“I promise,” I said. I had no clue what he was asking or what I was agreeing to. I had a feeling it was better for us that way.
* * *
KAREN MET US BACK at the front desk. “We’ll assess him tomorrow. Determine the best course of action. Let’s plan on meeting again next week.” She handed me her card. “We’ll be in touch.”
Daniel and I remained silent, one foot in front of the other, goodbye to the receptionist, thank you to the man holding the door, until we were back in the overheated car, driving with the windows rolled down until the air conditioner kicked in.
“What the hell was that about?” I asked.
“Hell if I know,” he said, both hands circling the steering wheel, the afternoon sun reflecting off the pavement like water.
“Did you really tell him about Annaleise? Or was that just the first thing you could think of?”
“No,” he said. “I really did.”
“That wasn’t smart.”
“No. It really wasn’t.” He sighed, his hard-to-read expression even more impenetrable.
“You were wrong to do that,” I said.
The pink was creeping up his neck as his knuckles blanched white, like the blood was seeping from one spot to the other. “I am fully aware of that, Nic. Fully. I’ll come back tomorrow to check on him.”
“Okay,” I said. “What time?”
He cut his eyes to me, then back to the road. “Don’t worry about it. Get some work done around the house. I’ll bring him the listing papers.”
“The house isn’t ready.”
His jaw tensed. “That’s why you should stay home.”
So much for my momentary swell of emotion for him. This was how we always communicated. In the things we didn’t say. We had developed a habit after our mother got sick, fighting in the space between words about anything other than what we meant.
He was with me the day I scratched Tyler’s truck with the swing of my passenger-side door, the day we met for real. “You never pay attention!” Daniel had screamed, slamming the driver’s-side door. “You parked too close!” I’d yelled back as Tyler looked on.
Nothing about the list of things that needed to be voiced: our dad’s growing distance, the fact that Daniel was dropping out of school, about what would happen to us after Mom died. No, we argued about how close we parked to other cars, about scraped metal and whether I was running late or he was early.
This was how we got through. This was the story of me and Daniel.
“I already called out of work for the day,” he said. “I’ll lend you a hand. Make some progress.”
The meaning underneath: that I had not made any on my own.
* * *
I SAW IT FIRST. That things were not how I’d left them. I stood in the entrance, unmoving, as Daniel brushed by me. “He came in,” I said.
Daniel spun around. “What? Who?”
I slammed the door and leaned against it, my breath coming too fast. “That cop. He came in the fucking house.” I pointed to the dining room table, scattered with chaos, but my chaos. I’d been sorting things into boxes not by item but by time period: things from my childhood, newer things that I’d never seen, and things I could tie to the memory of eighteen—to when Corinne disappeared. And the items I wasn’t sure, scattered across the top of the table.
But those items weren’t grouped how I’d left them. Things had been rifled through and moved. The home renovation book that I’d found in the kitchen drawer, dog-eared, and left on the table, now open to the marked page when I’d left it shut. Receipts with the dates worn off, reshuffled into the wrong piles.
“How can you tell? This place is a mess.”
“He was here, Daniel. Things have been moved. I swear it.”
His eyes met mine, and we stared at each other, into each other, until he said, “Check the house.”
I nodded and took the steps two at a time to my room. If the cop was looking for signs about Tyler, shouldn’t he have checked here? But the room was just as I’d left it. Even the top drawer that I hadn’t closed in my rush to speak to the cop. Dad’s room was mostly bare, and the closet was sparse—slippers on the floor, empty metal hangers, a few work clothes.
But Daniel’s room—the one with Dad’s old things—had been searched. Boxes moved and stacked, papers left out, without any attempt to hide it.
I heard Daniel’s footsteps coming up the stairs, down the hall, and then I could hear his heavy breathing over my shoulder. “What is it?” he asked.
“Here. Someone’s been through here,” I said.
Daniel looked at the mess. His old room. Our father’s mess. “Not someone looking into Tyler, then,” he said.
“No,” I said.
Daniel placed his hand against the doorjamb too gently. Since the fair, he never slammed his fists into walls, or kicked at the ground or his car. Lest somebody see him do it. See a pattern. But he was trying too hard, spilling outside his skin, holding himself too still. He spun silently and went back downstairs.
I followed, watching him check the windows, pushing until he was sure the lock was in place.
“Did you lock up?” He turned on me. “Because there’s no sign of forced entry, Nic.”
“I did,” I said slowly. “But the back door lock is broken.”
His eyes widened, and he mumbled under his breath, striding through the kitchen, checking for himself. He pulled on the handle and it gave, just like I’d said it would.
“I told you,” I said, hands on my hips.
His hand was on the knob, twisting, twisting, in case there might be a different outcome. “It was broken before? Before you got here?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Am I sure? Yes, I’m sure, Daniel. God!”
His face had turned so red with the anger he was holding in that it started to go the other way, blotchy spots of white breaking up the rage. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you get it fixed? What the hell are you even doing here?”
“What difference would it make? Come on, Daniel, is a stronger lock going to stop someone determined to get in?” Be rational. Be calm. Everett’s words, but they were useless in my family. This was how we worked.
