Grey

by Kayley Barratt

  “It’s complicated,” I say. “I was told she was at a summer camp.”

  “Which summer camp?”

  “I don’t know. Her mother wouldn’t tell me.”

  He’s giving nothing away with his eyes, with his gaze. He’s asking the questions as though we didn’t just have the ultimate conversation out there. I’m not sure if ignoring the elephant in the room is the best thing to do right now or the worst. If there’s even a spectacle of doubt that Elizabeth is still alive, then I need to know.

  “Her parents are Amelia and Jonas, correct?”

  “I guess.”

  “They attend my church,” he says. “They’re nice people. If they had any reason to believe their daughter was missing, I’m struggling to understand why they wouldn’t have reported it weeks ago.”

  I narrow my eyes a tad at the nice people comment. I’m not sure what universe he is from, but it isn’t the same one as mine. That woman that I spoke to this morning was anything but nice. Is that their cover? They make out to be saviours of the town when really they’re hording secrets?

  “She said that Elizabeth was staying with relatives in North Carolina,” I say. “She never mentioned to me that she had relatives outside the state. She never mentioned that she had relatives at all. And this letter.”

  I hold it out in my hand, urging him to take it. He takes it gently, opening it up to read through it while squinting his eyes.

  “That is not her. Beth had a love for grammar. She read every book you can imagine.”

  “This letter is addressed to her parents,” he says. “How did you get it?”

  Anger builds up inside of me at his accusing stare. “Look, someone had to do something. She wouldn’t just fall off the grid, she wouldn’t write letters to them. She despised her parents.”

  He grins. “All teenagers despise their parents.”

  I shake my head. “Not like this. Her mother is something else. I’m not accusing them of anything, someone could have written that letter and previous letters pretending to be her. But she’s missing. I know she is.”

  “Okay,” he says. “Before any missing report can be filed or before any further action can be taken, we will need to talk to them. We need to be sure that there is infinite proof that Elizabeth is, in fact, missing.”

  “That’s bullshit!” I shout, rising from the seat. “Did you not just hear what I said about the letter?”

  “I advise you to calm down, now,” he says, his hand stretching out. “I can assure you we’re taking this seriously and I’m going to do everything in my power to find out what happened to her.”

  I don’t want to say it, I really don’t, but I need to. “What about the body? What about the unidentified female?”

  “Like I said, we will need to be sure that Elizabeth is missing. We can’t put a family through an identification process until appropriate measures are put in place. Elizabeth could be safe and well in North Carolina, like her parents said.”

  “But they’re just going to say that she’s been sending letters,” I say, snorting. “When I know that it isn’t her sending them!”

  “We will look into it,” he says. “Trust us.”

  Trust them?

  Trust them when they’re not showing any sign of concern?

  Trust them when half the town is best friends with Elizabeth’s parents and are going to believe any dribble that comes out of their mouths?

  Trust them when Elizabeth could be lying dead in a morgue somewhere cold and alone, while they can’t be bothered to look into it?

  “You did the right thing coming to us,” he continues. “If you leave a number at the reception desk, I’ll be in contact shortly. I’ll have to hold onto the letter for evidence.”

  “I’m not letting this go,” I say, my hand going down onto the handle. “And if it was your girlfriend, you wouldn’t either.”

  I barge the door wide open and I leave the office. What a waste of time that was. They’re not going to do anything, I know they aren’t. They’ll talk to her parents and they’ll tell them what they believe to be is true, and Elizabeth’s life will be last on the priority list, but she’s first on mine.

  She once asked me what I’d do for her and I replied anything.

  And that word is still true today as it was then.

  Anything.

  Chapter 51

  I enter my house to come face-to-face with my mother’s furious scorn. I hang my coat up on the coat rack while she stands at the bottom of the staircase with a hand holding her up.

  “Did you drive?”

  I breathe out of my nose as I pass her to get to the kitchen. “Yes.”

  She follows me, her tiny feet stomping across the glossy tiles. I go straight for the fridge and I take out a bottle of water, unscrewing the lid as she stares at me from the doorway with her arms crossed.

  “Are you really that stupid?” she shouts. “You’re banned for eight months, Nathan. You can’t just hop into your car whenever you feel like it!”

  I tip the bottle into my mouth, oozing down the soreness. “Well, I felt like it.”

  “Where did you go? What was so important that you risked prison?”

  “The police station,” I laugh, choking on the irony of it. “And here I am.”

  She uncrosses her arms, the shock settling in on her narrow, pale face. She fires herself across the distance between us and prizes the bottle out of my hand, fury igniting in her light brown eyes.

  “You’ve got thirty seconds to tell me what the hell is going on. The truth.”

  “Elizabeth is missing, okay?” I say, unleashing my own fury. “She’s missing.”

  She reads my eyes; her spine presses backwards into the breakfast counter. “What?”

  I widen my eyes, moving myself backwards into a counter too. “You wanted to know the truth. You remember Elizabeth, right? Tall, dark hair, laughs at every little thing? Well, she’s missing and no one wants to do a damn thing about it.”

  “What do you mean she’s missing? I thought she was at that summer camp?”

