by TE Carter
“Our daughter has enough to worry about,” Kate’s mom says. “It’s hard for her. For us. She can’t … It’s just a lot, and she’s not strong enough. These things they’re saying in the news. Would you want your daughter thinking about things like that?”
Cassie shrugs. “I don’t have a daughter. But if I did, I guess I’d want her to know what to look out for. I’d want her to know what happens to girls.”
Mr. Prince slams his hand down on the table. I can tell he didn’t mean for it to be so aggressive, because he lifts it and cradles it with his other hand under the table, looking sheepish. “I’m sorry. But like you said, you don’t have a daughter. Katie is … she’s not well. That girl ended up in whatever situation she did because she made bad choices. Katie said she had trouble with boys. Our daughter knew better than to get mixed up in that.”
Cassie sighs. “Has Kate been in touch with anyone back here?” she asks. “Do you know what came of the meeting with the police?”
“We just told you we didn’t,” he says and he gets up from the table. He makes a show of starting dinner, a subtle warning that Cassie is intruding. That her time is up. But she continues anyway.
“I’d imagine this would be something you’d want to talk to your daughter about. If she was close to Ellie. Even if they weren’t good friends, I can’t imagine it would be good for her to wonder what happened.”
“My daughter,” Kate’s mom says, “like my husband said, she’s had a hard time. In high school, she was … well, she was sick. Not well. You don’t need to know, but she was in the hospital a few times. It was never easy for her to adjust back into things when she’d be there. When she’d go back to school, the kids weren’t very nice. She didn’t have many friends because of it, and we always tried to look out for her. To make sure she didn’t get in trouble. Didn’t get caught up in things that might have made her illness worse. We really wanted her to stay closer to home for school because of it. She insisted she needed to go away, but that was a very difficult choice for our family.”
She looks at her husband, who nods slightly, and she continues. “We’re trying not to get her involved. Katie needs to be kept away from things that upset her. Things that might make it hard for her. She’s all alone there at school, and we can’t … we can’t fix it if she gets upset. She gets sick, you know.”
After a year, it was something I should’ve known. I didn’t even realize Kate was ill. All those afternoons. The conversations we had. She said she was in the midst of reinvention, but she had this sickness and I didn’t know. I hate myself for not knowing.
“I’m sorry. I understand this is hard,” Cassie says. “What do you mean she was sick? What kind of illness exactly?”
“I don’t think it’s really any of your business,” Kate’s dad says. “Look, like we said, she wasn’t friends with that girl. We don’t know anything. We’ve told you everything we do. My wife and I … we want Katie to move on. She’s been doing better away at school. There have been no incidents. We’d like to let her keep it that way.”
“I can’t imagine it doesn’t get back to her. Now that they’re digging things up again,” Cassie says. “The Internet alone—”
“She won’t find out, because Katie and that girl were not friends. We don’t know anything. She doesn’t know anything. Can you please just leave us alone?” her mom asks.
Cassie does, but not until she makes them take a business card.
There was always a wall between me and Kate. I didn’t know she was sick. She didn’t know what was happening with me. Especially toward the end. We were friends, but not really, and now the only person who maybe could have explained, who might have been able to speak for me, is in Ohio and her parents don’t want her to remember me. They can’t even say my name. They just call me “that girl.”
Kate’s parents aren’t hiding anything. They’re just reluctant to admit I existed. Reluctant to let me into their lives. To admit what this town is. What people do. The things that are out there for girls. They don’t want to face these things, because it’s easier to believe they only happen to other people.
It’s hard to get information in Hollow Oaks. Nobody ever wants to talk. Nobody ever wants to be inconvenienced by all the things that happen to girls.
chapter thirty-six
He sits in the same blue chair Gina Lynn sat in. He came right from work and he struggles to keep his eyes open. Playing with the skin along his nails on his left hand, he looks outside. Sees how the light from the store followed him.
“Mr. Frias, thanks for coming,” Officer Thompson says. She guides him back to the same drab room. I don’t know why I imagined there’d be multiple rooms, that these conversations wouldn’t be repetitive. It’s always the same here, and it shows even in the way that Gomes scribbles in the lines of his notepad as he waits.
“Do you have anything?” my dad asks. “Has something new come up? I’ve been trying not to watch too much of the news. It just ends up devolving into arguments and speculation.”
Gomes shakes his head and adjusts in his seat. The fan is still going. It spins during all of these conversations, capturing all the pieces of the story. Only the fan knows the truth.
“Not exactly. As you know, we had very limited information before,” Gomes says. “It’s hard, even when we want to keep looking, to tie up resources with no direction. We don’t want you to get your hopes up that there’s been a breakthrough. However, we think, maybe, there’s something that could help. We think we may have a starting point. There are still a lot of questions, though, and we’re hoping you might be able to fill in some of the blanks.”
“Is she alive?” my dad asks.
“We don’t know.”
“Is there a chance?” He wants to hope, and they want to let him, because it hurts too much to say it’s impossible.
“We hope so, Alex.”
