Taryn felt like she’d gladly have sold her soul to continue the feeling of relief she felt in her grandmother’s presence, but there was an undeniable sense of urgency in the room, and she knew there wasn’t much time. Even as she watched, Nora’s body wavered, as if unsure of itself. Taryn opened her mouth, tried to speak, but nothing would come out. Nora looked at her with a mixture of love and pity and then raised her left hand, the large rings she’d always worn casting sparkles against the walls and floor. As Taryn watched in confusion, a handful of dry, brittle leaves fell from Nora’s hand and floated to the floor where they landed in a small pile at her feet. Then, with a sad smile that still managed to light up her careworn face, she reached her hand out towards Taryn and softly disappeared. She didn’t fade out, like a vision might in a movie, but simply ceased to be. Taryn collapsed back down on the couch, drawing the afghan back around her shoulders, and cried. The room still carried her grandmother’s scent.
Matt found her curled up on the couch, hours later, when his alarm went off. “Sorry,” he apologized as she wiped the sleep from her eyes and glanced at the cup of tea he offered. “You were sleeping so well I didn’t want to disturb you. I didn’t think you’d sleep through the night.”
“I didn’t,” she muttered. She hated crying herself to sleep. Now she had a sinus headache and her face felt red and puffy. “I got a visitor last night.”
As Matt perched on the edge of the couch she quickly relayed her grandmother’s visit and what had happened. “I’ve never seen her before, Matt,” she explained, her eyes threatening to fill with tears again. “I kept hoping, and what with the Miss Dixie doing what she does I thought maybe…”
Matt got up and walked to the center of the room where Taryn had pointed her grandmother’s location. “Well, she left behind some presents,” he mused as he knelt down and studied the floor.
Wrapping the afghan around her shoulders like a robe, Taryn walked to Matt and knelt down beside him. The small pile of colorful leaves smiled up at them, their edges curled inward and the stems pointing up with glee. In the middle of the pile was something sparkly, something that caught the overhead light and threw a glimmer on the wall over the couch. Taryn poked her fingers into the dry heap and pulled out a large ring–a simple gold band with an ornate sapphire in the middle.
“It’s hers all right,” she mused, laying it on her flattened palm and studying it with the care of a surgeon. “It even smells like her. If a ring can have a smell.”
“I definitely catch a scent,” Matt agreed, patting Taryn’s knee, although whether he was being truthful or humoring her in comfort was debatable.
“What do you think this means?” Taryn couldn’t help but feel waves of excitement in the pit of her stomach. Her grandmother had been with her. Maybe just for a few seconds, but it was closer than she’d been to her in a decade. She wanted to kick herself for not trying to communicate with her more, for not holding onto the moment longer, for not being able to join her… And she’d do anything to be able to repeat the experience.
“I have no idea, Taryn,” Matt murmured. “I wish I did.”
Taryn’s class flew by quickly, and she couldn’t remember a single word she’d said. She’d given her students homework at their last meeting and now their sketches were piled up on her desk before her. She thought she might hang around the classroom and look over them before going home. She had the car since Matt had wanted to stay home, do laundry, and pack. The room emptied out in a hurry, like it usually did, and the building was quiet. She could faintly hear the sound of a man lecturing down the hall, but the noise was faraway and had nothing to do with her so she was able to tune it out. Soon, however, she could hear the staccato sounds of footsteps in the hallway and as they grew louder she looked up from the desk and watched as Emma’s slight frame filled the doorway.
“Hey,” she began with what Taryn thought might be nervousness. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”
“Yeah, sure,” Taryn motioned her to a seat. “Have a seat. What’s up?”
Emma’s red hair was pulled back in a loose bun, a few blazing tendrils falling down in her face becomingly. She wore camel-colored Uggs, leggings, a red infinity scarf, and a dark brown down jacket. Taryn envied her stylish, pulled-together look and felt dowdy and drab in her own ancient jeans, cheap sweater, and ratty hiking boots. Her hair could use a good washing (the water pressure at the cabin was a little lacking so she never felt fully rinsed) and she was developing a pimple on her chin. Or maybe it was a cold sore. Either way, it wasn’t nice.