“No, Nic, but it would be proof. A broken window, fingerprints on the glass . . .”
“Oh, give me a break. Nobody’s going to waste resources on a home break-in for a house we’re not living in where nothing went missing. They’ll blame it on kids. Nobody. Cares.”
“Oh, somebody cares,” he said.
I swallowed. Took a deep breath. Tried to focus, searching for a reasonable explanation. “Maybe it was Tyler,” I said. “He still has a key from years ago—”
Daniel made a deep sound in his throat, though I didn’t know if it was for me or for Tyler.
“Maybe he was going to fix the air-conditioning. And maybe—”
Daniel threw his hands up, took a step closer. “What? He got distracted by piles of junk and wasted his day going through Dad’s things in my old room?”
“Asshole,” I mumbled. I flipped the switch in the foyer to check the air-conditioning, because God if I didn’t want it to be true. The other possibilities nauseated me. Made me feel like someone had poked that box in the police station too hard, and it had sprung a leak, and the names were circling, caught up in a whirlwind, vicious and desperate.
Tyler was the only answer that was safe. Please be Tyler.
I turned the AC dial down and listened to the walls. Nothing. No catch, no whoosh, no rattling vents.
Daniel’s knuckles were white. He was right beside me, and his voice was eerily low. “Tyler works. He doesn’t need to sneak around or use a key when we’re out. I’m sure he can talk his way in here pretty easily. Bet he doesn’t even have to talk.”
; I pushed him in the chest, gently, just for space. Another inch. So we were going to fight about Tyler again. That, at least, was an argument we knew the lines of already.
“He’d call first,” he said. “Did he call you?” At my silence: “Did he?”
“No, but we’re not . . . he’s not really talking to me right now.”
Daniel let out a bark of laughter. “Un-fucking-believable. You’ve actually done it, Nic. You’ve pissed off the one person who seemed immune. You’ve finally gone too far. Congratulations.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“And you’re so fucking stupid sometimes, it’s infuriating.”
He stared at me and I stared back, my head tilted to the side—his cheeks bright red, his neck splotchy, his fists balled up, something dark and ugly coursing through my veins. “Are you going to hit me now?” I asked.
He breathed heavily, furiously, and whatever fragile ground we stood on shattered.
One question, creating so much distance between us yet pulling us right there. His knuckles colliding with my cheek and the beginning of the end of everything.
Daniel walked around me in a wide berth. He left the front door ajar.
* * *
I SLOUCHED AGAINST THE wall, cradling my phone to my chest.
This place messed with me. Made me forget myself. I called Everett, but his cell went to voicemail. I called the office and kept my voice practiced and steady as I talked to the secretary, Olivia, who’d become one of my closest friends. A tied-to-Everett friend but a friend.
“He’s prepping witnesses,” she said. “I’d love to chat, but this place is falling apart this week. Can you hear that?” And I could: the ringing phones in the background, the low hum of voices. She went on, “Jesus Christ, I need a girls’ night so bad. When are you coming back? Shit. I gotta go. I’ll tell him you called.”
I stared at my phone, wondering whom to call to ground myself. The truth is, I’m not good at close friends. I’m great at casual, at meeting up after work and bringing lasagna to the potluck. I’m excellent at being friends with Everett’s friends. But not at exchanging numbers and calling up just to talk.
I always leave people behind. Holiday greeting cards last one apartment, and then I move, no forwarding address. Emails go unanswered. Phone calls unreturned. It’s a habit. It’s easier. I’m the friend in the group they’ll throw a going-away party for but never keep in touch with. I had ladder rungs to climb, debts to repay, a life to create.
And whom did I have after so many moves? Everett, for a year. My college roommate, Arden, but she was a doctor, and busy, and every decision she made was life-or-death, which made everything I said seem trivial. My thesis adviser, Marcus. I could call him, vent my issues in a normal way. Surface level. Not like this: My best friend disappeared when I was eighteen, and it’s all coming back, and I’m losing my dad, and someone’s been in this house. Maybe the cops, but maybe not.
They were the people you called with news: I met a guy. I’m engaged. I got a new job. To share the highs and the lows. But friends to call for the deep things, the things that live in the dark spaces of our hearts? Those people didn’t exist for me any longer. Not since I’d left Cooley Ridge.
* * *
EVERETT CALLED BACK AT night, when I was cleaning the house—guilted into action by Daniel’s disapproval. I heard voices in the background, fading as he walked away. “Hey, sorry. I thought it was earlier. You weren’t sleeping, were you?”
“Nope,” I said. “What’s going on there?”
“Boring legal stuff. Boring but relentless.” He sighed. “I miss you. How’s it going with the filing?”
“Papers have been submitted, and we’re waiting for a court date. Working on the house. How’s the case?”
“Oh, you know. Be glad you’re not here. I’m still at the office. You’d be furious.”
I checked the clock, saw that it was nearly ten. “I’d show up and bring you dinner.”
