Someone else is here.
I turn in a circle, confused. I’m not sure whether this car belongs to the developer—someone who can help us. Or whether it belongs to someone who knew Liam was here and sent that picture. “Hello?” I call. I didn’t see anyone on the path on the way back, but they could’ve veered to the right at the cutoff, heading to the base of the quarry.
The car looks familiar, in a vague sort of way. It’s parked beside Nolan’s, and it reminds me of earlier today.
I walk closer until I’m out in the dirt lot and quietly step around it—until I see, on the back, the decal for the foundation Nolan’s family runs, and I know this belongs to that guy who works at his house, though I’ve never seen him before. Mike, I think he said.
I wonder if he knew what we were doing and followed us here. Nolan trusts him, and it’s possible he’s here to help. Though I don’t recall seeing another car behind us on the back roads, or when we arrived.
I stare back into the woods, remembering what Nolan said—that the picture of Liam was sent from the library. It could’ve been anyone. And yet, it could’ve been sent from the library to make it seem like Nolan. He used to pretend he had a job tutoring there. Mike would think he worked there. Nobody knew it was a lie.
In the pit of my stomach, there’s the feeling of wrong.
I try to open Nolan’s car door, but it’s locked. Thankfully he’s left the windows half down, because his air conditioning is always broken, so I reach my arm in until I can disengage the lock, stretching down until it clicks.
Then I open the door and pop the trunk. The noise cuts through the empty parking lot, and I pause, looking around—with the feeling that someone is watching me.
His baseball gear is still tucked in the corner of the trunk, the mitt beside the bat. I can feel his hands on my hands, his body pressed behind mine, his words, explaining how to get more power.
Don’t swing like you’re afraid, he said.
One more look over the lid of the trunk, into the trees.
I’m not afraid, I tell myself. My hands shake anyway.
I pick up the bat.
Everything sounds so far away: across an ocean, a void of empty space. When I look up, the branches move, and the sky shrinks, and it’s like I’m falling into a black hole.
This cannot be what had me coming out here—to find this? This nothingness?
What was the point? Of the signal, and the signs, leading me here?
All this, to find he’s been dead, all this time?
There are footsteps, slowly trudging up the path—the sound cutting its way through the fog, back to me. It must be Kennedy, but I don’t want to look at her. All I’ll see is her face when she told me not to look. Her expression, which said everything.
“Nolan?”
It’s a man’s voice. The footsteps pause for a moment and then continue.
“Nolan? Is that you? Is everything okay?”
I look up, and I’m disoriented. In the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere—it’s Mike. I shake my head. No, everything is not okay.
Did Kennedy call him somehow? Did he know how to find us? Did time slip from me just like Liam did, here and gone? I look beyond Mike, for Kennedy. For someone to make sense of things.
“Hey,” he says, coming into the clearing. “It’s okay.” He reaches a hand down for my shoulder, where I’m sitting on the stump of the tree.
“Mike? What are you doing here?” There are no police behind him. My parents aren’t here. No one is here.
His shadow falls over me, his feet braced apart, and my shoulders tense.
“Mike?” I ask again, except this time, I’m asking something else. Something tingling in the back of my mind. “Mike, did you know…” But what? What did he know? That there was a picture of my brother, taken from this location? That my brother had been here once? That my brother was dead?
“Oh, Nolan,” he says, crouching down. “I want you to know how sorry I am.” His hands are shaking on his knees, and I can see that he is. Sorry. Except I’m face-to-face with the thing that is wrong, that makes no sense.
It’s his hands. They’re covered. He’s wearing thin leather gloves, in June, in the middle of Virginia.
“What are you doing?” I ask, leaning away. And then I look around frantically—for the police, for my parents, for anyone.
Who is this person, who’s been in my house since the earliest days of my parents’ organization? This man who gave us his condolences, told us what a gift Liam had been to the shelter they worked at together. Did he ever really lose his sister? Or was it Liam, all along, that brought him to us?
“Did you do this?” I ask, fueled by anger instead of grief. I stand abruptly and my head spins. But my body is full of rage, and adrenaline, and everything’s on edge. I can’t tell which person is in front of me—the Mike I thought I knew, or the Mike I’m seeing now. I don’t know which instinct to trust.
He holds his hands up, palm out, and on instinct I step back, losing my balance over the stump, scrambling to stand again as Mike walks closer. I can tell now, this is not the expression of someone here to help me. His face has shifted, set and determined.
“Stand up, Nolan,” he says. He reaches a hand down for me, but I push myself upright on my own. He steps closer, and I move back again, into the center of the clearing.
“You sent that picture,” I say, pointing my finger at his chest. “You knew he was here all along. You—”
He raises an eyebrow, not denying it.
The pieces start clicking together. “Is this why you work for my parents? You’ve known all along? Were you in my house to protect yourself?” After the first press conference, the police scanned those images from the television stations for potential suspects. They told my parents that suspects often like to insert themselves into the cases directly.
We didn’t look close enough, though. We didn’t check our own home. Mike gave us a story, and we believed it, because Liam knew him and my parents wanted answers.
Now I’m here, finally getting answers, only they’re not the ones I want. I’ve been racing toward the thing that would devastate us all, and for what? For this? One more betrayal?
“What did you do to him?” I ask, my thumb jutting over my shoulder, pointing to the edge of the quarry behind us. Needing to know, and needing desperately to be wrong about all of it.
Mike shakes his head. “He did it to himself. I’m so sorry. Your brother was good at a lot of things, but he didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut.”
I picture Liam over the sink, the razor clattering, the drop of blood—his hand shaking. Something had been on his mind. Somehow, I knew, even then—something was wrong. But I said nothing. The thought was fleeting, barely registering. And in the chaos that followed, I’d all but forgotten it.
“I thought you…” Everything twists. I thought Mike was on our side. I thought Liam trusted him. And now I see that he did; I finally understand how Liam would disappear from the park, with a dog, without putting up a fight: only if it was someone he knew. Only if he trusted that he would make it back unharmed. I remember, then, how Mike told my parents Liam probably ran away. Because it was unlikely someone would take and harm both Liam and the dog. Mike planted that seed, and it grew.
“Someone was spreading rumors,” Mike explains. “About me. It’s all so unimportant, such a small thing. All of this about people who don’t even matter. Who no one even misses. But someone confided in your brother. And he couldn’t let it go.” He shakes his head, like it’s all some big regrettable thing. Instead of something he had control over all along.
“But this, Nolan. I am truly sorry. I want you to believe that.”
I shake my head, not understanding. A step behind, as I’ve always been.
“Thing is, Nolan, this body is going to be found, one way or another now. The land was purchased. It’s unfortunate, really, but that’s the truth of it. Your brother’s case was going to be reopened, with or without that email. And I’m tired of trying to hide it. It’s time he was found, don’t you think?”
Yes, I do, except I also realize exactly how Mike wants Liam’s body to be uncovered. An email, with a photo, sent from me.
“So, what, you decided to blame it on me?” I say. It’s ridiculous. He couldn’t imagine this would work.
But he smiles, his lips pulling back, baring his teeth. It’s a look I’ve never seen on him before. “I didn’t realize you’d know the location, Nolan. Didn’t know it meant anything to you at all. But it was obvious you figured it out. Left it up on the computer screen right before you took off on this little excursion.” He shrugs. “You make do with what you get.” Then he smiles again. “Maybe it was a sign.”