.
“‘It looks better at night,’” I read. “What does that mean? Somebody posted that on a picture of her feet.”
“Not just anybody,” Dean points. “Look at the name.”
“Tegan Herrara,” I say. “That’s the guy Allison and Vivian said Ashley was with the night she disappeared.”
“And who died not long after,” Dean confirms.
“And he’s hitting on this girl…because of her feet?” Sam asks, sounding confused.
“I mean, maybe,” I say. “That’s a thing. But I don’t think so. I think there was another picture on this post and she deleted it.”
I click on Tegan’s name and scroll through the brief stretch after the disappearance. A picture immediately jumps out at me. “Look.”
Dean looks at the picture on the screen, then at his tablet. “That’s the same place. It’s a different angle and it’s obviously at night, but it’s the same place.”
I nod. “It’s from the night Ashley went missing.”
“From a time when they were supposedly at the campground,” Dean says. He pulls the computer toward him and narrows his eyes at the picture, tilting his head to get a different perspective. “Looks as if they couldn’t keep a secret.”
We break our meeting to get some sleep with the new knowledge not only of where the mysterious spot in the picture is, but also that we need to go there. We rest for a few hours and I’m back up putting in a video call to Allison and Vivian. They both look surprised to hear from me, and to realize they’re both on the call as well.
“I’m going to ask you a question that I think I know the answer to, but I need both of you to answer me honestly,” I start.
“Go ahead,” Vivian says.
“Is Sherando Ridge the only place the three of you girls went the night Ashley went missing?” I ask.
“Yes,” both of them answer.
“You didn’t go anywhere else?”
“I mean, before we went to the park we went to the store and picked up some food,” Allison shrugs.
“But you didn’t go anywhere after you got to the park? You went and you set up your tent, you went to Arrow Lake Campground, and back to your tent?”
“Yes,” Allison says.
“Okay,” I say. “So, do you want to explain to me why Tegan seemed to think all of you hung out behind the old elementary school?”
They aren’t in the same place, so they can’t exchange glances. That doesn’t stop them from looking at each other through the screen. Both of them are waiting for the other one to just say something. I know it’s because they weren’t ready for this moment. They didn’t have the chance to prepare anything to say.
“Behind the old elementary school?” Allison finally asks.
“Yes,” I confirm. “From what I understand, it’s somewhere you went pretty often.”
“How could he have told you that?” Vivian asks, the edge in her voice something close to being offended, but also just startled. “He’s been dead for years.”
“Yes,” I say. “He has. But his social media was never shut down. People love going on and leaving comments to him. They might not remember that all the posts you ever made are still there. Including the picture he posted the night Ashley went missing. A picture of the old school ground. The same place she posted pictures of, that same night.”
“That could have been any time,” Vivian counters. “He could have taken that picture days before.”
“Maybe,” I acknowledge. “But it doesn’t make a lot of sense. He commented on a picture of the school Ashley posted that day, saying it looked better at night.
And then he posted a picture of that place at night. All of this posted the day she went missing. Meaning this activity was going on at the same time you were supposedly at the park.”
They hesitate again.
“Maybe we went there earlier in the day,” Allison says. “I really can’t remember. It was a long time ago.”
“Five years isn’t that long,” I say. “Not long enough for you to forget something like that on a day that affected you so much. And, again, the picture he posted is at night. And if you look closely enough, there are shadows in the picture. Now, we can’t prove who those shadows are, of course. But we can make a pretty good guess. This would be the time when both of you need to stop lying and start telling me what actually happened. Because both of you look incredibly suspicious right now. I don’t know what you’re trying to hide, but it’s getting worse the more I look into this.”
“We are not trying to hide anything,” Vivian protests. “He posted a picture of a place we hung out sometimes. That’s it. You can’t prove when he took the picture or if we were even there. We told you we were at Sherando Ridge. And that’s where we were.”
“What are you thinking?” Dean asks when we close the computer screen.
“That they are nowhere near as innocent as they want people to think,” I say.
I lean back on the couch, the image of the three girls from a picture hung in Ashley’s room stuck in my mind.
Could her two best friends know more about what happened to her than they’re saying?
And could they be the reason she’s gone?
Twenty-Five
The next morning, we get to the hospital just as Eric is finishing getting the baby dressed. He settles her into Bellamy’s arms and comes to give us hugs.
“How was the first night?” I ask.
“Not too bad, actually,” Bellamy says. “She woke up for feedings pretty much on the hour, like clockwork. Eric is already a diaper changing champion.”
“That’s great,” I smile. “When do you get to go home?”