“What we’re trying to do is piece together new information we’ve received,” Malik says. “Can you remember Ellie saying anything about Caleb Breward? About a boyfriend in general? Did she go anywhere in particular?”
My dad looks down. “I don’t know. I know you asked me before, about him. If she was dating. What kinds of boys she might have been involved with. But Ellie and I, we didn’t talk much. After she started high school, she spent a lot of time in her room and I didn’t know how to talk to her. I didn’t even know she had a boyfriend until you told me. Until you went through her diary and talked to other kids at school. We never really talked about those kinds of things.”
He pauses and looks at them, ashamed. “Except…” He shakes his head. “There was this one time, but it probably doesn’t mean anything.”
“Anything could mean something,” Gomes says.
“Well, she came into the store, while I was working, with some kids. Caleb Breward was one of them. They were holding hands, but there was space between them. It wasn’t the way you stand with someone you’re dating,” my dad says.
It hurts me hearing that. It hurts because he noticed and I didn’t. He saw what wasn’t there, even when I pretended it was. I wish I’d asked him. I wish I’d talked to him about Caleb or tried to find out what love looked like. How you can tell if someone means it when they say they care or call you pretty.
“So she never gave you reason to think they were serious? There was nothing else? He never came to the house?” Thompson asks.
“Never. She knew…” I hear him remembering. In his voice, I can see that morning. The fish and the bottles. I can see his mind replaying that time in the store. I see him putting it all together. “Why him, Ellie? Of all the people in this town…?”
“You don’t like the Brewards?” Gomes makes a note in the folder.
“There are a lot of things I don’t like, but what good does complaining about them do? She deserved better.”
“How long have you lived here?” Malik asks.
“Before Ellie. My family lived out past Ithaca, and Sierra an
d I—that’s Ellie’s mom—after school, we fell in love with this place. It had so much potential. We wanted to capture it.”
“What do you mean?” Thompson looks at the clock. It’s late. My father is exhausted, but he’s trying to remember the right thing to say. Trying to give them whatever thread they need to find me.
“She was a writer,” he says, talking about my mom. “I used to want to make films. We thought this town was the kind of place where we could do that. That there were stories here that deserved to be told. And then Ellie was born. Sierra couldn’t stand it. It didn’t take very long for the potential to start to feel like decay.”
“That’s when she left?” Gomes asks.
“Around. It wasn’t just the town anymore. Sierra wasn’t good at being a mom. She felt like it was stifling her. That we’d be stuck here forever and suddenly, all the stories that she wanted to tell felt like stories no one needed anymore. Stories of people she didn’t understand. So she decided to go somewhere else. To find the ones she cared about instead.”
“And as for you?” Gomes asks.
“I was working for Goodman and Sons for a while. Trying to do my best for Ellie. I knew there wasn’t going to be a big career break for me anymore, but she was a perfect kid. She just lightened everything. I know it’s cliché. A dad who thinks his daughter is the greatest thing ever, but Ellie was. I came home at night, especially after they started talking about layoffs, and I would feel like giving up, too. I thought maybe Sierra had had the right idea. But then Ellie would be sitting in the kitchen or playing in the yard. Just being Ellie.” He pauses. “My daughter was my entire life. She is my entire life, and I have no idea what to do without her now.”
“I’m sorry, Alex,” Gomes says.
“I failed her. She had this whole life I didn’t know about. I wasn’t a part of it. I wasn’t there for her and she was all I had. How could I miss so much? How could I let her down so badly?”
Thompson grabs the tissues. She’s added that to her daily routine now. My dad takes one, but he doesn’t use it. He just folds it over his hands.
“I need you to find her. I’ve been patient. She has to be somewhere,” he says.
Thompson looks at him. “I know we’ve covered this, but there’s absolutely no chance Ellie is with your wife?”
He laughs. “Sierra would’ve called right away. Like I said, she wasn’t interested in being a mother. She would’ve been on the phone, making sure Ellie got back here as soon as possible.”
“Sometimes, these things happen with kids and estranged parents. I’m sure, at Ellie’s age, she wondered about her mom. Stranger things have been known to happen and at her age, she’s going to surprise you. Maybe your wife thought—” Thompson says.
“Sierra and Ellie weren’t estranged. Sierra was welcome here. I tried constantly. I never gave up on the idea of her coming back. She could have come back anytime.” He pockets the tissue. “Look, the thing with Sierra … She chose not to be a part of her daughter’s life. Ellie is fifteen. She won’t be sixteen for a couple weeks. And you know what I got in the mail three days ago? A birthday card. She doesn’t even remember her own daughter’s birthday. She knows around when it is. And sometimes the cards come months early, when they’re convenient for Sierra.”
Thompson shakes her head. “I can’t understand how—”
My dad cuts her off. “That’s just who she is. Ellie and I know that. We’ve lived with it for years. We get it. But when you say maybe Ellie went to be with her … it’s absurd. Maybe that happens with other kids. With different kinds of women. Not Sierra. Besides, if Ellie had wanted to, and if Sierra hadn’t been the way she is, I would’ve been more than happy to send Ellie to spend time with her mom. She didn’t need to run away.”