“God, I miss you.” And then another voice—a woman’s. Mara Cross. “Hold on,” he said. His hand was over the speaker. “Uh, the Pad Thai. Yeah. Thanks.” Then to me: “Sorry. We’re ordering food.”
“Mara’s there?” I asked.
“Everyone’s here,” he said, not missing a beat. Everett had a painfully healthy relationship with his ex—at least he thought so. But her smile was too forced when she looked at me, and everything about her was too stiff when she walked by him, knees to shoulders to neck. They weren’t really friends, despite what Everett wanted to believe. Olivia couldn’t stand Mara, the way she talked down to her and then to me. It’s probably how we became friends.
I’d asked Everett ages ago why he and Mara had broken up, because she was always smiling and attractive and smart and there. “We weren’t compatible,” he’d said, which made no sense to me at first. They seemed perfectly compatible. Equals, even. She had strong opinions and worked even longer hours than he did, and they could talk about the same things: torts and motions and appellate courts. Words that I understood but that held no real meaning for me.
I liked to imagine they were incompatible in some other way—in bed. Whenever I saw her, whenever I caught her looking at Everett like she knew him too well, I held tight to the word incompatible, picturing something awkward and unsatisfying. Her name became synonymous with this vision, and I found myself legitimately surprised when she won cases. Her? She’s so awkward. Her arguments so unsatisfying.
Easier than to think that I must be none of those things: strong, opinionated, dominating in a room. Otherwise, we would not be compatible, or so goes the logic. What did he see in me? Someone he could mold, create, introduce, and place in his world exactly like he wanted? What did he see in the painted furniture and the long conversation in Trevor’s apartment? A blank slate? You have to come from nothing, I’d told him. Maybe he took it too literally. He didn’t know I was already something.
I knew things about Everett the same way he knew things about me. From what he chose to share. Or what his family shared in a Ha-ha, remember the time way. Where were his skeletons?
He had friends, guys mostly, who varied in degrees of never growing up—which was obnoxious but not harmful. Not haunting. Not defining. They’d tell stories of Everett doing keg stands, and that one time he swallowed a goldfish whole, which was repulsive but not the same as a missing best friend and a family of suspects. If Corinne had never disappeared, maybe we’d meet up for drinks when we were all back in town, share stories like this with our boyfriends, our husbands. And then Bailey puked on Josh Howell’s sneakers . . .
There was a difference, a chasm, between that type of story and a real past.
Did something like this exist beneath Everett, too?
Where were the stories that defined him, that broke him open, that laid him bare?
Who was this man I had agreed to marry?
“Tell me something about you,” I said. “Something no one else knows.”
I heard his chair squeak as he leaned back; I imagined him sliding his feet out of his shoes and placing them on the dark wood. Stretching his arms up over his head, the buttons of his shirt pulling, the outline of his bleach-white undershirt beneath.
“Is this a game?” he asked, and I could hear the yawn in his voice.
“Sure,” I said. “Or it doesn’t have to be.”
“Okay. Let’s see. Okay. Don’t laugh. I tried to use my dad’s credit card in middle school to buy porn online. It didn’t occur to me that his statements would have the purchased information.”
“That’s gross,” I said, laughing. “But it doesn’t count. Your dad knows.”
“Ugh. Don’t remind me. Still can’t look him in the eye when I think about it.”
“You’re cute. But that’s not what I meant. I meant something more, you know? That nobody else knows.”
His chair squeaked a few more times, and I didn’t think he’d answer. But then he did: “I watched a man die once,” he said. The air in the room changed. His voice dropped, and I felt his mouth coming closer to the phone. “I was in high school. There was a car accident on the highway, and I wasn’t supposed to be out. There was a crowd of people already around, helping. An ambulance on the way. I couldn’t look away.”
Yes, I thought. Here he is. Here’s Everett. Can he feel it? “More,” I said.
A deep breath. I heard footsteps, a door closing, the squeak of his chair again. I didn’t dare interrupt. “I don’t know if I have the stomach for my job,” he said. “I like dealing in the facts and the law, and I believe that everyone is entitled to the best representation. A fair trial. I do my job well, don’t get me wrong. But sometimes there’s a moment. A moment when you realize the person you’re defending is guilty. And you can never go back. And then justice is this double-edged sword. Like I’m upholding justice with my ‘unyielding drive,’ to quote my dad. But which is the real justice, Nicolette? Which is it?”
“The Parlito case?”
“Just anyone,” he said. He sighed. “I’m a better lawyer when I don’t know.”
“You can do something else,” I said.
“It’s not that easy,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” I said. “I don’t care what you do. You know that, right? I don’t give a shit if you’re a lawyer or not.”
He paused. “Right. If you say so. We don’t all have that luxury. I’m thirty. I’m a partner. This is my life.”
“What I’m saying is, it doesn’t have to be.” Change your hair, leave everyone behind. Go someplace new and never look back. You can do it. We can do it.
He laughed as if mocking himself. Putting distance between himself and the conversation. “So tell me, Nicolette, did you always want to be a counselor?”
“No way. I wanted to be a country singer.”
“Wait,” he said. “You can sing? I feel like this is something I should know.”
All the Missing Girls Page 16