“You miss it,” he said.
“I miss it like an ex-con misses the other inmates.” Like the ice after the fist. They come in pairs.
“Think you’ll ever move back?”
“Never,” I said. At Jackson’s look, I added, “I’m getting married. To a guy in Philadelphia.”
“Does Tyler know this?”
“Yes.”
“But he’s the one you called after midnight . . . No, you’re right, none of my business.”
I caught a stanza of Poe heading up his forearm, a line from Kerouac slashed across his wrist. As though he had mined my father’s old books, borrowed words, and hidden beneath them. “I gotta go. Thanks for breakfast.”
“It was good to see you, Nic.”
I stopped at the door, turned to see Jackson still watching me. “She’s dead, Jackson,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
* * *
I DROVE BY TYLER’S parents’ place on the way back; his truck wasn’t there, either. For all the time we spent together, I didn’t know them well. Tyler wasn’t the type to bring a girlfriend home for dinner. We stayed indoors only in bad weather. We always had his truck, and there were the woods. On first glance, it may seem like there’s nothing to do here, but honestly, the world is yours. And the woods were ours. The clearing where we’d set up a tent. The caverns if we were with friends. And the river. We spent a lot of time down near the river, lying on our backs, fingers loosely linked.
The river cut between our homes, which now seemed more metaphorical than physical. I could get to Tyler’s from my own place if not for the river. Technically, it was possible to cross in the narrow section on one of the trees someone had dragged across. But it was out of the way and tricky in the dark. One misstep and you were over. The water cooler than you expected, the rocks sharper, the night indifferent to your plight.
No, it was better to take his truck to the drugstore and go from there. Much shorter, too.
I passed that drugstore on the way back home, and then the elementary school, the police station, the church, and the graveyard. I felt myself getting light-headed at the stoplight, holding my breath until the light turned green.
* * *
I DIDN’T GO IN my house or the garage; I’d accidentally left the door ajar when I’d left with Jackson in a hurry. I trekked out to the hill behind my house, looking down into the valley, imagining all the possibilities that could’ve happened out there. The Carter property was to my side, beyond the dried-up creek bed—I could see a sliver of white from the remodeled garage in the distance; the river farther in the distance, now hidden. In the winter, when the leaves fell, and depending on the angle, you could catch a glimpse. Now all you could hear was the low, steady rumble. We could hear it more after a few days of rain.
I used to find Daniel up here sometimes, though I’d thought this spot was mine alone. My haunts, my places, probably belonged to every child who ever lived here. Annaleise must’ve sat here, too, surveying her world. She must’ve stumbled upon the clearing with the fort that I thought belonged to us. She must’ve known all the paths through the woods, all the places to hide, just as I did.
I followed the one I knew best—the one that cut a straight path to the clearing. I used to think the downtrodden underbrush, the exposed dirt, was from the wear of my steps and Daniel’s over time, but it probably was begun years earlier and would continue years after.
There was the tree with the hole in the trunk. I stuck my hand in, pulled out a few acorns and a collection of stones we’d stored there years earlier. There was the spot in the corner, the flattest surface where Tyler and I would pitch his tent. There was the joint between two trunks where Daniel and I collected long branches in case we needed to ward off outsiders.
Corinne and Bailey and I took over the clearing once, way before boys, when we were still made for play, and tried to make Daniel and his friends earn it back. Corinne had raised a big stick over her head, pretending to be the Lord of the Rings wizard, which the boys had been watching in the living room. It became this big event: me and Corinne and Bailey guarding this site, Daniel and his friends trying to sneak inside without getting caught, and Corinne’s booming voice, You shall not pass!, disintegrating into a fit of laughter. We’d played until it was dark, and Corinne tried to make them declare their loyalty to her as Queen of the Clearing, waving the stick in front of her body, swishing her hips in a rhythm. Eventually, Daniel swung Corinne over his shoulder—she was skinny and straight, and her hair nearly brushed the ground, and she was yelling, “A curse on you, Daniel Farrell!” because she was Corinne Prescott even back then.
I could feel them surrounding me here before things changed—like the past was alive, existing right beside the present. Daniel abandoned this place first. Always responsible, too mature, no time for kid stuff. Corinne and Bailey didn’t want to hang out here by themselves. “It’s only fun if someone’s trying to fight you for it,” Corinne said. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”
I tried to hold the memory of all the people who had been here with me. Daniel and Tyler, Corinne and Bailey.
And then I tried to imagine an outsider watching us all.
All those times we used to scare ourselves with sounds—an animal, the breeze. A monster, Daniel had said, and we had rolled our eyes. Nothing, Tyler had said, pulling me closer in the tent, I got you. But what if there were something? What if the monster were a child just watching? What if it were Annaleise crouched in the bushes? I tried to make myself small, make myself timid, make myself her, and see our lives playing out through her eyes. What did she see? I wondered. What did she think? Who was I through the filter of her eyes? I stood, wandering to the center of the clearing, trying to picture us.
I was so caught up in the memories of other people, the feeling of people sharing this space with me, that at first I didn’t recognize the feeling of someone real. Someone now.