“I know we’ve gone through it before,” Gomes says, “but we need to cover all the possibilities. It’s better to hope for something innocent like a girl trying to connect with her mom.”
“I don’t like the alternative,” my dad admits, “but Ellie wasn’t that kind of kid. We weren’t close anymore, but she didn’t run away. I told you then. Nobody believed me. I may not have known everything about her. We may have lost something along the way, but I know that. I know Ellie well enough to know she wouldn’t have left. Not without saying good-bye. No matter what it was, Ellie would never have left me guessing.”
The officers pause, looking at one another, knowing he’s right. Six months is a long time. Maybe they hadn’t had all the information. Maybe Gina Lynn had lied, but they could have tried harder.
“Right now,” Gomes says, “we don’t have enough to link Ellie’s disappearance to anyone or anything with real proof. We still don’t know where she is. What we do have, we believe, is hopefully enough to prosecute Caleb and Noah Breward on these new charges.” He looks at the other officers and then back at my dad. “Alex, I shouldn’t be telling you this. I’m really not supposed to tell you this, but I want you to know how hard we’re trying. We are sincerely hoping that moving forward on this will bring out more information. There are a few things we’re trying to tie up and they may bring us back to Ellie. I hate asking you to be patient, but I promise … we’re still looking.”
“If there’s anything I can do, anything I can tell you, please let me help,” my dad says.
Malik nods. “We will. You’ll be the first person we tell as soon as we have anything useful. In the meantime, if you think of anything or hear anything, no matter how useless it may seem, please contact us.”
Gomes reaches out to shake my dad’s hand and squeezes. “We know we dropped the ball. But we’ll make it right. I promise we’ll find her.”
My dad nods. “Please do,” he says. “Even if it’s bad news, I need you to find her. She needs to come home.”
chapter thirty-seven
When you charge people like the Brewards with sexual assault, there’s a media deluge. A town is put upside down. Local and regional coverage becomes national. People all over the country sit in their homes and imagine Hollow Oaks. They talk about the kind of place it is. The kind of people who live here. The kinds of secrets we must all have. Everyone has a theory and we’re no longer just another town where people live and die and fade. We’re a name that everyone knows. A name of a place where things happen to girls. As if it’s unique to us.
Now that the media is here, there’s no space left. The pizza place has to feed hundreds of members of the press. The school’s courtyard is more film equipment than grass and trees. The front of the police station looks like a studio set. Everyone wants to know what comes next.
People discuss us online. They speculate as to what happened. As to who the Brewards are. Who the girls are. People everywhere talk about what did and didn’t happen, and they prosecute and defend a group of people they’ve never met. They condemn our town. Separate it from their own, where the same secrets pulse.
Gomes may have been disinterested in the case at first. Maybe he was tired. He’s close to retirement and maybe he didn’t want this. Maybe he was afraid of his reputation, of having this be how he’s remembered. He didn’t want to get involved in any of it, but when he’s given the second stack of printouts, when he gets another pile of online comments that have come from all over, from people who couldn’t find Hollow Oaks on a map, something changes in him.
He bellows at anyone who will listen. “This isn’t a fucking witch hunt. Get these girls’ names off the Internet. What’s wrong with you?”
He’s not yelling at anyone in particular. No one knows who gave up the names. Someone did, but they could be in this room or not. And it doesn’t matter anyway. Gomes can yell. He can get angry. But no matter what he does now, the names are out there. Once a name is spoken, it doesn’t get to be taken back. Sure, the media keeps saying the names have not been released, but what good does that do? Everyone knows and everyone has already decided if Gretchen and Kailey are telling the truth. The court of public opinion moves much faster than the l
aw.
“There’s something wrong with people,” Malik says. Thompson nods. “Look at this one.” He reads aloud. “‘Both these girls are lucky. Guys like the Brewards don’t need to waste their time forcing anyone to do anything. I bet these girls are ugly. The Brewards probably did them a favor. If they were any good, maybe they’d have stuck around for more.’”
Gomes snaps at someone who brings in more pages for him to look at, and Malik puts down the stack. “I don’t understand people,” he says.
“There are plenty of calls to hang the Brewards, too. It’s not all one-sided. Of course, the comments are just as vile,” Thompson says.
“Yup. And plenty of calls to hang us, too,” Malik adds.
Gomes pushes the papers away from himself. “Okay, let’s just focus on what we can do. Let’s make sure those two girls are safe. That’s a starting point. From there, let’s make sure that anyone else who wants to come forward can do so without being dragged through this. Let’s find this house the girls described. Maybe, if we can do these things, we might have a chance here.”
I know there are other girls. There were at least eight—well, seven since one is Gretchen—after me. But no one is coming forward, and I can’t pretend I blame them. People all over the country know Gretchen’s and Kailey’s names. The cops tried to keep them safe. Tried to keep them anonymous, but Hollow Oaks wasn’t ready for this case. Towns like this are never ready for these kinds of stories, no matter how many times they happen.
“I contacted the DA,” Thompson says. “They’re sending an advocate, setting up a meeting with the girls. She’s going to help keep them from being out there too much. She’ll do most of the speaking for them.”