If I Disappear

by Eliza Jane Brazier

  “Serial killer?”

  “They killed Florence, April, Elizabeth. They abducted Grace, kept her locked inside that house. When they realized I was looking for her, they tried to scare me off the land, away from the house. But I didn’t give up. I stayed close by, looking for an opportunity, a way to help her escape.”

  “The rock. Was that you in the woods? Did you throw the rock? Did you want me to run?”

  “I wanted to save you from them.”

  I have more questions for you, but my head is in a fog. I try to swim through, to make sense of everything. “But who killed your cat? Who poisoned Jed?”

  “They did.” I think of your mysterious gang.

  “But who are they?”

  “Homer and the Moronis. They’ve been doing these things for a long time.”

  “But why didn’t you tell someone?”

  “I did. I told you.” A rush of pleasure like a seizure shivers through me as I think of all the episodes, all the secrets only we knew. “You’re the only one who believed me. And they tried to silence me. They threatened me. I went into hiding, but I kept watching. I was watching you.” You speak with detached certainty, the way you did on Murder, She Spoke, like you have dissected, like you understand everything, like it all makes sense once you get your tongue around it. “Homer poisoned the ranch. He wanted to pin it on you.”

  “On me?”

  “He had been planting seeds that you were crazy all around town.” I think of the people in town. Have they treated me like I was crazy? Officer Hardy did. Moroni did.

  “Where is he now?”

  You shudder through a sigh, unsettled. “He’s gone. You’re safe now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s deceased.”

  “What? How?”

  You seal your lips, afraid to say, afraid to speak.

  “Rachel, you know you can trust me, don’t you?”

  “He was poisoned.”

  “Poisoned? Where? When?” I left Homer that night at the house, with his family.

  “They found him at the church. He’d been poisoned, with the same poison he used to contaminate the ranch.” Your eyes rush over me, looking for clues, evidence that I believe you, evidence that I am on your side.

  My nerves simmer like warm coals. I feel myself sinking and I say, “My God.”

  “There’s something else.” You brush my hand like you’re afraid to touch me. “Do you remember what happened to my mother?”

  My senses rock. I remember the blood. I remember her coming toward me. I remember the sound of the shot. I remember pain.

  You press your finger bones into mine. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  There is a knock at the door. You drop my hand. “Come in,” you call, and Grace enters the room. Her blond hair spills over her shoulders. Her blue eyes gleam when she smiles.

  “You feelin’ better?”

  “Sorry I ran away.” I am not sure why I am apologizing. I feel wrong. I have finally made it to you and it’s like the world has done a somersault and, instead of feeling happy, I just feel dizzy.

  “That’s all right,” she says, and her voice is just like Jed’s, the same rhythm, and strangely I think I will cry. I feel tears crest my eyes, and I think it has been years since I have let myself cry. “The ambulance is outside. They should be up any minute.” Her eyes go to you and your eyes go to me.

  “The police are going to want to talk to you.”

  The words from your lips slightly thrill me. “What should I tell them?”

  Your eyes are warm and you smile. “Tell them what happened.”

  * * *

  —

  Officer Hardy comes to visit me in the hospital in Yreka. I am surprised that he has driven all this way. I would have expected him to wait longer, or not to come at all. Instead he sneaks into my room like a kid in trouble. His shoulders sag and his eyes are misty and I wonder why; I thought he hated the Bards.

  He sits in the chair beside my bed, where only you have sat. He walks me through that day in particular. I am ready with every detail. It is such a relief finally to have him listen to me that I almost lose track of what I am saying.

  “And then I asked him about Florence, and he got very defensive.”

  “Defensive?” he says, like this is a word I have invented. He lifts his head and the hospital lights illuminate the rugged patterns on his checks, the pockmarks along his jaw.

  “He seemed angry.”

  “What do you mean, ‘angry’? What did he do?”

  “. . . Nothing.”

  He sits back like he thought as much, like I am torturing him by answering his questions. He doesn’t care about the Bards, not exactly; that’s not why he’s here. He cares about Homer. And I think how Jed liked Homer, how the town liked Homer, how even I liked Homer. Everyone liked Homer, just like everyone hated your mother, and I think, “He’s dead.” Only I say it out loud.

  And Officer Hardy leans forward. “What makes you say that?”

  “I . . .” And then my heart starts to crumble. I realize this is a real investigation. The kind that will be on the record. The kind that will be used as evidence. The kind that will be used to create the narrative of what happened, what really happened, who killed all those people. And I realize I am not supposed to know that Homer died. And if I tell him you told me, the narrative will turn to you, and if I don’t, the narrative will stay on me. I found Jed’s body. I found your father’s body. I was there when your mother was shot. “I just figured, if he poisoned the ranch, he might have poisoned himself by mistake.”

  “That’s a pretty good guess. Do you know how he ended up at the church?”

  “I didn’t know he was at the church.” I always thought that if I was ever involved in an actual police investigation, if I were on the record, I would tell only the truth. But it turns out, I am the same person I am in real life.