The crack of a twig and the shuffling of underbrush. The hairs raising on the back of my neck in response.
I was in the middle of the clearing, completely exposed, and I felt eyes. I was sure I could hear breathing.
“Tyler?” I called.
I hated that he was always my first instinct. The number I’d start dialing after midnight and then stop. The name I’d call when I heard a front door creak open.
“Annaleise?” I called in a voice just above a whisper.
I took out my cell phone, so if there were someone, he or she would see I had it.
Sounds—footsteps—from just out of sight, from deeper in the woods.
I backed away, into the trees, closer to home. Heard something from the side and spun in that direction.
I held the phone in both hands. And I had a signal. A beautiful signal, out in the woods, with the one service provider who covered out here. Terrible plan otherwise—couldn’t get a break on mobile-to-mobile, the data-service part was murky at best, but I was alone in the woods, and it worked.
Everett had taken my phone once while his was in the other room charging. He tried to look up the scores of a game, got frustrated, and said, “Why do you have this service? It’s horrible.”
“It’s not horrible,” I’d said. But it was.
Now I thought: Because. Just in case. For this. For here. I thought of all the little things I’d held on to. All the little things I’d taken with me when I left. A fine, transparent thread leading all the way home.
I held the phone to my ear, and I called the one person I knew would come, no questions asked.
The phone rang two, three times, and I was teetering on the brink of panic when Daniel picked up. “I’m in the woods,” I said. “At the clearing.”
“Okay,” he said. “Are you okay?”
The faint wafting of a scent on the breeze—cigarette smoke. Gone as suddenly as it had registered.
“I don’t know,” I said. My hand on the tree trunk with the hole, the bark rough and familiar, grounding me.
I could hear the panic in his breathing, imagined him pushing himself to standing. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
My eyes roamed the woods, looking for the source. I lowered my voice. “I don’t know. I feel like someone’s here.”
I heard him curse under his breath. “I’m coming. Stay on the phone with me. Make it known that you’re on the phone. Be loud, Nic. And walk straight for home.”
It would take him twenty minutes to get here if he were home. Longer if he were on site somewhere.
I had no idea what to talk about and ended up sharing the most idiotic thing I could imagine: “I’m thinking about eloping.” Something totally vacant. “I can’t stand the idea of a big wedding. All these people I don’t know—Everett’s family knows everyone. There will probably be two hundred people from his side and five from mine. And Dad . . . what if that day he doesn’t know who I am? What if he won’t walk me down the aisle? Or maybe we should have a destination wedding, just family. Somewhere warm.”
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m on the trail, there’s this cool oak tree, you remember it?” I picked up a sharp rock off the path, spun in a quick circle. Heard a noise to my left. A crackling of leaves. I kept moving, with more purpose now.
“I hear you,” he said.
“If Everett’s family insists on a wedding, I guess I’d have Olivia—she works with Everett—and Laura, of course, if she wants. And probably Arden from college.” I couldn’t think of any other names. “Keep it small, you know? Meaningful.”
“Keep talking,” Daniel said. “I’m on Fulton Road.”
I kept moving, kept talking, and had no idea whether someone was still here, still following.
Daniel and I didn’t talk about personal stuff, about anything that wasn’t an essential conversation, anymore. If he called, it was for a reason. If I called, it was to give him a new address, to tell him my Christmas plans, to let him know I got engaged.
“I once went to this wedding when I was interning for an ex-student’s parents. It was so weird. The dad was getting remarried, and the son asked me to come. It was probably totally inappropriate, now that I think of it, an eighteen-year-old bringing a twenty-three-year-old teacher as a date, but I didn’t think of it like that at the time. It was in the summer, right after he graduated, and it wasn’t like a date—it was just like he got me on the invite list. I thought he was trying to tell me something. Anyway, the wedding was ridiculous. Those people were beyond rich, Daniel. Like, rich is an understatement. A wedding that could pay for college, that could feed a small country. I don’t know why he brought me. I don’t know what he wanted me to see. I don’t know where he is now.”
“Cranson Lane, now. Do you see anyone?”
I spun around again but couldn’t get a sense where the feeling was coming from. “No. I feel like I should look him up. And ask him. I had this other kid, later, who told me I just had to see his football game. I was there anyway—we have to work a certain number of games each semester. But he didn’t care about me seeing him play, really. He was showing me something. His father laying in to him after the game. The pressure. He didn’t want to say it, right? Sometimes it’s easier to show.”
“Where are you?”
I checked over my shoulder, but my vision was going a little hazy from the adrenaline, or maybe the panic. “Oh, I’m almost home now. I need to call that kid. Shane something. God, I can’t even remember his last name. I’ve been to his father’s wedding, and I can’t remember his name? They all start blending together. There are just too many of them. Hey, I can see our house.”
“Nic. Get in the house and lock the doors.”
I did. I dropped the rock and ran, the phone cutting through the air with each pump of my arms. I ran the remaining distance between the woods and the house, slamming the door behind me and turning the lock, like Daniel had said.
