He readjusted the brim of his hat, turned to stare out the window. “What, exactly, do you need to ask me?”
How many ways could I say it? I stepped closer, but his face remained in shadow. “Was it you?”
He looked back to me, like the whole conversation had caught him off guard. “Was what me? What the hell are you talking about?”
I lowered my voice even though we were alone. “Were you in her place last night? After midnight?” I asked.
Tyler turned and fixed his eyes on mine—What are you saying, Nic?—until I had to look away.
“Do you have a key?” I asked.
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
“You never told me,” I said. “You never told me whether you were serious or just screwing her.”
He took his hat off, ran his hand through his hair, pulled it back down. He shifted his lower jaw around. “Just screwing, Nic. Happy?”
“No, I’m not happy.” My voice wavered, and I took a slow breath to steady myself. “Someone was in there.”
“Probably the police. Since they were just here.”
Fuck. Fucking Jackson being fucking right.
“What did they want? What did you say?”
He looked out the window again. “They want to find Annaleise. And they want to poke holes in my alibi. They want to catch me in a lie.”
I paused, thinking. “What is your alibi, Tyler?”
He grimaced. “That’s the problem. I don’t have a fucking alibi. My alibi is just that I wasn’t there. Except I obviously was a few hours earlier. So my alibi is that I wasn’t there when she went missing. That we didn’t have a fight that got out of hand.”
“That’s what they think?”
He shrugged. “That’s the story they seem to want. That I called her. We fought. For some reason they haven’t quite worked out yet, we agreed to meet up in the woods. She accused me of being with you. I . . . did something.” He reached out in front of him, fingers curling in as if closing around her slender neck.
“It’s up to them to prove that,” I said.
“Is it? Is it really? If everyone already believes it and then you show up at my work in the middle of the day?”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, heat rising to my face. “I’m sorry I came. I just needed to know.”
He nodded. “No, I’m sorry. I’m pissed. I’m pissed at them. Not at you. It was probably the police in her place, Nic.”
“No, not the police. There weren’t any cars. Someone on foot.” Someone who didn’t want to be seen. Someone who had a key. Someone who knew the woods by heart.
“Her family, then.”
“Through the woods, Tyler. Someone walked through the woods.”
Then he stared again, walked toward the door, readjusted the brim of his hat so it was perfectly centered. Nodded once. “It wasn’t me.” He looked me over once more. “Go home,” he said. “Get out of here before they come knocking on your door, too.”
I followed him out the trailer door into the sunlight, the work site too bright, like an overexposed photo.
* * *
MEALS STARTED BLENDING TOGETHER, along with the hours, losing structure, just as the days had been. Sleep was hard to come by, and I overcompensated with too much caffeine all day. It was after nine P.M. by the time I remembered to eat. There were too many possibilities. All those names and events tied together in that hypothetical box, weaving around, untangling in my mind. And more—the stories that never made it inside the box. The things we never asked each other slowly unraveling.
To solve a mystery, to solve a mystery here, you can’t come from the outside.
There were people here who knew more than they said, who chose to keep it silent, like Jackson seeing Corinne. Like me seeing them together. There must be more of us. I had to understand the silence. With Corinne comes Annaleise. With Annaleise comes Corinne.
Apply one filter to the next, watch it all slide into focus.
* * *
THERE WAS A LIGHT outside the window, in the woods. Someone near her place again. I didn’t bother grabbing my phone, just the flashlight that had been in the drawer beside the microwave as long as I could remember.
I was losing them, and I couldn’t. I had to know.
The new cop from State, staying at the motel in town? Someone else? Annaleise?
Find them. Find answers.
I sneaked through the yard like I used to when I was a kid, keeping silent and to the shadows until I reached the tree line. I saw the flashlight bobbing periodically in the distance, and I sprinted toward it until I got too close. I kept my own light off. The moon was enough for my footing, or maybe that was my memory.
But the light wasn’t moving toward Annaleise’s place anymore, or my own. It was heading away. Backtracking. Moving sure-footedly and with purpose through the forest. Toward a hiding spot, maybe. Or a car on the other end.
We’d been moving for at least half an hour, and a sliver of panic had wedged itself inside my chest. I was at the disadvantage, I was alone, I was unarmed, unprotected—with no phone, or map, or GPS. My options were to keep following the flashlight or stop with no sense of where I was.
And yet.
I had the sense that I knew where we were heading. Not from the direction but from the timing. I’d taken this trek before at night.
But it wasn’t until we reached the clearing that I was sure. Big open space set back from the road. Small narrow path, cordoned off, leading to the caverns. I stayed in the woods, watching the flashlight. Eventually another light appeared on the path, and I willed it closer until it shone on the person I was following.
For a moment I think I expected to see skinny arms and blond hair and huge eyes; pale skin and dirty clothes. Maybe it was nothing but hope, but there it was: I expected to see Annaleise.
But it was a boy. A teenager. Her brother. And the person with him was a tall girl with dark hair, an arm held up to shield her eyes. “God, you’re blinding me, asshole.”
“Where’s David?”
“Bringing the drinks. Carly’s in the car. She doesn’t like it out here when it’s just us. Says it’s not safe.” The girl paused. “Any word about your sister?”
“Nah,” he said, lowering the flashlight.
“I’m sorry, Bryce,” she said.
Bryce. Right. He didn’t look particularly shaken up by the fact that his sister was missing. And they didn’t look the same—not like Daniel and I used to. Bryce was stocky, had inherited his father’s square jaw and broad shoulders.
“Could still turn up,” he said.
Nine days, and that was all he could say. I’d find it suspicious if I didn’t already know his type—part of a generation of kids expecting everything handed to them: the missing people, returned. The mystery, solved for them. Ten years ago, we’d torn these woods to pieces. We’d followed the cops to the places they searched, and we’d searched the places they didn’t. But not these kids. Apparently, they could just shrug it off, give their condolences, wait for the beer to arrive.
Maybe it was that Annaleise wasn’t theirs. A little too old, she’d already left, gone to college, come back. She didn’t belong to them or to us. Lost in the gap with no one to seek her out.
I heard an engine and shrank away from the flashlights and headlights. “There he is,” the girl said. “Come on, the woods creep me out. My brother used to tell me there was a monster.”
Bryce nodded and followed her.
If you let yourself get swept away in legend, let it become more than story, then it’s not such a stretch to imagine Corinne disappearing without a trace. It happens all the time, all across the country, especially in the woods, in the middle of the night. And if Corinne did, then so could Annaleise.