Of Scars and Stardust

by Andrea Hannah

  “We can get to all the records easy,” he said. “The computers I need are at the other end of the building. We don’t even need to go through the front door.” He squeezed my wrist and I thought his hand might leave a warm, puckered mark on my skin. “It’ll only take a couple of minutes, then we’ll be out. I swear.”

  I nodded and stepped out of the truck, into the swirling snow that bit at my ears. Grant pressed his hand against my back as he led me around to the back entrance of the dumpy building. He pulled out a string of keys, all of them clunky and tarnished and important-looking, and pawed through them until he pulled one free and shoved it in the lock.

  As he started to open the door, I whispered, “So you’re important enough to have keys to, like, everything?”

  Grant shrugged, shoving the keyring back into his coat pocket. “Remember how I said I was in the deputy training program?” I nodded. “Yeah, well, I’m the only one in the deputy training program.” A small smile crept across his face. “Turns out not a lot of people want to work for the Amble Police Department.”

  There was a rush of heat as we entered the building, but I still felt a blast of blistering cold in my chest. I hadn’t been to the police station since the day of the incident. Somehow I’d managed to block out the sagging gray ceilings and walls, but I could never forget the smell: the place smelled like a combination of mildew and soggy cups of coffee. In fact, everything inside smelled like wet snow, and even the walls were covered in tiny droplets of condensation.

  As the smell hit me, I bit my lips shut and plugged my nose. I did that the first time, too, when they’d brought me here. That part I remembered. I’d been screaming and crying, so hard that I could taste the previous night’s leftover mascara running into my mouth. All I’d wanted was to stay with Ella, so badly. I begged my dad and the other cops. I told them about the wolves, and about the bonfire and the birthday party and how I’d left cherry vodka sizzling in the snow. I told them about Rae, even though I’d promised her I wouldn’t, because my promise to keep Ella safe was always the most important one. They still never found the wolves. Instead, they used what I’d told them about the party to search for Rae. They never found her either, as far as I knew.

  Before all the questions, one of the other Amble cops had snapped handcuffs ten sizes too big around my wrists and prodded me into the back of a car. Dad just stood there, kicking a lump of ice from the back tire and frowning. And that was when he was chief. He could have stopped them, but he didn’t. Now he was basically a human filing cabinet and Grant’s babysitter with a badge.

  They’d brought me here, and as soon as I smelled the walls and the carpet and the rotting desks in the front room, I gagged and held my breath. That’s all I smelled for the next thirteen hours while that guy from Toledo questioned me.

  Did you see any animal prints at the scene?

  Was anyone with you when you found your sister?

  Did she try to communicate with you at all?

  Yes. Yes. Ella communicated with me with her half-lidded eyes and her bloody face, with her thoughts and her heart, because she was my sister. But how could I even begin to explain that?

  “Earth to Claire,” Grant whispered as he wiggled his fingers in front of my face. I shook my head, and Grant’s face and crooked grin came back into focus. “Welcome back.” He pushed open a door that looked like it could lead into a closet and gestured for me to follow him inside.

  I stepped into the only room I’d never been in before, probably because I’d never known this was a room. Its walls were wet and gray, just like in the rest of the station, but the room was completely circular, like someone had cut away all the corners with a pair of scissors. One small, dingy window cast shadows across the two whirring computers in the middle of the space.

  Grant shut the door behind us and pulled the extra stool from the corner next to him. I sat and watched as the computer yawned to life.

  “It’s not much,” Grant said, typing in some kind of password. “But it’ll get the job done. Where do you want me to start looking?”

  I tapped my fingers against my jeans, thinking. Where I really wanted to start looking was at Sarah Dunnard’s records. I needed to know the connection between her case and Ella’s, and why Ella would say that the same thing that happened to Sarah was going to happen to her.

  I wanted to be able to thread together the clues from both cases, and show Grant paw prints that were missed, or how both girls were wearing periwinkle and smelling like cherries—something, anything. But I couldn’t tell him to look up Sarah when I’d ask to see Ella’s records. Besides, I knew I was lucky he was even letting me in here in the first place.

  He was watching me, fingers positioned on the keyboard. “How about we just start with ‘Ella Graham,’ okay?” He clicked an icon on the screen and started typing before I could respond.

  The computer whirred to life and a stream of what looked like articles flooded the screen. I leaned in, my shoulder brushing Grant’s, but neither of us shifted away.

  There were at least a dozen articles from the Amble Observer about the incident, but that wasn’t what I was here for. Where were the actual records—the facts, the notes, the case files? I stole a glance at Grant, but he looked just as confused as I did.

  “That’s weird,” he finally said, scrunching his nose. “Look. There aren’t any evidence records in here. The only things in her file are newspaper articles.”

  My stomach knotted. It just didn’t make sense. Why wasn’t there anything in the police database about me, or Ella, or any kind of hard evidence about what happened that night? Something was missing.

  The floorboards in the hallway groaned and I gasped. Grant’s mouth dropped open but he said nothing.

  “Grant, is that you in there?” Seth’s voice boomed just outside the door. “What’re you doing?”

