If I Disappear

by Eliza Jane Brazier

  He shakes his head, and that’s when I realize he is shaking, shivering without his jacket in the cold where he has been waiting for me for who knows how long. And I want to hold on to him but I can’t because I’m afraid and he says: “She knows.”

  “How could she?”

  “She knows everything.” He shakes his head miserably. “You don’t understand. You don’t understand what she’s like. She’s jealous.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of everything. Of anything she can’t control.” He is trembling everywhere. He has always been on the edge, but now he is losing it, right before my eyes, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help him.

  “Jed, calm down. I don’t know why you’re so afraid of her.”

  “Man alive, neither do I. I’m losing my shit. This place gets to you. It just gets to you. The other day, when I was in Willa Creek, I saw vultures circling, miles out up the road, and I knew they were here. I knew they were circling the ranch. And they were. If you look up. All day, every day, there’s vultures circling here.”

  “Jed, breathe. You need to breathe.”

  “I think she’s bugged the phone at the lodge. I think she’s listening when I call my mom, when I call my brother.”

  “Jed.” I feel sorry but I also feel slightly fearful, like it might be catching. I remember what your mother said, how thoughts are as contagious as colds out here, and I don’t want to catch whatever he’s got, but I don’t want to leave him sick either. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Hey, you need to pull it together. Everything’s okay. Everything’s fine— Hey!” I say again, and then I pull him into me.

  He shivers, ten seconds, and then he melts into me, and then he sobs, “I did something bad.”

  I step back quickly. He moves away too, allowing it. “What do you mean? What did you do?” My mind goes straight to you. Did he do something to you?

  “It’s like I got a death wish.” His thoughts are jumbled and I don’t understand what he’s trying to say.

  “Did you do something to Rachel?”

  He shakes his head. “No, listen to me. Rachel is not—”

  “Sera!” We both jump a mile. Jed dashes his shoulder into the tree, eyes wild.

  Your mother stands behind me in her nightgown. The glow of a distant bug light makes a crown around her head. “I thought you were going back to your cabin,” she says to me, her voice so calm, it cuts through us. “You know I don’t like you all standing around in the dark. It’s not safe.” Jed has stopped shaking. His whole body is rigid. “Jed, remind me where you live.”

  “Yes. Yes’m.” He ducks his head and walks off, swaying slightly.

  “I’d keep my distance from him if I were you. Crazy is contagious,” she says like she read my mind. “Now, what were you wanting from your cabin?”

  My possessions are so meager that I can’t think of anything and I finally say, “I just realized I forgot to wash some rags and I didn’t want to leave them there.”

  Your mother stretches her lips, close to a smile but not quite. “How thoughtful of you,” she says. “To clean up. Why don’t we do it tomorrow?”

  I swallow and I nod and then I follow her back to the house.

  Episode 61:

  Why They Stayed

  They did whatever they were told because that was what they had always done. When they were told to strip, when they were told to hurt themselves, when they were told to drink poison. They were good girls, and that’s why they stayed.

  I need to sneak downstairs and use the computer to search for Grace but your parents’ house is different, set high on the hill, and I can hear everything, hear engines roaring past, so loud it’s like they’re in the room with me, hear voices, across the river or all the way in Happy Camp, arguing, yelling. But scarier than that are the silences that drop between the sounds, like something far away creeping closer.

  Your parents are just down the hall, and the walls are so close, the sounds so easily bent and manipulated that I can hear your mother roll over in bed, hear your father snore. I can’t imagine growing up here, in such close quarters. It’s no wonder you became fascinated by details, evidence, by defining your world and the motives of the people in it.

  I decide to check the computer tomorrow during lunch. I can come back early, while your parents are still working. Tonight I search your room, as quietly as I can. I look under the bed. I lift the mattress. I check behind and inside every book on your shelf. I don’t trust a flashlight, so I use the light of the moon.

  I find no laptop, no evidence of your podcast. I turn to the files on the floor. I start at the beginning: kindergarten. You have kept every test, every assignment. You wrote your name in all capitals but eventually you learned the lower case, and over time your letters softened, and I can see you taking shape, becoming the person I knew, the person who told me every week, We are different. We see things others don’t.

  I love your homework. I love the story it tells. The cleanness of it. The polish. The perfection. I love it because it tells me everyone was wrong, wrong about you. You are not a liar. You are not a stunt queen or a falsely accused or a Gone Girl. You are settled and perfect and good and then you hit high school. I notice a general slackening, a gradual decline, so gradual that I almost don’t see it at first. Doodles appear. Flowers with petals shaped like hearts, a Stussy “S,” the same carefully calibrated horse head drawn over and over. Your answers are still correct and your tests are still marked A, A+ but your notes become more fluid, messages in the margins:

  Do you want to come to my house after school? Y/Y

  And then another author: Will your mom be there?

  Back to you: She’s ALWAYS there.

  Hahaha fuck

  I flip through the patterns, the games of MASH, where familiar husbands are listed:

  Homer

  Moroni 1

  Moroni 2

  I recognize your games because you skip this section, while your friend (who must be Clementine), somehow ends up with Homer every time.