“I know you went to Cheyenne’s house a few days ago,” Emma began. At Taryn’s look of confusion she laughed. “It’s not that big of a town, and I’m from here. Cheyenne’s kind of my cousin in that southern sort of way.”
“Ahh,” Taryn nodded in understanding.
“Well, I wanted to help you, if I can,” she continued. “And there are others, too, who want to help. Cheyenne’s best friend, Ruthie, is my roommate. We live with two other girls and have a house off campus. We’ve kind of been playing amateur detectives, I guess you could say, and we were wondering if you wanted to come over and hang out, maybe put our notes together or something.”
“Like a murder club,” Taryn mused and then instantly regretted it. “”Oh my God, I am so sorry. I don’t mean to imply Cheyenne was murdered. I just meant…”
Her cheeks flaming with embarrassment, Taryn was mortified, but Emma just laughed and waved it off. “I know you what you meant. You meant like one of those true crime clubs that sits around and discusses cases.”
“Yeah, like that.”
“Look,” Emma leaned forward and lowered her voice to a stage whisper, despite the fact that nobody else was around. “We know we’re probably not going to bring Cheyenne back. Whatever happened to her, she’s gone. She wouldn’t have put her parents through this and, besides, she didn’t have a job or anything so it’s not like she could’ve just taken off and started life new somewhere else.”
Taryn bit her bottom lip and studied Emma’s young, earnest face. She still wasn’t sure what to think about the whole thing. Thelma actually seeking her out to come and help find Cheyenne, the strange dreams she’d had at the cabin, her grandmother visiting her…
“I don’t know,” she answered at last, thinking more about how it might be a conflict of interest with her teaching job than anything else.
The look of disappointment that crossed Emma’s face made Taryn feel bad, and she instantly regretted turning her down. The regret was followed shortly by anger. Why did she have to feel guilty? After all, it wasn’t like she was a real university professor–she’d been lured to the college under false pretenses, brought not for her artistic talent or because someone thought she’d be a good fit for the school but because they thought she was some kind of freak show. She’d already given in to the self-pity that morning and broken down to Matt before going to class but now it was creeping back up on her, twisting its spindly little legs into her brain and whispering self-doubt soliloquies to her.
“Yeah, okay,” she conceded. Emma’s face lit up so brightly that Taryn felt a little embarrassed. “When and where?”
Chapter 11
I don’t know…” Matt grumbled for what must’ve been the hundredth time.
Taryn, curled up on the couch with a spread over her for warmth watched him pace back and forth, his hands occasionally raking through his hair. Her grandmother’s ring rested on her forefinger, a little big but calming. She hadn’t had a bad dream since she put it on.
“You have to go,” she sighed again. “I’ll be fine.”
“Something just feels off about this.”
Picking at a piece of lint in the Sherpa, Taryn shrugged. “I feel okay here in the house. I actually feel okay out there. Still a little upset about why I’m actually here…”
Squatting in front of her, Matt fished both her hands out from under the throw and engulfed them in his. His fingers were long and narrow, lik
e a piano player’s, and they were chilled from the trips he’d taken to the car. “They might have brought you here to help with the search, but they couldn’t have offered you the job if you weren’t good.”
“Money talks. Maybe they paid someone off.”
“Maybe,” he agreed with a smile. Taryn scrunched her face in mock anger. “But does it matter? You’re making money and the students seem to like you.”
“Is it strange that I’m going to hang out with one outside of class?”
“I don’t know. I certainly never hung out with any of my professors, but they were mostly old, nerdy geezers–you know, me in forty years. If I’d had a hot teacher like you, then maybe.”