  Grant stared at me, pure panic etched into the lines around his eyes. I leaned into him and whispered, “Tell him you’re here, quick.”

  When my lips brushed the skin beneath his ear, his eyes fluttered and his brain started working again. “Yeah, I’m here. Just doing some extra work on that graffiti case at the elementary school.” He hopped off his stool so quickly that it shuddered. “Just about to come out and grab a cup of coffee, actually.”

  I squeezed into the sliver of space behind the door as Grant threw it open and stepped into the hall to greet Seth. My heart throbbed in my ears and the cool dampness of the wall pressed into my skull.

  “Oh. I’m glad you’re here then,” Seth said. “I’ve got a lead on that. I was going to tell you about it the next time you came in.” I heard Seth pat Grant on the back. “Let’s get you some coffee and I’ll show you what I’ve got.”

  “Great. Right behind you,” Grant said. To anyone else on the planet, he’d have sounded as normal, calm, and thoughtful as always. But I could hear the hint of panic still lingering at the edges of his syllables. I wanted to tip my head out of the shadows and whisper to him that I’d be okay, but he quickly shut the door before I had the chance.

  I let out a breath. And then I hurried back to the computers, practically throwing myself onto the stool. I knew I only had a few minutes at best before Grant would try to escape Seth and come back. And I knew he’d still try to help me find information about Ella’s case, even if we had to sneak back in again. Right now, I needed to find out everything I could about Sarah Dunnard.

  I erased Ella’s name from the search bar and began typing as quietly as I could. When I hit enter, this time it was Sarah’s name that swam across the screen. Once again, various newspaper articles flooded the screen, but no facts, no evidence. I clicked on the first article at the top anyway.

  Eight-year-old Sarah Dunnard was reported missing last Friday after she disappeared from her backyard Thursday evening. Amble police chief Mike Graham was the first on the scene and is currently lead
ing an investigation to find the child. There are no leads at this time.

  I clicked through a few more articles that followed the case as it developed. The next one reported spots of blood at the base of the cornstalks by the clearing near Lark Lake, right next to the Dunnards’ house. Another described prints of some kind, which had been distorted by a heavy snowfall and were unidentifiable.

  I opened an article near the bottom of the list. This one was the most current, dated a few months after I’d left for New York.

  Amble police chief Mike Graham resigned from the Sarah Dunnard missing persons case this afternoon and then promptly announced his subsequent resignation as chief. When asked to clarify his position, Graham simply stated that in light of new evidence in the case, he did not feel adequately unbiased to proceed with the investigation.

  “I think it’s crap,” Candice Dunnard, mother of Sarah, stated to the Observer. “We trusted him to keep us safe and to find Sarah, and he failed.”

  Several anonymous sources believe Graham’s resignation has to do with the eerie similarities between the Dunnard case and the case of his own daughter, Ella. Just two months ago, his youngest daughter was discovered critically injured and unconscious. The cause was never determined, and no weapon was found at the scene in order to convict a suspect.

  My mind reeled, and I saw smudged prints and delicate drops of blood that looked like tiny rubies littering the snow. And cold days and cornstalks. Little snow angel girls with rosy cheeks and empty eyes. There were so many similarities between Ella and Sarah and what had happened to them.

  But there was one huge difference. While Sarah Dunnard’s disappearance happened only a month before Ella’s attack, Sarah’s incident was a missing persons case—which polluted Amble’s residents with fear while the police searched for her. Dad had only given up and resigned after they’d found some kind of new evidence. Ella was different; she’d never disappeared after her attack.

  Well, until now.

  I needed to read all the articles about Ella’s incident. There was something we were missing—that everyone was missing. There had to be something more. As I started to type Ella’s name into the blinking search box again, I heard footsteps thumping down the hall.

  “I’m just going to check the record of that one kid—the one with the mohawk.” Seth’s voice seeped through the walls. I jumped up from the stool, clicking at the screen furiously until the database closed.

  I didn’t have time to hide before the door flew open and Seth stood in front of me, a Styrofoam cup in his hand and a bewildered look on his face.

  “Um—”

  “GRANT,” Seth boomed, and Grant instantly appeared at his side, his shoulders slumped in defeat. He looked at me with an expression that said Sorry, I did everything I could.

  I put my palms out in front of me and said, “I was just waiting for Grant. He was giving a ride home and said he needed to stop here.” I plastered an awkward, no-teeth smile to my face. “I didn’t touch anything.”

  Seth narrowed his eyes at the blank computer screen and then at me. He took a step forward, his bulky frame causing a shadow to drape over me. “You’re lying. You look just like your father when he’s trying to lie. All twitchy.”

  I tried to keep my body very still as I lifted my chin to look him in the eye. “My father doesn’t lie.”

  To my surprise, Seth’s mouth twisted into a smirk. “No, I suppose he doesn’t. Mike just doesn’t ever tell all of the truth.” His eyes narrowed. “Even about the facts.”

  All of a sudden, Grant was by my side, his fingers wrapped around my wrist. “I think I got what I needed, Seth. We’re leaving now.” He pulled me forward, through the door and around Seth’s belly.

  “Grant?” Seth called after us, just before we reached the back door.

