“You didn’t say anything. Your eyes opened once, but it didn’t seem like you were really conscious.” I think about how I didn’t see a thing when I touched her hand. No desire. No fear. Nothing. “You were in really bad shape.”
“Tell me about it,” she says with a small, bitter laugh as she runs her fingers over the bandages on her arm.
“Do you remember anything? How you ended up in the water or what you were doing that day?”
She shakes her head. “Just little flashes. The doctors say it’s stress or trauma or something. That my brain is trying to protect me. That I might remember as more time passes.”
Aidan leans forward. “But you don’t remember now?”
Her gaze darts to him, and a tiny crease forms between her brows. “Not really. I remember going to work and punching out with Amber, but nothing concrete after that.”
“Amber as in Riley Fraser’s girlfriend?” I ask.
Rachel nods. “We work the same shift sometimes. I usually give her a ride home, but she had her parents’ car. I remember walking across the parking lot and telling her how much nicer it is working the early shift because there’s still a few hours of daylight left when you get out.”
“So it was early?”
“Four thirty—maybe five, I think.” Her voice gets quieter. “The police said I got a flat on the way home.”
“But you don’t remember? You don’t remember the flat?”
Before Rachel can answer, a nurse sticks her head in the doorway. “Visiting hours are over.” She hovers, waiting to make sure we leave.
I stand, awkward and unsure of what to say or do. It’s strange: knowing you were there on the worst night of someone’s life but not having them remember.
I move closer to the bed. “You were holding something.” I keep my voice low because I’m not sure how much the officer in the hallway can hear, and I don’t want what I’m about to say to get back to the chief. “When I took your hand, you were clutching a Saint Anthony medal attached to a string of leather.”
“I don’t . . . ? I’m not sure what that is?”
I hold my thumb and forefinger about an inch and a half apart. “About this big. Silver. A man on the front.”
That small crease appears between her brows again. “I don’t . . . I don’t remember that.”
“It’s not yours? Not something that you found or that someone gave you?”
“I don’t think so . . .” A bit of the color drains from her face.
“You need to leave now,” says the nurse, her shoes squeaking against the tile floor as she comes farther into the room.
On impulse, I reach forward and touch the back of Rachel’s hand. I touch Rachel’s hand, and as I get pulled in, I try to control what I see, I—
Sensations and images that are almost too quick to catch. A too-small space. Not enough air. Darkness. Flashes of red. Red rectangles. Taillights pulsing in the dark like a heartbeat. A single thought in a voice that isn’t mine: “No one is ever going to find me . . .”
I sway a little on my feet as I step back.
“Sorry,” I mumble as the nurse says, again, that we have to leave.
“C’mon, Cat.” Aidan places a hand on my shoulder, gently, guiding me from the room. I stumble as pain explodes behind my temple, and he shifts his touch to my arm to steady me.
Normally, I’d be worried about his hand and whether my shirt covered enough skin to make the contact safe, but my head is filled with what I saw in Rachel’s head and those eight words: No one is ever going to find me.
Twenty-Three
RACHEL LARSEN HAD BEEN TAKEN. THE SENSATION OF BEING in a too-small space. The taillights in the dark. Her fear that no one would find her. I’m sure of it. Her memories are locked under the surface, but her fear is still there.
Unfortunately, knowing that hasn’t exactly been a huge help.
“Ugh.” I collapse back on Noah’s bed and stare up at the ceiling. “Are you sure we shouldn’t try to tell Jensen what I saw?”
It’s something we’ve talked through over and over in the three days since the hospital.
“How would you explain it?” Noah says patiently, for the hundredth time.
I don’t understand how he can sound so calm.
“I still feel like maybe I should try.” I close my eyes, just for a few seconds, and Rachel’s voice fills my head. No one is ever going to find me. Knowing she had been taken and not being able to do anything about it—not being able to tell anyone other than Noah—is almost worse than not knowing what had happened to her at all. Almost.
Noah crosses the room. “Move over.”
I sit up and scoot toward the wall. The mattress dips as he sits on the edge.
“It’s so useless, what I can do. We know someone grabbed Rachel, but we don’t know who. We don’t know if they let her go or if she got away. We don’t even know how she ended up with the medal, and that’s the only thing we have that might connect what happened to her to whatever happened to Riley. For all we know, they’re not connected at all. Maybe Riley dropped the medal in the woods and Rachel found it by some one-in-a-million chance. Even the things we’re sure about—the taillights, the trunk—aren’t things we can explain to anyone. I mean, Rachel doesn’t even remember them. Not really. It’s useless.” I’m useless, I think.
“Cat . . .” I ignore Noah, and he says my name a second time, a little more forcefully. When I give in and glance up, he says, “If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have any idea what happened to her that night.”
“So?”
“So, you’re amazing, Mary Catherine Montgomery.”
You’re amazing, Cat. You’re like one of the X-Men. Like Professor X.
I hadn’t been amazing then, and I don’t feel amazing now.
“I mean it,” says Noah.