  And then Where did she go? Written in pencil in the margins of your fourth-period history notes, then erased but still visible. Then Flo, Flo, Flo, again in pencil, again erased. My vision has started to blur but it refocuses now. My eyes zoom in on your notes and they find, hidden inside the section on Reconstruction, the first of your case notes. I knew she was meeting someone but she wouldn’t tell me who. On July 23, August 5, September 19, she told her parents she was staying with me.

  The case notes continue for a time, the details you were so good at exposing. She was last seen with Rachel Bard and Clementine Atwater and Tasia LeCruce. My chest zings. You write Florence’s age, eye color, hair color, approximate weight, identifying marks. You remind yourself: Pass details to the police. Fourteen and you were already in it—you were already trying to solve murders and save people. You were already lost in the details.

  I keep flipping through but your class notes thin. They are consumed with notes about Florence. Your style has changed. Your handwriting is looser. You stop paying attention. The doodles breed and multiply. Your grades swing out: B, C, C, D, INCOMPLETE, OFF-TOPIC. You draw girls in the margins, flowers with heart petals in their hair. You draw a speech bubble and write “help” in decadent, loopy script. You make slashes, like cuts along your wrists, in the margins; you press hard as you color in all the gaps.

  There is no place for you. There is no place for me. There is no place to put your feelings if you’re a woman.

  I hate being a girl.

  I remember you were asked to leave school. I wonder how you would have stood out on a small campus like Happy Camp. How your attitude might have seemed infectious. I remember the way Tasia acted, like you were a disease that needed to be stamped out.

  Florence is dead and no one even cares.

  * * *

  —


  I lie awake in your bed, thinking your thoughts, until the sun comes up. I smell bacon and eggs and I remember that there is no lock on your door and I get dressed quickly.

  I have breakfast with your parents. I get to work. I feed the horses. I ride them. I get back early to try to sneak in some Internet time, but your mother is there waiting. She has made me lunch—a sandwich that tastes like its color: beige. She and your father hold me hostage, tell me improbable tales about logging accidents, Bigfoot-hunting expeditions, like I am a guest they are selling their wilderness-family dream to. I ask where Jed is and your father tells me he’s fixing a sink in one of the upper cabins.

  After lunch, I head up there to clean the windows. I still have work to do down below but I don’t care; I want to talk to Jed. I need to ask him about last night.

  I find him in the farthest cabin, collapsed on the bathroom floor. In yellow rubber gloves, greasy tools scattered around him.

  “What are you doing here?” He moves to brush his hair back and remembers his gloves. Instead he reaches for a black water bottle, sucks thickly on it so I don’t wonder what’s in it.

  “What was that all about last night?”

  “Huh?” His eyes are red. His cheeks are pink. I remember that we slept together and I feel shame spurt through me. Has he always looked this drunk? I feel regret, the way I always do when I sleep with a man. Like even if I wanted to, I was still in some way duped, because it was all a consequence of his being a man.

  “You said you did something bad. You said something about Rachel,” I remind him.

  He peels his gloves off, flips back his hair, revealing a dark purple bruise in a hook around his eye.

  “What happened to your face?”

  He brushes his cheek, pokes it in a tender spot and flinches. “Well, Officer, I don’t really recall.”

  He is sitting on a bathroom floor, trashed in the middle of the day, but he still has a cavalier quality. He stinks of whiskey and pheromones. I think if the roles were reversed, if I were the one drunk in the afternoon, how disgusting I would seem. I express legitimate concerns and people think I’m crazy. I am alone and people think there is something wrong with me. Jed is slouched on the floor and he is still sexy. I still feel like I need to impress him.

  He smiles, like he’s remembering something I wish I could forget. “I guess I was a li’l drunk last night.”

  “You seem pretty drunk right now.”

  He frowns; alcohol makes his reactions abrupt and childlike. “Someone broke into my house. Someone was fucking with my wife’s stuff. I got a reason to be upset.”

  “You’re only taking it out on yourself.”

  He frowns again, and his eyes find focus. He recognizes the sentiment. “You were in my house.”

  My chest tightens. I can lie, but I know I should have told him all along. “I was looking for you.”

  He slaps his leg. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

  “Because I— You cleaned my cabin. I felt bad.”

  He smiles, like he’s proud of knowing he was right about me. “You weren’t looking for me.” He drops his chin. “You were looking for evidence. You can’t help yourself.” He fiddles with the cap of his bottle, like he’s debating whether he should take another drink. “Can’t help thinking everyone’s no good.” He spins the cap. “I’ll tell you something, darlin’. You may be a good person, but you’re good because you think you’re bad, and one day that’s gonna catch up with you.”

  I squat, crouch down on the ground, closer to him. “What were you going to say, about Rachel?”

  He holds my gaze for a second, and I can see that he is disappointed, that he wanted something else from me. “Rachel, Rachel, Rachel,” he says, and I think he envies you. He shakes his head, slides back against the wall. “Aww, what does it matter what I say to you? You’re gonna think what you wanna think.” And he pops the bottle cap and takes another drink.