Taryn leaned forward and pressed her face against his until their foreheads met. The curve of her forehead and nose fit perfectly onto his, like they were made for each other. It was a comforting pose for her, sometimes even more thrilling than kissing, and when she did it something always tugged at her–something deep-rooted and primal.
“I think I might even feel better knowing you’ll be around people while I’m gone. Just promise me you won’t go out to the farmhouse until I get back. Not even with someone else,” he added before she could protest.
“I don’t think there’s anything there,” she insisted. “I get something, but nothing definite. I don’t think Cheyenne is there.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Matt muttered stubbornly. “I picked up on something, too, and, even though my sensitivities aren’t anywhere near as strong as yours, I’d just feel better if you stayed away.”
The oldies CD Matt had playing changed to Otis Redding and as “These Arms of Mine” filled the room. Matt stopped talking and drew her up until she stood in front of him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Between the feeling of being close and the weight of her grandmother’s ring, she felt incredibly safe and protected. Moving in slow circles around the room, she let the sadness of the music and lyrics weigh her down a little, not in a bad way, but in a yearning. Torn between wanting to feel independent, and wanting him to stay, she’d pretended she’d be fine. But she might not, not really. Taryn’s biggest fear might just have been that she couldn’t really exist on her own, that the safety of Matt was what kept her heart beating.
The apartment building Taryn parked her car in front of looked exactly like the other ten buildings in the development. A breezeway with four apartments squared around it contained a steep staircase where, at the top, she found the exact same thing. Someone at Emma’s apartment had hung a wreath decorated with silk fall flowers and tiny pumpkins. It was a reminder that it would be Thanksgiving soon, and she had no idea what she was going to do this year.
When she knocked on the door, she could hear a flurry of activity inside. Emma, dressed in snug yoga pants and a hoodie, opened the door. Her red hair was piled atop her head and she looked beautiful in the casual way only young women can.
“Hi!” she shouted, and in her southern way engulfed Taryn in a hug before pulling her into the room and shutting the door.
A gathering of young people congregated around a coffee table laden with Domino Pizza boxes. There were six of them in total–two girls counting Emma and four young men. Some of them didn’t look old enough to be in college.
“Everyone, this is Taryn!” Emma announced with pride, holding onto Taryn’s hand the way a child might. “She’s my teacher, and she’s here to help us!”
“I’m not really a teacher,” Taryn mumbled, feeling embarrassed. “Just an instructor for a little while.”
“Oh, but she’s great,” Emma bubbled. “Here, sit on the couch and have some pizza!’
A young guy in camo pants and a black Guns-n-Roses T-shirt was already piling slices on a plate for her while Taryn settled down on the blue microfiber couch. The springs creaked under her weight, and Emma apologized. “I know, it’s a little old, but it was cheap.”
“Cheap?” The other girl in the group laughed. “It was free! We found it on the sidewalk. Someone set it out,” she explained to Taryn.
“Yeah, but we washed the cushions and sprayed it real well. There’s nothing wrong with it,” Emma said defensively. “Oh, and this is my roommate, Lindy.”
Lindy looked eighteen and had shoulder-length blonde hair. She was hard-looking and brown, like someone who spent an equal amount of time at the gym and tanning bed.
Emma went around the room and made the other introduction: Joe, Brad, Eric, and Mike. Taryn knew she’d forget their names by the time she got back to the house but now she nodded and smiled at each one.
“So what do you guys do?” she asked, taking a bite of pizza. Dominos hadn’t changed much since her own college days.
“We’re trying to find Cheyenne,” Eric grunted. He was the oldest looking in the group, although it could’ve been his red, bushy beard hiding his baby face.
“Did all of you know her?”
“Mike didn’t,” Emma explained. “He’s Brad’s roommate, though, and really good with computers so we roped him into this.”
“I have nothing better to do,” Mike smiled. He was strikingly good looking with a head full of dark, curly hair and an olive complexion that made him look Mediterranean.