  “You didn’t?”

  “How would I know that?”

  “I’m sorry. I just thought you knew everything.” He readjusts himself in his seat. “Clementine said he would go there sometimes to meet members, people who were in trouble, late at night. Any idea who he might have been meeting?”

  “Why don’t you check his phone records?” I am not surprised I am telling him how to do his job.

  “We did. Guess where the call came from—you’ll like this.”

  “Where?”

  “His own house.”

  “Maybe he called himself.”

  “Looks like he did.”

  I try to get him back on track, back on Homer. “Anyway, we talked about Florence, and then we separated. I went back to my car. And he walked toward the water system.”

  “Did he tell you what he was doing?”

  “He said he was going to go look at something.”

  “Did he say what?”

  “No.”

  “And was he carrying anything on him, anything unusual?”

  “No. But he was using Addy’s ATV. She kept the poison in the basket.”

  “Did you see it?”

  I didn’t see it, but maybe I did. “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  I press my fingers to my temples, imagining a headache before it’s really there. “I feel sick.”

  Officer Hardy shifts. “Mrs. Fleece—”

  “Miss.”

  “Whatever. Real people are dead.”

  “Maybe they were real to you,” I say without thinking, and then I am appalled. I cover my mouth with my own hand. Were your parents never real to me? Was your brother? Was Jed? Or was this all just some game, some escape, that got away from me? “No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, you never cared until it affected you, until it affected someone you cared about. I cared.” D
id I? Or am I really that much of a monster? Am I really that lost? Am I really so alienated from the world that I can’t even feel a mass murder—not on a podcast, not on a Dateline episode, but in real life?

  Officer Hardy sits back. “I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned her.”

  “Mentioned who?” I say, like I don’t know he means you.

  “Mentioned Rachel. That woman you were so hard searching for. She’s back, you’ll be glad to know. With another wild story.” Something knocks loose in my brain. It’s the words “that woman.” He has used those words before to indicate your mother, I thought, but now I realize he might have been indicating you. You were the one with the “crazy stories.” The one who used to bother him. “According to that woman, he’s been plotting to get the ranch for years.”

  “Maybe he has. He told me he wanted it to go to him.” Was that what he said?

  “Then it wasn’t very smart of him to contaminate it.”

  “Maybe he wanted to destroy the evidence.”

  “It wasn’t very smart of him to poison himself.”

  “Maybe he felt bad for what he’d done. Maybe he wanted forgiveness. He was in a church.”

  Officer Hardy puts down his pencil. He stretches forward. He traces a finger down the edge of my pillow so close to my face that I feel my cheek sinking, smell the tobacco in his finger pads. “See, I don’t think he did.” I can hardly breathe all of a sudden; I think that poison is still affecting me, contaminating me. I can’t think straight. I can’t see clearly. “I don’t think he had anything to do with this.”

  “Of course you don’t.”

  His features pinch. “Oh, come on, now. I’ve never been anything but nice to you.”

  I laugh. “Is that what passes for ‘nice’ with you?”

  “Homer is a good man. He wouldn’t do a thing like this.”

  “It’s easy for a man to be good, just like it’s easy for a woman to be crazy.” I lean in. “You can believe whatever you want, but you need proof. Something beyond whatever nefarious ideas you have twitching up in your head. Right?”

  He sighs. Sits back. “Clementine said you were a writer. You sure know how to tell yourself a story.”

  “Right back at you.”

  Three months later

  Every morning I wake up early to feed the horses. They are new horses, replacing the old ones, but we take better care of them. We have moved to the yellow house, which was kept safe by its lack of a water hookup, while we wait for the main property to become decontaminated.

  We plan to turn the ranch into a safe haven for women who need to disappear. All day we work clearing trails, rebuilding, and all night we work our cases. We take care of the animals and we take care of each other and nobody bothers us. We can look however we want, act however we want, be whoever we want. We are not disappearing. We are multiplying. Every weekend, more and more guests participate in our retreat. They are brought here sometimes by the podcast, sometimes by the website and the Instagram photos and the promise that this is a place where we can just be. This is a place where we are safe.

  The police keep looking into what happened at the ranch. They have counted the bones in your mother’s garden. There are thirteen women. Florence is one of them. Most have been identified, but some never will be. They won’t accept Homer as the villain. Moroni has skipped town, even though they never accused him, probably never would have. You say the police won’t stop, because of course they won’t.

  Grace has her baby, and it’s a girl. Grace names her Hope, because that’s something a woman with a name like “Grace” would do. She doesn’t even consider going back to Abilene, to the family who never even realized she was gone. She says, Jed would have wanted me to stay here, and I can’t correct her, even if I suspect it is the last thing he would want. We all help her with the baby. We all take turns looking after her, like she’s our baby, so sometimes we forget who she belongs to.