  I cross my arms, flexing my muscles as I straighten. “So did I.”

  “Are you going to elaborate? Or do I need to guess?”

  I bite on my lip for a moment, wondering how to even begin to explain my suspicions. My mother has never really been one for listening, but I guess this could grab anyone’s attention. I let the words roll off my tongue, the sentences coming out quaky and spaced. I explain the letter and my encounter with Elizabeth’s mother, and how things weren’t adding up which led me to the police station. I go on to tell her about the policeman and my interview, and how the Detective won’t consider it a priority until he’s spoken to her parents himself. And after I’m finished, she just stands there with a dumb-founded look on her face.

  “You think I’m being paranoid, too?” I accuse. “Don’t you?”

  “No,” she whispers. “I don’t. I mean, you probably know Elizabeth better than anyone. If your gut is telling you that she’s in trouble, then you did the right thing to report it.”

  “She wouldn’t do this to me, Mum,” I say. “She wouldn’t just…” I trail off, blinking as I turn my gaze towards the window. “Would she?”

  “No!” she says, coming towards me. “Absolutely not. If you believe that something is wrong, then I believe you. But it’s more complicated with the police. It’s a lot of resources and police time that they’ll be using up to search for her. They can’t just take your word for it. I know that this is hard to hear, but her mother could be telling the truth. As painful as that might be to accept.”

  I squint my eyes at her. “You just said you believe me.”

  “And I do,” she says, blinking. “I’m just trying to see this from a realistic point of view.”

  “Realistic?” I repeat, nodding gently. “Do you know how many psychopaths there are out there? How is it not realistic to presume the worst?”

  “I’m just saying that there could be a po
ssibility that this summer camp changed her. That’s all.”

  I shake my head, glaring downwards. I know what she’s trying to say, but it doesn’t hurt any less. Not knowing is the hardest part. Not knowing who to believe, who to trust, where to find her. I just want her back here in my arms, using her terrifying charm of psychology to assess my body language like she always did. As much as I, sometimes, hated and envied her intelligence, I miss it.

  I miss her correcting my pronunciation. I miss her reciting quotes from books word-for-word that somehow related to a conversation we were having. I miss her glaring at my laptop in awe whenever it played music, like she was hearing it for the first time. I miss her name flashing across my phone screen late at night with something simple, yet, amazing.

  I miss her looking at me like I was the only person on Earth that she could see.

  “So, do I accept that she’s gone?” I whisper. “How?”

  “By getting on with your life and letting the police take it from here,” she replies, her hand squeezing my shoulder. “There’s nothing you can do now. It’s up to them. I’m sorry but that’s the reality of it. You can’t obsess over this, it’s going to make you ill.”

  I know that she’s right. It’s probably the only thing she’s ever said that actually makes sense. But it’s not as easy as that. It’s not as easy as just getting on with my life. Not when I know that she’s out there somewhere and she needs me.

  I don’t know how I know that, but I do. She’s alive, I know she is, but I don’t know how long for. Every passing minute could be a minute closer to losing her forever. But with nothing else than a Detective’s pending phone call to rely on, speculating is useless.

  A lot of people thought mine and Beth’s relationship was a fling, a phase. All my friends at school, despite liking her, would constantly tell me that we were too young to know what love was. They’d say we’d only last a few weeks and then get bored of each other. Well, they were wrong, incredibly wrong. We defied the odds and we remained together. Even though I hardly saw her, sometimes, we went weeks without seeing each other, but she’d text or call me every night.

  I’m not sure what she saw in me, but she saw it brighter than anyone else. And in her eyes, I saw a girl depraved of something I had no idea about. We balanced each other, we intrigued each other.

  And to face a future without her, is not yet an option.

  Chapter 52

  One Week Later

  The stack of college letters on my desk makes my eye twitch as I observe them. If Beth was here, she’d be researching every single one, or revealing every tiny detail she knows about them to help me make my choice.

  I’m still unsure what I want to study, or what I want to be, this summer was supposed to be the summer that I found out. That didn’t happen.

  I didn’t want to open the acceptance letters until she was back, even though she already had her heart set on Harvard, having her choose my college with me was something we agreed upon. So, we could work out the distances and make sure we’d still get to see each other. Most times she banned it from conversation because I brought it up too much and I wasn’t ever sorry for breaking it.

  I might not be smart enough to get into Harvard, but some of the top colleges are still sitting there on top of my desk, waiting for me to open them, to choose them. It’s probably too late to reply to them. What if I’ve blown my chance?

  I sigh and swivel around on my chair, turning my attention to the window for a moment. Here, in this small, blue-coloured bedroom, the walls hold thousands of memories. Good memories. Memories that are still as clear as the moment we made them. They’re just hollow memories now—they’re just reminders of something that I’ve lost.

  I should have known there was something wrong, I should have seen the signs when she’d dismiss any conversation about her parents. It’s too late to do anything about it now. They’ve turned her against me. It’s too late for anything.

  I remain still as a gentle knock comes from my door.

  “Your friends are downstairs.”

  I still stare at the window as I reply to my mother. “Okay.”