“Don’t let him fool you,” Lindy smirked, giving Mike a punch in the arm. “He’s as invested in this as we are.”
“I don’t know how much help I can be,” Taryn interjected. She still wasn’t sure why she was there, and not in the apartment but in Georgia at all.
“They all know about your, um,” Emma faltered, searching for the word.
“Powers?” Brad of the camo pants suggested.
Taryn laughed. “I’m not a superhero! And it’s more my camera than me. I’ve tried taking pictures of the farm, but I’m not really picking up on anything. All I can tell you is I know she was there. And, of course, you know that already.”
For some reason she wasn’t ready to share anything about her dreams yet, or the scream. Those felt too personal and she thought it best she play things as close to the vest as possible at the moment.
“Well, we can show you what we have,” Emma insisted, snapping to attention and suddenly becoming business like. They removed the pizza boxes from the coffee table, which turned out to be a shipping crate, and began putting folders on it. Emma picked the first one up and opened it. A few sheets of paper fluttered out. “This is a timeline. It shows everything Cheyenne was up to in the forty-eight hours leading up to her death. There’s also some copies of receipts in here to prove where she was.”
“How in the world did you get those?” Taryn asked, raising her eyebrows. “Surely the police didn’t…”
“Oh, no,” Lindy replied. “From Thelma herself. She’s given up on the police. They were dragging their feet. She hired a private investigator and a lot of this stuff is things she gave him. We just asked for copies, too.”
“What happened to the private investigator?”
Emma shrugged. “He didn’t turn up anything new. That’s why Thelma let us take a crack at it.”
“And brought in you,” Mike smiled.
“To be honest, we don’t have much to go on,” Brad explained.
“It’s like she just vanished into thin air,” Eric quipped, the first thing she’d heard him say.
Taryn glanced over the timeline and receipts but there were no red flags. Cheyenne looked like a typical teenager: McDonalds (quarter pounder with cheese, no pickles), tanning bed, Wal-Mart (Revlon lipstick, a bag of Doritos, and a Keith Urban CD), and a milkshake from Dairy Queen. She’d apparently used her own bank card for all of the transactions.
“Did Cheyenne have a job or anything?” she asked after she’d flipped through everything.
“No,” Emma replied. “She worked at a car wash one summer and talked about applying at Wal-Mart after she graduated but…” Emma let her voice trail off as the implication hung in the air. Cheyenne had never gotten around to applying at Wal-Mart because she was gone.
“Her
parents gave her money,” Brad supplied. “They worried about her and didn’t want her to get stranded somewhere.”
“Did they have a reason to be worried or was it just your typical parent thing?” Taryn asked. She remembered Thelma saying Cheyenne hadn’t gotten along with her step-father.
Emma folder her hands under her chin and propped her elbows on her knees. “Cheyenne wasn’t happy at home. That last year was probably the worst. She was hardly ever there. She’d come stay with me for a while, with Lindy a little bit, with an aunt… I mean, she always called home and checked in and all; she just didn’t like being there. You know what I mean?”
“Is there any chance she just got too tired of it and left?” Taryn asked gently. In a lot of ways it did look like a runaway case. At least, the armchair detective in her, schooled by episodes of Law and Order and Criminal Minds, thought.
“No,” Emma objected stubbornly. “I could see her doing it for a few days, maybe even a couple of weeks, but never for this long.”
“Did they ever find anything of hers from that night? Any clues at all?”
“Her purse,” Lindy offered. “It was still by the bonfire. One of the detectives thought when she caught the ride she must have been in a hurry and left her purse behind.”
“I don’t buy that,” Emma frowned. “She always had that damn thing with her. She kept a ton of makeup in there, some emergency cash, her cell phone… no. She wouldn’t have gone anywhere without at least her cell.”
The group was quiet, lost in collective thought. The silence between them was almost tangible.
“So what else do you have here?” Taryn gestured to the table, breaking the stillness in the air.
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