“I’m inside,” I said, out of breath, walking to the kitchen window, staring into the woods. I couldn’t see anything. No sign of life.
“You’re okay?”
“I’m inside,” I repeated, my hand over my heart. Slow down.
“Stay in the house,” he said. “I’m here.”
His blue SUV pulled all the way to the garage, and I watched him exit the driver’s side, but he didn’t walk toward the house. He went straight for the woods.
I ran out front again. “Daniel! What the hell are you doing?”
“Stay inside, Nic.” He started jogging away from me.
Like hell. I wasn’t about to stay in the house while he went into the woods I’d just run out of in a panic. I walked back to the edge of the woods and stood outside the tree line, trying to keep my breathing quiet and measured. I watched him disappear in fragments—a sliver of him sliding behind that tree, an arm lost to a branch, his footsteps to the wind. I kept my eyes focused on the spot where he’d disappeared, willing him to return.
I waited, my breathing growing louder, my pulse gaining speed, and jumped at the phone ringing in my hand. Everett. I hit the silence button and immediately heard footsteps coming closer. “Daniel?” I whispered, craning my neck to get a better view. And then louder: “Daniel?”
I saw a shock of blond hair first, then a shoulder. Half a face, his long, lanky legs. He came out shaking his head, tucking something in the back of his pants.
“Didn’t see anyone,” he said.
“Is that a gun?”
He didn’t answer. Kept moving toward the house, expecting me to keep up. “Are you sure you heard someone?” he asked.
“Why the hell do you have a gun?”
“Because we live in the middle of nowhere and it takes the cops too long to get to the house. Everyone has a gun.”
“No, not everyone. That can’t be safe, just walking around with it tucked inside your pants.”
He held the door for me, waited until we were inside, and took a deep breath. “Nic, are you sure? Tell me exactly what you heard.”
I couldn’t meet his eyes. “I was at the clearing, the one where we used to make forts, and I thought I heard footsteps.” I strained to hear in my memory, but I felt like I was forcing it, making the leaves crunch, turning up the volume. “I thought I smelled someone smoking. But I’m not sure.”
Maybe someone was watching me, but maybe there wasn’t. Like Daniel said, there’s a monster out there. It’s not too much of a stretch when you haven’t been sleeping enough, when you’ve just been threatened, when the people you love have disappeared. It’s not too hard to believe in monsters here.
“Maybe you should’ve figured that out before you called, scaring the shit out of me.”
I glared at him. “I was scared.”
He did that deep-breathing technique, trying not to explode at me. I felt my shoulders tightening, like his did when he was tense. “Your eyes are all bloodshot. Have you been sleeping?” he asked. I could tell he didn’t quite trust me. As the time grew between then and now, I didn’t quite trust myself, either.
“A little . . . I can’t, really,” I said. “I can’t sleep here—”
“I told you to come stay with us, Nic. Come stay with us.”
I started to laugh. “Because that would solve everything, right? When did you get the gun, Daniel?”
He picked at the pile of receipts on the table, narrowing his eyes, putting them back where they’d been. “Laura told me what happened at the shower. She feels terrible. Let her take care of you. She’s driving me crazy.”
“And how would you explain that? Why I suddenly want to stay?”
“Air-conditioning,” he said, the side of his mouth quirking up for a second.
“I can’t, Daniel. Besides, and no offense, but Laura is really nosy.”
“Right.”
“You don’t give her enough credit, Nic.”
I saw the outline of the gun as he walked away. “It’s a family trait,” I called after him, but he shook his head and kept moving. “Daniel?” He stopped, spun around. “Thank you for coming.”
He turned back around and waved in acknowledgment as he walked away. At the car, he rested his arms on top of it. “Did you get the affidavits?”
“One for two,” I said. “Working on the other one.”
He nodded. “The gun was Dad’s,” he said. “I didn’t think it was safe for him to have it anymore. I took it from him so he wouldn’t hurt himself. Or someone else.”
* * *
SO WE HAD A father who drank too much. So he didn’t come home sometimes. So he forgot to get groceries. So he left us to our own devices. We were lucky. In the grand scheme of life, ten years later, I could see: We were lucky.
Corinne was not that lucky. We never knew this. Hannah Pardot was the one who broke Corinne’s father open, let him weep out all his secrets. Hannah Pardot knew how to push and where. Probably because of what my father had told her. It’s a family matter, he’d said, lowering his voice, giving it meaning.
Corinne had two much younger siblings. She was eleven when her parents had Paul Jr.—PJ, Corinne called him—and Layla followed two years after. They were little kids, seven and five, when Corinne went missing. Silent and stoic, unusual for children—that’s what Hannah Pardot told Bricks and what Bricks told everyone else. Hannah asked them questions as they sat on the white sectional sofa in their living room and their mother handed out lemonade and they looked at their father, waiting for their orders. They looked at their father when Hannah asked if Corinne had seemed sad or upset, or if they’d heard her say anything. Any little thing at all, she’d said. Anything about her state of mind. They looked at their father, questioning. They looked at him like the answer.
All the Missing Girls Page 18