“Shut up,” I mumble. My fingers twitch with the unfamiliar urge to push him or hit him. Not in earnest. Just in the way I’ve seen other girls act. How Lacey occasionally acts when flirting with someone she likes. “Another thing has been bothering me . . .” I say, partly because something really has been bothering me and partly to redirect the conversation.
There’s a snow globe on the nightstand. Palm trees and a sandy beach. Noah does not strike me as a palm-trees-on-the-beach kind of guy. I pick it up and turn it end over end, causing a mini-blizzard. “Why would Jensen make that guy—make Buddy—stand watch outside Rachel’s room? I mean, I know he said it was because of reporters, and sure, maybe one got through that first day, but it’s not like Rachel’s disappearance made national news. How many reporters could realistically have been staking out the hospital, waiting for a chance to get close to her?”
“Buddy did say he thought Jensen was just trying to save face, that he wanted to make it look like he was taking the complaints from Rachel’s parents seriously.”
“Maybe . . .” Jensen hadn’t struck me as the kind of man who cares about saving face or dealing with complaints, but I could be wrong. I set the snow globe back on the nightstand. As I do, my gaze falls on a backpack next to the bedroom door. “I wish you didn’t have to go to Saint John tomorrow,” I admit. All we’ve done over the past few days is go round in circles, but there’s been something comforting about spending so much time together. There’s been something comforting about not carrying what happened to Rachel by myself.
“I have to.”
There’s a note in Noah’s voice that makes me realize how selfish it is to want him here when I know the reason he’s going. “They’ll be able to help her,” I say, my voice sounding sure even though I’m not sure at all.
There’s a loose thread on the comforter. Noah catches it and pulls, ripping out the stiches. “Can I tell you something?”
I nod even though he’s not looking at me.
“Part of me just wants it to be over. Part of me hopes that we’ll go down there and they’ll tell me that she’s too sick to bring home.” He gives the thread a sharp tug, bre
aking it.
“That’s normal. That’s human.”
“It doesn’t feel very normal. Or very human.” The Adam’s apple in his throat rises and falls as he swallows roughly. “You know what’s even worse? There are times when I think I hate him a little bit. Riley. I hate that I had to give everything up and come back here. School, my friends, Jenn—”
He cuts himself off.
A girlfriend, I realize. He left a girl to come back here.
I wonder what’s she like. What they’re like together. I imagine Noah touching her the way Riley touched Skylar, and a small spark flares in my chest. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost say it was jealousy, but I can’t be jealous. It wouldn’t make any sense.
Noah stretches out on the bed. He’s too tall and lying the wrong way: his feet hang out over the edge.
After a second’s hesitation, I stretch out beside him, careful to leave space between us. I inhale deeply. He’s so close that I can smell the soap off his skin.
“You didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend.”
“Had being the operative word. Figured it didn’t matter.”
I want to ask if he misses her, if he wishes they were still together, but there’s this tiny voice in the back of my head that tells me to leave it alone. That leaving it alone is somehow safer.
Noah rolls onto his side and studies my face. “You’ll be careful, right? While I’m gone.” This close, I can see tiny flecks of color—golds and greens—in his brown eyes. “Whoever hurt Rachel and Riley is still out there.”
My hair falls over my face as I shake my head. “I’ll be fine.”
Noah reaches out, catches a strand of my hair, and pushes it back. If I were to move my head just a fraction of an inch, his fingers would brush my skin. “Just be careful.”
The expression on his face is so earnest that it makes something inside of my chest twist. I remind myself that he wants me to be careful because he needs me. I’m Noah’s ticket to figuring out what happened to his brother, that’s all.
It would be stupid to confuse that need for anything else. It would be stupid to ever really let him in.
“I think maybe I was too hasty in sending you there for the summer.” Those are the first words out of my father’s mouth when he calls the next morning. No buildup. No hello or how are you. Just a complete readiness to uproot me again without asking what I want.
I cradle the phone between my shoulder and ear as I stretch the cord to the max, trying to reach the counter and the bowl of cereal I had been in the middle of pouring. “I thought you were in California.”
“I am.”
“So, I’d just be going home to an empty apartment?”
“Certainly not. I thought you could come out here. You can hang by the pool while I’m in meetings. We can go to Disneyland. You can even see your mother—if you want to.”
My father hates amusement parks and he loathes my mother. He must really be worried.
“I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong.”
“Finding a girl in the river is not ‘nothing,’ Mary Catherine.”
“Dad, I told you: she was just some girl who got lost in the woods. It was a fluke.” I may not believe the official police story of what happened to Rachel, but I’m not above using it. And I can’t let my father pull me out of Montgomery Falls. Not right now. I can’t do that to Noah. I need to be here for Riley and for Rachel. To find out what happened to them. But even as I have that thought, my mind goes to Skylar and Aunt Jet and even Aidan—to other reasons to stay. The realization that I would miss them takes me by surprise and throws me off-balance.
“I don’t think being there is healthy for you.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t think staying in New York was healthy, either.” I carry my cereal to the table and sit. “Remember how you cut me off from everything and then shipped me to Canada?”
“You’re reframing the narrative, Mary Catherine. I haven’t been keeping you away from social media to punish you. It wasn’t healthy, you reading those comments from those kids and getting those messages. In time, I hoped you would understand that.”