  “Have you heard anything yet?”

  I nod, wiping a quick tear that makes me turn to look at her in embarrassment. “He rang this morning.”

  “He did?” she says, stepping into the room. “Why didn’t you say something? What did he say?”

  I shrug.

  “Well, if it was bad news, you’d be tearing this room apart.”

  “If it was no news, maybe,” I say.

  “Nathan,” she begins in her patronising tone. “What happened?”

  “He couldn’t tell me specifics about where she is,” I say. “But there’s sufficient evidence to support that Beth isn’t missing. They looked into the letter, tested it for DNA prints and it matched her DNA. Then, he went on to say something about a phone call and voice recognition.” I choke out a laugh, dragging my eyes back to the window. “Even though her mother told me that the family she was staying with didn’t have a phone. But she would say that, wouldn’t she? Because she wouldn’t want me anywhere near her daughter. And Beth doesn’t want me anywhere near her. It’s all true.”

  “But the letter,” my mother says. “Her hand-writing.”

  “Circumstantial,” I say. “She could have been under the influence of alcohol or extremely tired. Either way, they were convinced enough not to pursue it.”

  “What do you believe?”

  I roll my eyes back to hers. “I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.”

  “Yes, you do,” she says, her voice hardening. “She wouldn’t leave you. Not like this.”

  “They spoke to her,” I whisper. “How can I—”

  “Bullshit!” she bursts out, strolling across the room to my chair. “You said yourself there are psychopaths out there. It doesn’t take much to get someone to talk on the phone, especially if they’re being threatened.”

  “But they would have rung the number,” I say. “The number of the relative’s house. I just need to face facts, it’s over.”

  “If they could talk to her on the phone, then why is she sending letters?” my mother presses, holding her arms up in the air. “Doesn’t that seem dodgy to you? I mean, she’s what, eighteen? Since when do eighteen-year-old’s send letters?”

  I laugh. “Have you ever met Elizabeth?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say, I swivel back on my chair to face my desk. “I need to go through these letters. Tell Guy and John to come back later.”

  “Fine,” she says.

  I feel her eyes still boring into me as I take the first letter from the top of the stack, pretending to concentrate. The moment she leaves my room, I slam the letter down onto my desk and I angrily smash my hand across the stack so that they soar to the floor.

  I stand up, the anger builds inside of me as though I am transforming into a different person. The heat, the adrenaline, the loath, the bitterness, it’s all consuming me. I’m just so furious with her. I don’t want to be, but I am.

  How could she do this to me? How could she leave me?

  After everything.

  I fall to the floor with my hands pulling at me hair, letting out a silent scream. I was so sure that she wouldn’t do this to me, I’ve spent weeks paralysed with the fear that something had happened to her.

  I’ve been an idiot. I am an idiot. Not anymore.

  I rise to my feet and I shake off the resentment, the weakness. I won’t let it beat me, I won’t give her the satisfaction.

  “Nathan,” my mother’s voice calls again.

  I turn abruptly. “What now?”

  “There’s a man downstairs. He wants to see you, he says it’s important. It’s about Elizabeth.”

  I stand so still, absorbing her words slowly. “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “But there’s something he wants to give you.”

  Chapter 53

 
; There’s something he wants to give you. I repeat my mother’s words to me as I descend down the narrow staircase in a non-caring manner. My limbs are tired, my mind is tired, I’m just tired. Whoever it is, can just say what it is and piss off. I’m done.

  My mother walks around the bottom of the staircase out of sight and I stare at the open doorway in front of me.

  Lingering just a few feet in front of the house is the police officer from the reception desk last week. He wears regular clothes, sporting a leather jacket and blue jeans. From the position he’s standing in, I get the impression he wants a private conversation in the driveway—so I step outside and close the door.

  He turns as he hears it thump and his attention drifts from my mother’s camper-van to my longing stare.

  “Nice,” he says, trailing a finger over the paint work. “I’ve always wanted one of these.”

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, stepping closer.

  He pushes his hands into his pockets for a moment and brings out a slip of paper. “This is off the record, okay?”

  I nod, staring at the piece of paper in his hand.

  He pushes it halfway across the air to my eager palm and then snaps it back. “I mean it. I’m risking a lot to bring you this.”

  “Okay?” I say, I take the paper from his hand that he’s reluctant to give. I fold it out, my eyes scanning over the writing.

  In lines across the paper, in neat black ink, is what looks like an address followed by a specific set of coordinates with North Carolina at the bottom.

  My eyes flick up, my eyebrow raises. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I,” he says. “Look, something about that night, all those weeks ago, has been bugging the hell out of me. When I dropped Elizabeth off, she tried to get my attention, she was trying to warn me about something. And I ignored her.”

  I step forwards, anger flushes in my face. “You did what?”

  He scratches his head, trying to defuse my fury by acting oblivious to it. “She begged me not to leave her with them, her parents. I just thought it was typical teenage stuff. I hear it a lot. But there was always something about it that kept me wondering. When you turned up and reported her missing, my heart dropped, I knew that part of it was my fault. I should have recognised the signs.”