  Grant turned around and squeezed my wrist like he had in the truck. “Yeah?”

  Seth looked at me, even though he was supposed to be talking to Grant, and said, “Don’t ever bring her back here again or I’m going to have to fire you.” And then he walked down the hall in the other direction, his boots shuffling against the faded carpet.

  seventeen

  “Where have you been?” Dad sat at the breakfast bar, dressed in his cop uniform minus the chief’s badge. He sipped on his mug like he was bored just asking the question.

  I didn’t say anything; I just tossed my purse onto the counter and pulled out an oatmeal-colored mug from the cabinet.

  Dad didn’t prod me to respond, and I didn’t rush to answer. We’d always had a mutual agreement like that, where we allowed the other to think. In fact, out of everyone in the family, Dad and I were the most alike—contemplative, yet gutsy when we had to be. Even all the minutes and miles hadn’t changed that.

  And now I was contemplating how much to tell him about what I’d read at the station. How much to ask about Sarah Dunnard, about Ella.

  “I was with Grant,” I said slowly. “Looking up some old files in the police database on Ella’s attack.”

  Dad’s mug hit the counter with a clink. “What do you mean, ‘looking up some old files’? How’s that supposed to help anything?” The words tumbled out of his mouth in a rush.

  “Dad, I’m looking for Ella,” I said. “You know this. You know that’s why I’m here.”

  He bent over his mug, running his finger around the rim. “Did you find anything?” he asked, staring into his coffee.

  “No,” I answered. I could hear the defeat in my own voice. “We didn’t have that much time to look.”

  He sighed. “Claire, I know there’s a part of you that still believes in this stuff about the wolves. But when will it be time to let it go and start thinking about other possibilities?” He paused for a second and stared at nothing in particular. “There have to be other possibilities,” he said quietly.

  I felt my eyelashes flutter on my skin, and for some reason, the corners of my eyes felt hot and itchy. I hadn’t almost-cried since the night Aunt Sharon told me Ella was missing. But being this close to Ella and still so far away from her hurt more than the hundreds of miles that had stretched between Ohio and New York.

  Dad stood up and moved in front of me, shadowing my escape to the staircase. He put both hands on my shoulders and I flinched. “There was no evidence of forced entry. Certain things were missing from Ella’s room: a toothbrush, some books, pictures.” He rubbed my shoulders and sighed. “People who aren’t planning on leaving don’t take those things with them, honey.”

  I thought of Rae, then, and how she’d packed all of her underwear and shoes in a garbage bag before she left. And how I’d seen her toothbrush sticking out of the purse slung around her shoulder.

  The articles, the paint on the house, the secrets—they all clawed at my tongue. I wanted to spit them out at Dad. I wanted to make him tell me everything—about what had happened with Sarah, about the wolves. About Ella. But it all just curdled in the back of my throat. I couldn’t do it, not until I figured out the rest of the truth myself. Mostly because I knew he wouldn’t give it to me, anyway.

  I pulled away from him. “Yeah. You’re probably right.” And then I headed up the stairs.

  I knew he was watching me the whole way up, and I knew he wanted to tell me something, anything, that would change the way I felt about the wolves. But the truth was there was nothing to say about it anymore.

  If what Dad had said about Ella was true—that she had packed up her things—then why had she left her diary behind? Of course she would have taken her diary. There was a part of her that knew she was going to be taken—she’d said it herself in her entries. The only explanation I could come up with was that she wanted me to know about it—about what took her.

  Or about who.

  I had to find her, whether Ella had her toothbrush in her purse or not.

  The problem was, I was stuck. I cou
ldn’t get back into the station without Grant’s help, and after Seth caught us, I wasn’t sure Grant would risk taking me back there again. I paced my room, thinking.

  An idea bubbled to the surface and I stopped in a ray of watery light pouring through my window. Even if I couldn’t find anything on Ella right now, I could still search for information on the wolves. There was the map Ella had left in her diary. Maybe she wanted me to search for wolves in that town she’d circled.

  I was reaching for my phone to call Grant when a long shadow diluted the sunlight splattered across my floor. I glanced out my window.

  Dad was trudging through the freshly fallen snow, back toward his shed. When he reached it, he paused in front of the door and then turned to look behind him, not once but twice. Then he reached down and plucked an old, chipped garden gnome from the snow. Something silver flashed in the sunlight as he tipped the gnome upside down.

  A key.

  He shoved the key into the padlock. I thought he’d open the shed door, but he didn’t. Instead, he just locked it up again, and fiddled with the lock. Then he tried to open the door, shaking the handle until the whole shed wobbled. When he decided the padlock was doing its job, he replaced the key and the gnome and started toward the house.

  My eyebrows knitted together as I watched him, flushed and full of secrets. I gazed out at the backyard.

  Or maybe it was the shed that was full of secrets.

  eighteen

  Grant stared at the computer screen for a long minute, scratching his head. “I think my eyes are going blurry. This thing is basically ancient.” He rubbed his face. “Whose idea was it to come do research in the library again?”

  My lips hitched into a smile. “It’s your fault you don’t know the topography of Michigan.” I took a breath. “Or anything about wolves.”