Slowly and softly, I beat my head against the kitchen table three times, making the spoon clink against my bowl. “How are the meetings going?” I ask once I’ve finished.
“We’re not talking about me, Mary Catherine. Do not change the subject.”
“Why not? Your work is important. It affects me, too.”
Usually, feigning flattery and interest is a surefire way to deflect my dad’s attention. This time, however, it doesn’t work. “I’m just worried about you, pumpkin.”
Pumpkin? The last time my father called me pumpkin, I was probably about six. For a split second, I think he must be really worried and feeling extra paternal; then I hear the faint voice of a woman in the background and wonder if the endearment is just for show. My father hasn’t always been above using my existence to signal to women that he’s caring and sensitive and responsible—something I’ve only realized as I’ve gotten older. I don’t think he ever does it on purpose. He’s just really charismatic, and really charismatic people sometimes manipulate on instinct.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say, trying a different tactic. “Maybe I should fly out there. I mean, you’ll only be in meetings a few hours a day. We’d get to spend tons of time together. We could go to Universal Studios and the beach. We could check out the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.”
Dad doesn’t answer right away. Thirty seconds go by and then a minute, and then I realize something: he hadn’t thought it through. He feels like he should tell me to leave Montgomery Falls, but he doesn’t actually want me to come to California. He confirms it by saying, “We don’t have to make a decision right this instant.”
“Okay.” I should be relieved—I’m getting what I want—so why do I feel like I’m being rejected somehow?
“I love you, kiddo.”
“I know.” And the thing is, I do. My dad’s not perfect, but I’ve always known he loves me. At least in the ways he’s capable of.
Aidan walks through the back door just as I’m setting the receiver in the cradle.
“You all right?” he asks.
“Been better.” I glance up. Whatever else I might have said vanishes into the ether at the sight of toned muscles and glistening skin.
“What?” Aidan makes a show of sniffing himself as he tosses his T-shirt over the back of an empty chair. “Do I reek?” He pours himself a tall glass of chocolate milk from the fridge and then leans against the counter. A pair of black shorts hangs ridiculously low on his hips, and sweat-damp curls cling to his forehead. He’s like a walking PSA on the benefits of calcium or exercise. I resist the urge to tug at my own shirt, to make sure it’s not clinging too tightly to the pudge around my stomach and hips.
He pulls a chair out from the table, spins it around, and then straddles it so that he’s sitting with the chairback pressed against his chest. I can still see plenty of skin, but it’s a tad less distracting.
Imagine doing Jell-O shots off those muscles. That’s what Lacey would say. She’d peer at him over the top of her fighter-pilot shades—the pair with the little rhinestone heart in the corner of the right lens—and lick her lips.
Aidan takes a long swig of milk, then raises his eyebrows. “What?”
I give my head a shake. “Sorry. Just imagining what my friend Lacey would say if she saw you walking around like that.”
“She’d disapprove?”
“Pretty much the opposite, actually.”
He grins and flexes a bicep, the gesture more goofy than sexy, particularly given that he has a milk mustache. “She sounds like she has excellent taste. You must miss her.”
“I guess.”
“Well, not that I don’t fully endorse this whole ‘rattle around a giant house looking like someone kicked you in the shin and stole your puppy’ thing, but I ran into some people while I was out jogging. There’s a party tonight
. I think you should come—unless you have plans with Tall, Dark, and Mopey.”
If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think he was jealous. I’m not sure how to feel about that. For one thing, it’s hard to believe. No guy has ever been jealous when it comes to me—at least not that I’m aware of. Why would they? I’ve never let anyone get that close. “Noah is not mopey. Besides, he’s out of town.”
“Great. You can come with me to Amber’s.”
“Amber Preston?”
Aidan nods.
Given that Amber was Riley’s girlfriend and saw Rachel the day she disappeared, she’d be a logical person to try to read, and going to the party might be a perfect opportunity. The idea of going without Noah, however, feels strange.
Apparently, I take too long to answer because a look of mock exasperation flashes across Aidan’s face. “Amber’s parties are not a fate worse than death. You might even have fun. Come with me. We’ll have a good time.”
We’ll have a good time? Wait—is he asking me as some sort of date?
“Just you and me?” I ask, because I’m not sure how else to figure things out.
“Chase is coming with. Given what happened between Skylar and Riley . . .”
“She and Joey aren’t going.”
“Right.”
I don’t exactly love the thought of going to a party where Skylar wouldn’t be welcome, but it’s probably too good of an opportunity to get close to Amber—not to mention to other people who would have known Riley—to pass up.
Aidan’s phone chirps in his pocket. He ignores it. “Come with me.”
“You don’t think having a chubby tagalong will put a dent in your style?” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I want to take them back. I don’t know why I said it. It’s not like I’m pointing out anything that he doesn’t already know. He has eyes; he knows I’m not skinny. And he has Joey to point it out if he ever forgets.
Aidan stares at me, a slightly bemused expression on his face. He shakes his head. “You, Cat Montgomery, could never dent anyone’s style.”
And, just like that, I guess I’m going to a party.
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