“And you’re not supposed to tell me?” I asked.
“Definitely not.” Two of hearts.
“And why is that, if there’s not some other reason he’s coming? Think about it, Dad.” Two of spades.
“You’re not paying attention,” he said as he swiped up the stack—about the cards or Tyler, I wasn’t sure.
A new group of residents wandered in, and a few nurses shuffled in and out, carrying clipboards. We were running out of time. Dad stacked all the cards, and I placed my hand over his. “Dad, I need to talk to you.”
“I thought that’s what we were doing,” he said.
“Dad, listen. We took care of it. The police can’t question you. Do not let anyone question you. You tell us right away. Or the nurse. Or the doctor. They’re not allowed. You don’t have to talk to them. You understand?”
“I . . . Of course not. I wouldn’t,” he said.
But you did.
“I wish I’d been a better father, Nic.”
“Dad, don’t—”
“I really do. I can see it now that it’s gone. But you can’t go back, can you?”
I shook my head. No, you can’t.
He tapped the side of his head. “This is my penance, don’t you think?” Like losing his mind was the price to pay for being a shitty father.
“You weren’t mean. You weren’t bad.” He wasn’t anything. He made me laugh, and he gave me a roof over my head and food in the kitchen, and he never raised a hand to me, or his voice. For a lot of people, that would make him good. A good father. A good man.
He leaned across the table, took my hand again. “Are you happy, Nic?”
“Yes,” I said. I had everything I wanted waiting for me in Philadelphia. A whole life there.
“Good, good.”
I squeezed his hand. “You don’t deserve this,” I said. “Any of this.”
He started drumming his fingers again, double time, leaned toward me, and lowered his voice to a raspy whisper. “Nic, listen to me. I have to pay. I have to.”
“I’ll take care of everything,” I said. “Don’t talk about it anymore. Nothing. Not a word. To anyone. Got it?”
“Got it,” he said.
But I knew it would last only an hour or so. “I need you to focus. I need you to remember this.”
“I’ll remember, Nic.” He lifted his face to mine, his eyes like a child’s, waiting for me to explain.
I looked down at my hand over his, at the age spots speckling the back of his hand, the freckles on my own. “Dad, they want to bring you down to the station. You have to stop talking. Please.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but I held up my hand to stop him. Over Dad’s shoulder, I saw Everett standing just inside the cafeteria entrance, his eyes quickly finding me. I raised my hand, and Dad followed my line of vision. “Dad, I want you to meet someone. This is Everett,” I said as he approached. Remember who Everett is. Please.
He looked at Everett, then at my bare hand, and smiled. “Sure, sure. Nice to meet you, Everett.”
Everett shook my dad’s hand. “Same to you, Patrick. Sorry Christmas didn’t work out.” We were supposed to fly in and out for a Christmas Eve visit before returning to spend the rest of the holiday with Everett’s family, but a snowstorm had derailed our plans, and we’d never rebooked. But this was a detail too hard for Dad to pull from his memory. He made a noncommittal noise that to Everett probably sounded like displeasure.
Everett turned to me. “Everything’s all set here, unless you want to stay for dinner?”
All at once I felt like I was seventeen again, sitting in the kitchen, with my dad asking if I was staying or going. Going, I’d say. Always going. Had my foot out the door as soon as I stopped trying to convince myself my mother might live.
“I’ve got a lot to do,” I said. “But I’ll see you later, Dad.”
Everett placed his card on the table. “I told the director and the nurses up front, but if anyone comes to talk to you—anyone at all—you give me a call.”
Dad raised an eyebrow at me as I walked away. When I looked over my shoulder, he was still watching. I shook my head once, praying he would remember.
I excused myself to the bathroom while Everett chatted with the woman behind the front desk. I closed the door to the stall and dialed Tyler, unease coursing through my veins. “Pick up, damnit,” I mumbled, but of course he didn’t.
I considered calling information and getting the number for Kelly’s to see if he was there. But from outside the restroom, I heard the faint echo of Everett’s voice: “What, exactly, was Patrick Farrell saying?”
I raced out of the room. “Everett?” I called, watching him slowly pull back from the reception desk. “Ready?”
* * *
GOSSIP. THE MOST DANGEROUS part of an investigation. Infectious and inescapable. This was something I was all too familiar with, even before my job as school counselor.
There’s a danger to it, because it grows out of something real, a seed in the earth, giving life on its own. It’s all tangled together—the truth, the fiction—and sometimes it’s hard to pick apart. Sometimes it’s hard to remember which parts truly exist.
When Corinne disappeared and we ran out of places to search, people to question, leads to track down, the only thing left for people was the talk.
About Corinne and Bailey and me. Reckless and drunk on life, never thinking of the consequences. How we passed around a bottle in the clearing outside the caverns and invited boys inside. How we lifted candy bars from the convenience store (on a dare, always a dare) and didn’t respect property or authority. How we had no boundaries with each other, a tangle of limbs and hair and sun-kissed skin—They swapped boyfriends, even, you know.