  * * *

  —

  That night I have dinner with your parents. As we are wrapping up, your father makes a sucking sound, pokes his finger beneath his teeth. “That Jed sure is starting to lose it,” he says.

  There is a finality to his words that matches the sky outside the windows.

  “I told you he was bad news.” Your mother stands to clear the plates.

  “Some people can’t take it out here. They start to go cuck-koo,” he says in his silly voice. “Cabin fever. We had this guest once— Hey, Addy, remember? She was a drinker too, had a phone installed in her cabin, and one night she calls us up to say there was someone trying to break into her cabin. Remember that, Addy?”

  “Oh, yes!” Addy smiles. “You said, ‘Can you describe them to me?’ And she said, ‘Yes, absolutely. It’s Bill Clinton.’”

  He slaps his knee. “Wearing a tutu!”

  “So we went over there with our guns—”

  “And found an empty bottle of Jack and prescription pills on the table.”

  “And we said, ‘We don’t mean to offend you—’”

  “‘But we think you might be just a wee bit intoxicated.’” They both explode in laughter.

  I wait a suitable amount of time to say, “But what about Jed?”

  Your father mops his brow. “He wasn’t there.”

  “No, I mean, why do you say he’s losing it?”

  “Oh, right, well, for one thing, he smells like a distillery—”

  “Always has,” your mother adds.

  “And on top of that, he shows up to work this morning with a big ole shiner and says he ran into a wall! You’d think he had a concussion, the way he was stumbling around.” He waves a hand. “I just set him up in one of the family cabins. I couldn’t do anything with him.”

  “He needs to go.” Your mother sets her hands on her hips. “I told you he needs to go.”

  “You may be right.” Your father clucks, pokes another finger between his teeth. “Don’t know how he’d make it on the road though, as loaded as he is. Probably end up in the river.”

  “It’s none of our concern what happens to them when they leave here,” your mother says.

  My first urge is to defend Jed, but what can I say? He is a drunk and he’s probably not a good employee, and even if I can’t quite believe he killed his wife, there is something he is keeping from me. But he has been kind to me. I push my fork across the plate. “I think Jed’s nice.”

  They both look up at the same time. Their jaws drop, their eyes widen, so they look like brother and sister. They are alarmed that I am voicing an opinion, alarmed that it is different from theirs, possibly alarmed that different opinions exist, on their land, in their kingdom, in their home.

  Then your father explodes with laughter. And your mother joins him. They both laugh for a good long time.

  He shakes his head, wipes tears from his eyes. “Of course you do! I can’t imagine why!” And they both chuckle. “Well”—your father presses a hand to his belly and catches his breath—“be satisfied in knowing you’re not the first young lady to succumb to his, er, charms.”

  I think of you. “Did Rachel—”

  Your father’s eyes widen. Your mother’s face goes pale. “Oh, no!” your father says eventually. “Rachel couldn’t stand him. She used to call him the Slow Ranger.” He taps his temple to make clear what you meant. You also slept with him, if Jed is to be believed.

  “But then who did you mean?”

  Your father is still catching his breath, so it takes him a moment to say, “Oh, he gets around. You wouldn’t think it, to look at the state of him, but I’d bet he’s had ‘relations’ with half the ladies at Happy Camp.” I feel disgusted with myself, as if I am responsible for all the women Jed has slept with.

  You mother nods. “I’m convinced that’s why his wife left.”

  “Are you sure she lef
t?”

  Their heads swivel at once in my direction.

  “You think she’s still here?” Your father wriggles his eyebrows.

  “I just mean, you don’t think he did anything to her?” It sounds silly when I say it out loud.

  “Jed?”

  Your mother shakes her head primly. “The only thing that man could kill is a six-pack.”

  And they burst out laughing.

  After dinner we play the same tile-matching game and I lose and I lose and I lose, but they hold me, with their benign comments, their lame jokes, their inexplicable laughter.

  When I finally get upstairs, I am so tired that I can barely keep my eyes open. But I brush my teeth. I splash water on my face and I force myself awake. I go into your room. I shut your door. I search the room again and again I come up empty. Then I wait.

  It’s three in the morning. I can hear your father snoring. Your mother has gone quiet. I need to go downstairs. I need to use the computer. I need to find Grace and then I need to look for your case notes. I can’t imagine you broadcasting from the living room—you always said you recorded from your yellow house—but maybe you kept your notes on that computer. Your computer-illiterate parents would never find them.

  Every second this case is getting colder and colder, every moment you are farther away from me, and I have waited long enough, I have been patient long enough and I need to go, now.

  I am on my feet again. I approach the door, thinking that if I am careful, I can contain the sound, swallow all the sounds, and sneak downstairs. I press my hand against the knob. Like a spider my hand encircles it, presses it against my palm and turns. I feel the click radiate in my wrist. I convince myself it doesn’t make a sound. I walk out into the hall.