I stared out the window, the glass cold against my bare hands, and wondered if anyone was out there. If they knew where I was. If they were watching me back. From Ryan’s window, I had a good view down the driveway, and I could see the top of a house somewhere next door, but much of the yard was hidden in trees.
Surely the fact that nobody had come for me in the middle of the night was a good sign. Surely there would be answers today. Jan would know what to do and would convince the police how to find my mother, and we would be okay. We would be okay.
An alarm began faintly buzzing beside the bed, and Ryan stirred beside me. I felt my face heating up as he reached an arm over to the bedside table to hit the clock. He was slow to wake, which surprised me, based on how much energy he seemed to have in class and at the Lodge.
He rolled over, grabbed a pillow, placed it over his head and moaned. Then he froze. He slowly lowered the pillow and tilted his head to my side, staring directly at me. “Hey,” he said.
“Hi.”
I decided Ryan-in-the-morning was my new favorite kind of Ryan. Vulnerable and unsure, a small smile as he reached a hand over to mine, on top of his comforter.
We heard a noise downstairs, and my first thought was, Them. They’re here. They’ve found me. I searched for alternate exit strategies: the bathroom, the phone, this window—
But Ryan cursed, bolted out of bed, and was running toward the stairs.
I heard the door at the bottom open just as a woman’s voice said, “Oh, I was just coming to see if you wanted breakfast before school.”
School. As if I could do something that normal. As if my life would ever be that simple again.
“I’m not feeling so hot,” Ryan said. “I was coming down to tell you.”
“Okay,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if…Well, I’ll be home after dropping Jay at school, so if you need anything…”
When I heard the door for the garage close, I crept out of bed and checked my phone, but nothing. Nothing from the police, or Jan. No news of my mother.
Ryan stood just at the entrance to his room. He didn’t come any closer. “You can go ahead and use the shower,” he said. “She’s taking my brother to the middle school. She’ll be gone for a while.”
“Okay.”
I was standing in Ryan Baker’s bedroom in his T-shirt and nothing else, and he was looking at me like…
“Hey, Ryan?”
“Yes, Kelsey?”
“I’m not going to break.”
“I know you’re not,” he said.
“So you can stop looking at me like I might.”
“That is definitely not why I’m looking at you.” He gave me that same small morning smile, and continued, “You’re in my clothes and you’re in my room and I’m thinking, Don’t be a dick, Ryan, she’s having the absolute worst day of her life and this isn’t the best time to tell her you like the way she looks in your clothes, in your room.”
My face heated up. “You’re thinking all of that?”
“I am.”
“Oh.” Oh. “Well, I’m thinking, You’re standing in Ryan Baker’s room, wearing Ryan Baker’s clothes, and you really shouldn’t be thinking about anything other than the fact that your life has gone to shit and you don’t know where your mother is, but Ryan is there and he’s making it better.”
He tilted his head, took a step closer. “You’re thinking all of that?” he asked.
“I am.”
“I’m thinking I want to kiss you now,” and I was nodding, but he was already walking toward me, and he backed us straight through the bathroom doorway until I was pressed against the sink, with both his hands cupped around the base of my neck, his fingers stretching up into my hair. And then he used one arm to help lift me onto the counter, his palm lingering where the fabric of the shirt met my bare leg, his hand circling the outside of my thigh.
“Oh,” I said when he pulled back.
“Oh,” he said, and then he kissed me again.
And then the buzzing of my phone on the table slammed me back to reality, his hands slipping, the distance growing as I skirted past him for the cell: Jan.
“Hello?” I picked up, my hand over my heart, my pulse already too fast.
“Kelsey, where are you? Emma said you’re not at home.”
“I sent you a message last night. I’m at a friend’s. Is Cole okay?”
“What? Yes, Cole will be okay. We’re on our way home with him as soon as the paperwork goes through. The police just called to let me know we’ve been cleared to go back into your house to pick up what you need.”
“Thanks, Jan.”
“Kelsey, come back,” she said. “We need to talk.”
I hung up the phone.
Ryan looked at me from the doorway of the bathroom.
“That was Jan. Still no word on my mom. But I can get back in the house.”
“I’ll take you,” he said. Then he grinned. “I’m just gonna take a nice, cold shower first.”
—
There was a police cruiser at the start of my driveway, blocking it off to traffic. And there were two other cars—no, reporter vans—hovering around outside.
“Oh God,” I said.
“Yeah.” Ryan reached out and grabbed my hand as he rolled down the window.
The police officer asked for our IDs, and Ryan held out his driver’s license. The cop looked from him to me.
“I left it in the house,” I said. And then I pointed for emphasis. “That one.”
He looked closely from me to Ryan and waved us through. I wondered if they had men stationed outside Annika’s place, too.
I tried calling Annika as Ryan navigated the driveway, but her cell went straight to voice mail. I sent her a text, in case she was grounded and couldn’t keep her phone on. Just checking in, I wrote. You okay?
There was another cruiser at the end of the driveway, and we parked behind it. The black iron gates were ajar, the light overhead still out, the system still down. Even the front door remained unlocked. The house smelled faintly of smoke, of chemical reaction, and there was a fine haze clinging to the walls, like we were inside a dream.
Everything served as a reminder: the pan on the stovetop; the curtains pulled back, revealing the bullet hole; batteries scattered on the kitchen counter. I saw shadows in my peripheral vision, something that didn’t belong, but when I turned to look, they disappeared.
There was nothing familiar about this house anymore. Nothing safe, everything ruined.
I walked down the hall toward my room, seeing everything anew, as an outsider might. Bars over windows, thick, tinted glass, cameras pointing at the outside, and a basement full of chemicals.
This was the home of someone mentally unstable. Someone who needed to agree to weekly visits with Jan in order to keep custody of her child. A person who was unpredictable. Someone the police could not begin to understand. I felt her slipping even further away.
Someone else had been through my room, my desk, and everything felt tainted and wrong. I pulled open the dresser drawers and threw piles of my clothes onto the bed. Ryan got a garbage bag from the kitchen, and he held it open as I randomly tossed clothes and toiletries and a toothbrush inside. And then I thought of the basement, the money, the passports. The things that were hidden—and that should be kept hidden. The police wouldn’t understand them—they couldn’t—if they didn’t understand my mother.
“Will you wait up here for me?” I asked.
“I can come with you,” he said.
But I shook my head. “I’ll just be a second.”
He didn’t argue, but he stood in the foyer with the garbage bag beside him, looking at that family picture again, of me and my mother with the light streaming through behind us, big smiles. Perfectly normal.