Because look at the evidence sitting neatly in the box: Jackson kissing Bailey; Corinne hitting on Tyler as I watched. The three of us spinning, blurring, like ghosts in a field of sunflowers. And me, on the outside of the Ferris wheel, watching death rushing by. We lived too close—too close to each other, too close to some mysterious edge, too reckless and invincible, too naive to our own mortalities, just too. The talk: that maybe we brought it on ourselves.
Maybe we did.
And on the other side of the talk: Daniel and Jackson and maybe Tyler, the ones to watch with a wary eye. The ones who circled us, watching, waiting. The ones who let their anger break free, who acted. Who broke up with us, who pushed us away when they were displeased and then came back for more.
Who was really surprised, looking from the outside in?
After all the talk, I didn’t understand how any of them stayed.
* * *
I DROVE SLOWLY BECAUSE of the glare coming from the sun, nearly setting, and the roads that wind gradually and then sharply with no warning. And the deer that could be standing there, frozen on the double-yellow line. And because Everett was plowing through his emails and we were about to lose service around that next bend.
I waited for him to start cursing at his phone. “Want to stop at the library again?”
“No,” he said, leaning his head against the window. “It can wait until tomorrow.”
“Hungry?” I asked.
“Famished.”
“Good. I know a place.” I cast a quick glance at him. “All I have at home right now are microwave dinners. We can hit the store tomorrow.”
“You need to eat better,” he said. “You look like you’ve lost weight.”
To judge from the way my pants were fitting, I probably had. I’d been busy, skipping meals, filling my gut with coffee and soda until I could feel the acid churning and rising. Everything else tasted either metallic or stale.
I parked in the lot behind Kelly’s Pub because the front streets were already lined with cars, and because that was where the residents parked. Tyler’s truck wasn’t there, but
Jackson’s bike was in the corner slot.
The Friday-evening crowd was different from the daytime crowd. The college kids, home and looking for something to do. The after-work crowd, catching a few extra drinks before returning to their families. But the smell was the same as always: alcohol, grease, perfume mixed with sweat.
There were two people behind a full bar. Jackson at the far end and a woman I vaguely recognized, with a too-tight top and super-straight hair to her waist. She looked in my direction as I entered. “Seat yourselves,” she said, nodding toward the tables, as if I didn’t know how it worked here.
I slid into a two-person table pressed up against the window, in full view of the vestibule connecting the stairs to the upstairs apartments. “Look at the menu, I’ll go get us some drinks,” I said, standing. Everett gestured to the waiter and waitresses making the rounds, but I shook my head. “It’s faster this way. Trust me.”
I walked over to Jackson’s side of the bar and knocked on the countertop, since his head remained down.
“Gee, what brings you around today, Nic?” he asked with a smug smile.
“Vodka tonic,” I said. “Double.”
“Rough day?”
“And a water.”
Jackson paused and looked over my shoulder at Everett, who was studying the menu intently in the dim light. “Who the fuck is that?”
“Everett. My fiancé,” I said as Jackson’s bloodshot eyes stared back at me. “Have you seen Tyler? I need to talk to him.”
“So you thought you’d bring your fiancé to his place? That’s cruel even for you.”
I flinched. “It’s an emergency.”
“Haven’t seen him, Nic,” he said, sliding the drinks in front of me. “But this”—he tilted his head toward Everett—“is not the best way to get his attention.”
I sipped my drink. “Do me a favor,” I said, pointing to the vodka tonic. “Keep these coming.”
At the table, Everett watched me as I ordered, and when the waitress left, the corner of his mouth was tipped up, and I didn’t think it was the alcohol just yet. “Never heard you talk like that to anyone but me,” he said. “It’s cute.”
My accent was never as strong as most people’s here. My father wasn’t from here. My mom was, but she left. Got out. Went to school, met my dad, got married. Had a career, a whole life out there. But she came back with Daniel. Said she wanted to raise her kids where she grew up, where her parents lived and died and were buried. She’s buried beside them now.
When I left, I learned to mask the accent, faint though it was—to clip my words, shorten the vowels, tighten the I’s, sharpen the A’s. To speak with a casual efficiency. Until I sounded like I could be from anywhere else.
The accent came out when I was drunk, and I wasn’t drunk often. I wasn’t drinking now, but it was seeping in nonetheless. “You fixin’ to get me drunk and take advantage of me, Nicolette?” Everett asked, and I forced a smile.
I spent most of dinner staring at the open door, made irrationally angry by Tyler’s absence. By his visits with my father, by the questions I had to get answered, by the way I could imagine Tyler looking at his phone, seeing it was me, and deciding to ignore the call.
We were almost done with our burgers, and Everett had just finished his third double vodka tonic, when Tyler arrived. He paused for a moment, scanning the crowd from the entrance—caught sight of me, caught sight of Everett—and then he was gone.
“I’ll be right back,” I said. “Bathroom.”
Everett’s back was to the door, so he didn’t see me push through the crowd and turn right out of the vestibule instead of heading to the other side of the bar, where the bathrooms were.
“Hey!” I called, but Tyler didn’t stop moving up the stairs. “I need to talk to you!”
He paused on the steps but didn’t turn around. “Is that him?”