  You talk about growing up on the ranch, how trapped you felt. How free we are now. You say it over and over, the way your parents used to say, We’re so happy you’re here. You say, I’m so happy I’m free.

  And the sun sets the same way each day. The trees rest in their piles. The creek is loud and fast and so close to us that I can feel it pounding in my chest after a heavy rain. And I think how lucky we are to be here, and I try not to think too much about the why, or the how, how we became so lucky.

  But not everyone is happy about it.

  Almost every morning I see it sitting at the end of the drive: the big black truck. Sometimes it’s Tasia; sometimes it’s Clementine. And it irks me. It makes me feel dirty. It’s like they are waiting for something to go wrong.

  And I ask you, “Is this what they did to you? Homer and Moroni, when they ran you off the road, when they attacked you? Were they following you, all the time? Were they watching you? Was that why you ran?” And you say, “You’re the only one who understands.”

  Early one morning, a nightmare wakes me up and I walk out alone. Belle Star is in the pasture. She nickers at me as I pass. We put her in with our new horses and she has become the alpha mare. Now they are the ones that wind up wounded and I am proud and scared at the same time.

  I walk down the river. Up close it sounds like an orchestra tumbling down a hill. The walls of the valley are green but there is a smell that hovers in the air, especially in the early morning, of death from above, a constant reminder that we are living in the fold of something bigger.

  I can see the truck—Clementine; I recognize the plates—waiting at the end of the drive. I try to ignore her, to shake it off, but the headlights flash. She’s signaling me. She’s calling me in and I think, I should confront her. Someone needs to. You say to let them watch. “They think they’re so scary.”

  I walk toward the truck. I hesitate when I see Tasia scowling in the front seat, but I won’t back down. I am stronger than I thought. I am not crazy. I was right.

  The window rolls down and Clementine stretches over Tasia’s lap. Her hair is askew and her face is pale but she almost smiles, like it’s been a rough few weeks but we’re all together now.

  “Will you come with us? We want to talk to you.”

  “I—” My fingers slide toward my gun. I carry now, all the time. I don’t know why or when I started, but I can’t stop.

  “We’re not going to kill you,” Tasia says, and the emphasis dances in my mind. “We’re”—or was it “you”?

  “I don’t know if I should.”

  Tasia scowls. “What, now you’re scared?”

  “None of this is your fault.” Clementine puts a hand on Tasia’s shoulder. “We just want to talk to you, woman to woman.”

  My eyes dart toward the house. I know you wouldn’t want me to go, but maybe I can fix this. Maybe I can convince them that everything is solved now. We solved it. I would like to have Clementine and Tasia and Asha and Aya here with us. I would like not to see that big black truck waiting at the end of the road every single morning.

  I open the door and climb into the back of the truck.

  * * *

  —

  We are quiet all the way to Happy Camp. We pull up outside the coffee shop and Tasia unlocks the door and leads us inside. She doesn’t bother with the lights. Doesn’t offer tea. We sit in a circle of chairs next to the window. I choose the one closest to the door. My gun pokes into my back and I shift to get comfortable.

  They say nothing. Tasia glares at the floor and Clementine gazes wistfully out the window. It’s as if they expect me to lead their conversation though I don’t even know what it’s about.

  I shift in my seat. “Rachel wants you to know that she doesn’t have any bad feelings toward you—”

  Tasia groans

  “Tas,” Clementine warns.

  Tasia’s knee bounces. “You realize what she did to you, right? You�
��re finally putting it together. The great detective!”

  “Be nice.”

  “Be nice? That’s exactly what got us here in the first place!” Tasia jumps forward in her seat, a sudden live wire. “Your best friend is evil.”

  “We don’t know that!”

  “Oh my God, Clementine, get real!” She cracks her knuckles so fast, it’s like a smattering of sparks. She turns to me. “Remember Florence, our good friend Florence? Who do you think was the last person seen with her? Who do you think ran off after her, after we fought?” But I’m not falling for it. It doesn’t even affect me, encased in stone as I am.

  I cross my arms. “If you really thought Rachel killed her, why didn’t you do something?”

  “Because Homer told us not to. He said that even if something did happen, it was an accident, and we should forgive her. He wanted to protect her.”

  “Or himself.” I sniff.

  “No! That’s not— You don’t get to choose who the criminal is!”

  “I could say the same to you.”

  Her eyes go flat but she continues. “Florence disappeared. It was suspicious but life went on. Rachel became obsessed by it. Back then it made us believe she was innocent, but not anymore.

  “The way I see it, Florence was her first kill. Maybe it was an accident. But that’s what got her started. She wanted to kill again, but she knew she would have to be more careful. She would have to find victims that no one was looking for. And she was lucky, because at her parents’ ranch, she had a constant source.

  “Clem and I were the only ones who noticed how women came in and out.” She stops for a second, hovering over some uncertainty. “We tried to talk about it but it was ‘What do you expect? It’s a seasonal job’ and ‘It’s not a crime to disappear.’ So we started watching.”