“Still. Someone should check.”
“Nic,” he said, waving his hand, “I came to talk to you.” He rolled his neck. For a second I thought he was gearing up for an apology, and I mentally prepared to do the same. “It’s about Dad. I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”
Nope, guess not.
“First,” Daniel said, “we have a court date.” We had two affidavits vouching for Dad’s general incompetence, and a petition that Everett had helped me draw up that would put Daniel as the primary guardian, then me, on condition of Daniel’s death. “But it’s not for another two months.”
“Two months?” I asked.
“Yeah. And if Dad still refuses to sign the paperwork to put the house on the market, it will take until after the guardianship hearing for us to list it.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
Daniel cleared his throat. “Maybe you should go home.”
My eyes latched on to his. He was always telling me whether to stay or go, and I wanted to know why. Why he wanted me gone.
“I thought you wanted my help. You told me. You told me you wanted me to come.”
“I can take care of it,” he said, his face closed off. Unreadable. Typical Daniel.
“I’ll talk to Dad,” I said. “He’ll sign the papers. We’ll sell the house.”
He nodded. Stared off into the woods. “Bring your phone next time you’re out. So I don’t worry.”
* * *
THERE WAS A POLICE cruiser in the first row of the half-empty parking lot of Grand Pines, and I instinctively parked near the back. I knew it was irrational, but still.
The cop walked out of the building just as I left the car, and I stood beside the door, reshuffling the listing paperwork. There was something vaguely familiar about the way he walked, looking down at his feet with his hands shoved in his pockets. Something about his jet-black hair cropped perfectly against his light brown skin—cinnamon, Jackson had called it on Bailey. As if her ethnicity had a scent or a flavor.
“Mark?” I called, pushing off my car. “Mark Stewart?” The cop Annaleise had left a message for before she disappeared: I have a few questions about the Corinne Prescott case. Can we set up a time to talk?
Mark Stewart. Here.
He froze halfway to his car, stranded on the blue lines of a handicap space. I was jogging toward him, my flip-flops slapping against the pavement, the papers slipping from their stack under my arm. I secured them between my elbow and waist and gestured to myself, my heart pounding in my chest. “Nic Farrell. Remember?”
His eyes widened in surprise, but he quickly replaced it with a nod and a smile. “Hi, Nic. Wow, it’s been . . .” He let the thought linger in the air between us.
“Yeah,” I said. “God, you got tall.” I searched his face, but it was completely closed off, both familiar and unreadable. Bailey had always been captivating, the type of person you couldn’t tear your eyes from, no matter how many times you’d seen her. Their mom was from Japan—her father had met her there during his four years of navy service—and she had this partially stilted accent that Bailey could mimic perfectly.
The same combination on her brother—the dark hair, the brown eyes, the cinnamon skin—somehow had the opposite effect. He faded into a group, shrank from our focus. I wondered whether he and Annaleise had been close. If he knew something more that he’d kept for himself. Maybe why she’d asked about the Corinne Prescott case in the first place.
Mark had been fourteen when I left. The only thing I really remembered about his personality was that he was exceptionally goofy in that immature-boy way in his own home. Outside, he was morose and quiet. And when I ran into him outside of his house, away from his family, he blushed when he saw me, like he was embarrassed that I knew the other version.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
His cheeks tinged red, and I was glad to see I still had that effect. It would make him overcompensate by oversharing. “Got a tip,” he said, staring past me. “From a nurse. About a potential crime. We’re required to follow up.”
I nodded, tried to steady my hand, tried to slow my breath. Could be anyone. How many patients are there? What did that brochure say? Six hundred and twenty? Maybe two hundred and sixty. Still, less than a one percent chance.
“So how’ve you been? Still living in town?”
“Nah. Just work there. I live a few miles from Bailey. Nice area. You know.”
He was acting like I had a clue about Bailey. I didn’t know where she lived or what she did. Didn’t want to ask around, to draw attention to the uncomfortable truth: Bailey and I didn’t speak. Not after Corinne had disappeared. Hardly ever a day since.
That box in the police station, it does things to people. Makes you tell things about each other. Becomes a permanent record of your betrayal, with your signature below.
“Well,” I said, “it was really good seeing you, Mark.”
I was almost at the door when he called after me. “Hey, Nic,” he said, using some voice I’d never heard from him. His cop voice. “You in town for a while?”
I shrugged. “Just taking care of some loose ends.” I gripped the papers tighter to keep my hands from shaking.
He didn’t ask why I was here or who I was visiting.
He already knew.
As soon as the doors shut behind me, I raced to my father’s room.
* * *
DAD WAS PARTICULARLY DISORIENTED, or rattled, or both.
He sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall, faintly rocking back and forth. I knocked on the open door, but he didn’t answer. “Dad?” I called. He turned to look at me, then went back to the wall and the rocking. He was shutting down.
There was no imminent danger. No reason for the director to call Daniel or schedule a meeting or explain her concerns. They were probably quite pleased with themselves.
But for me, this was scarier. He wasn’t clawing for sanity, or fighting for understanding, or raging against the unfamiliar. He was letting go.
On the wall across from the bed were pictures of us, of me and Daniel and the nurses and doctors, people he shouldn’t be afraid of. People he should remember. He was staring right through them now. I stood beside my picture. My hair was shorter in it, and I was smiling, and Dad had his arm slung over my shoulder. It was from when we brought him here last year, taken in this very room, because we couldn’t find any recent photos of the two of us. With daughter, Nic, it said underneath in Daniel’s handwriting.
Dad kept rocking. He was mumbling something—repeating words to himself, all strung together in nonsense. “Dad,” I tried again, but he still looked right through me.
Then he stopped, paused, focused. “Shana?” he asked.
I closed my eyes, and he went back to rocking.
There was no picture of my mother on the walls. It had been a hard decision, the one Daniel and I wavered over the most—whether to put her up there and fill him with the hope that she still existed. Or whether to pretend she never did. Which was worse? Daniel and I debated it over dinner the night before we moved him in. I was the one who made the decision, because I knew: The losing. The losing of something you thought you had. That was far, far worse.
I stepped into the hallway, the light too bright, the buzzing from the fluorescence drowning out the low hum of voices in the other rooms. “Hey,” I said to the first official-looking person walking down the hall. No scrubs, business casual, hair loose, and a birdlike face. I recognized her from the last time I was here. I grabbed her arm as she tried to walk past with a stiff smile. “What did you do to him?” I asked.
Maybe it was the way I grabbed her arm, or maybe the look in my eye, but she blinked slowly and said, “I’ll page the doctor.”
“No. I want to speak with Karen Addelson,” I said firmly, trying to summon my best impression of Everett, calling the director by her full name.