I stomped up the steps after him, lowering my voice. “You visit my dad? Why do you visit my dad?” He turned around, and we were way too close. I pressed my back into the railing.
“What? I have a project nearby. I swing by for lunch once a week. He could use the company. I’m right there.”
“He could use the company? Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”
“No. I’m not trying to make you feel anything.” He seemed to notice how close we were standing, and he took a breath, stepped back. “Your mom died and he checked out. I know, I was there. I get it. You don’t owe him anything. Nobody blames you.”
“That’s not why I don’t . . . I have a job and a life. I can’t just stop because my dad literally drank himself into oblivion.”
He nodded. “Fine, Nic. You don’t need to convince me. So I visit him. That’s my choice, too.”
“He said he wasn’t supposed to tell me,” I said, because that had to mean something. I’d felt like Tyler was keeping something from me, and now I was sure of it. “What do you talk about? What did he tell you?”
He tipped his head back, looking at the ceiling. “Nothing. We just . . . talk. He’s not supposed to tell you because of this, Nic. This is the reason.”
I stuck my finger at the center of his chest. “Don’t lie to me.”
His jaw twitched. “I don’t lie to you. And you know it.”
That used to be something I was sure of. There used to be nobody I trusted more. But the fact remained: He hadn’t told me that he visited my father, and he didn’t want me to know. “Just tell me why, Tyler.”
“Give it a rest, there’s nothing to tell!” He stepped closer. “He’s your family, and you were mine. You left, but he didn’t. I don’t just cut people off when they no longer suit me. It’s that simple, Nic.”
I wrapped my arm around my waist. When they no longer suit me. “I haven’t been yours in ten years. He’s not your problem anymore. How’s that for simple?”
I thought for a second that he was going to argue. Tell me all the reasons I was wrong, all the ways I didn’t understand. Instead, he laughed. He laughed with his eyes closed, and it came out like a grimace. “Okay. No problem.” He took a step up, then pulled out his key ring. “Ten years, huh? I could’ve sworn it was sooner.” He took a key off his ring—mine—and threw it to me, but I let it clatter in the stairwell, echoing as it fell. “Listen, I have to take care of some stuff. Do me a favor and stay away.”
And then I felt it—the punch to my stomach—the feeling that there was something worth holding on to, and I was losing it. Again.
I put my hand up to stop him, but his eyes were closed.
“Get him out of here. I want to come downstairs and have a fucking drink, and I don’t want to have to look at him.”
“Tyler—”
“Don’t, Nic.” He gestured toward the bar. “I can’t—” He dropped his arm. “Look, let’s make this easy. You asked me to leave you alone, and now I’m asking you to do the same. It’s what we both want, right? See? Simple.”
And there I stood, an eighteen-year-old girl breaking up with her boyfriend. The finality of metal on concrete in a dingy stairwell. We’d never had this moment, and maybe it was my fault for slipping away, or his fault for pretending I hadn’t, but we’d never officially called us off. Silly to think about now. That those scattered moments made up the longest and most meaningful relationship of my life. That maybe we’d been together these ten years because we never broke up. I just left. Just cut people off when they no longer suit me.
This was the feeling I couldn’t stomach the thought of back then. Why I slunk off in the middle of the night without so much as a goodbye. But ten years’ time didn’t change it at all, didn’t stop the nausea from rolling through, didn’t change the look on his face.
I turned away so he couldn’t see what it did to me.
I floundered for my key, stomped back into the bar, and slammed my hand down on the counter.
<
br /> Jackson watched me out of the corner of his eye. “Went that well, huh?”
“Don’t be an asshole,” I said. “Please.”
He placed one last vodka on the bar. “On me. Time to go.” I took the glass, but he grabbed my arm. “Really,” he said. “Go.”
This time I downed half the drink myself before making it back to the table.
* * *
“COME ON.” I HAD to pull Everett toward the car; he was solidly past his tipping point. I rifled through my purse to find my keys, and Everett put his hands on either side of me on the car roof.
“Hi,” he said as I looked up at him. He kissed me, his teeth colliding with mine, his hand sliding up my side.
“Hold that thought,” I said, pushing him back. Tyler’s apartment had a view to the parking lot, and I was not, as Jackson implied, that cruel.
“I think,” he said, “I’m drunk.”
“That would be an accurate assessment,” I said, helping him to the passenger side.
He paused, his hand on my shoulder, his gaze tilted up at the building. “Someone’s watching us,” he said.
“Get in the car, Everett.”
“I’ve felt it all day, though.” He swayed slightly, then eased into his seat. “Like someone’s watching. Do you feel it?”
“You’re just not used to the woods,” I said. But a chill ran up my spine, because I did. I felt eyes in the woods, outside the darkened windows. I felt them everywhere.
* * *
THE LANTERN WAS MOVING on the front porch again, casting shadows and ghosts.
“This place is trippy in the dark,” Everett said, following me up the walk.
“It’s trippy when you’re drunk,” I said, leading him inside.
Everett fell back on the couch, his head tipped toward the ceiling. “This is gonna hurt in the morning.”
All the Missing Girls Page 10