I slammed the door and leaned against it, my breath coming too fast. “That cop. He came in the fucking house.” I pointed to the dining room table, scattered with chaos, but my chaos. I’d been sorting things into boxes not by item but by time period: things from my childhood, newer things that I’d never seen, and things I could tie to the memory of eighteen—to when Corinne disappeared. And the items I wasn’t sure, scattered across the top of the table.
But those items weren’t grouped how I’d left them. Things had been rifled through and moved. The home renovation book that I’d found in the kitchen drawer, dog-eared, and left on the table, now open to the marked page when I’d left it shut. Receipts with the dates worn off, reshuffled into the wrong piles.
“How can you tell? This place is a mess.”
“He was here, Daniel. Things have been moved. I swear it.”
His eyes met mine, and we stared at each other, into each other, until he said, “Check the house.”
I nodded and took the steps two at a time to my room. If the cop was looking for signs about Tyler, shouldn’t he have checked here? But the room was just as I’d left it. Even the top drawer that I hadn’t closed in my rush to speak to the cop. Dad’s room was mostly bare, and the closet was sparse—slippers on the floor, empty metal hangers, a few work clothes.
But Daniel’s room—the one with Dad’s old things—had been searched. Boxes moved and stacked, papers left out, without any attempt to hide it.
I heard Daniel’s footsteps coming up the stairs, down the hall, and then I could hear his heavy breathing over my shoulder. “What is it?” he asked.
“Here. Someone’s been through here,” I said.
Daniel looked at the mess. His old room. Our father’s mess. “Not someone looking into Tyler, then,” he said.
“No,” I said.
Daniel placed his hand against the doorjamb too gently. Since the fair, he never slammed his fists into walls, or kicked at the ground or his car. Lest somebody see him do it. See a pattern. But he was trying too hard, spilling outside his skin, holding himself too still. He spun silently and went back downstairs.
I followed, watching him check the windows, pushing until he was sure the lock was in place.
“Did you lock up?” He turned on me. “Because there’s no sign of forced entry, Nic.”
“I did,” I said slowly. “But the back door lock is broken.”
His eyes widened, and he mumbled under his breath, striding through the kitchen, checking for himself. He pulled on the handle and it gave, just like I’d said it would.
“I told you,” I said, hands on my hips.
His hand was on the knob, twisting, twisting, in case there might be a different outcome. “It was broken before? Before you got here?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Am I sure? Yes, I’m sure, Daniel. God!”
His face had turned so red with the anger he was holding in that it started to go the other way, blotchy spots of white breaking up the rage. “Why the hell didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you get it fixed? What the hell are you even doing here?”
“What difference would it make? Come on, Daniel, is a stronger lock going to stop someone determined to get in?” Be rational. Be calm. Everett’s words, but they were useless in my family. This was how we worked.
“No, Nic, but it would be proof. A broken window, fingerprints on the glass . . .”
“Oh, give me a break. Nobody’s going to waste resources on a home breakin for a house we’re not living in where nothing went missing. They’ll blame it on kids. Nobody. Cares.”
“Oh, somebody cares,” he said.
I swallowed. Took a deep breath. Tried to focus, searching for a reasonable explanation. “Maybe it was Tyler,” I said. “He still has a key from years ago—”
Daniel made a deep sound in his throat, though I didn’t know if it was for me or for Tyler.
“Maybe he was going to fix the air-conditioning. And maybe—”
Daniel threw his hands up, took a step closer. “What? He got distracted by piles of junk and wasted his day going through Dad’s things in my old room?”
“Asshole,” I mumbled. I flipped the switch in the foyer to check the air-conditioning, because God if I didn’t want it to be true. The other possibilities nauseated me. Made me feel like someone had poked that box in the police station too hard, and it had sprung a leak, and the names were circling, caught up in a whirlwind, vicious and desperate.
Tyler was the only answer that was safe. Please be Tyler.
I turned the AC dial down and listened to the walls. Nothing. No catch, no whoosh, no rattling vents.
Daniel’s knuckles were white. He was right beside me, and his voice was eerily low. “Tyler works. He doesn’t need to sneak around or use a key when we’re out. I’m sure he can talk his way in here pretty easily. Bet he doesn’t even have to talk.”
I pushed him in the chest, gently, just for space. Another inch. So we were going to fight about Tyler again. That, at least, was an argument we knew the lines of already.
“He’d call first,” he said. “Did he call you?” At my silence: “Did he?”
“No, but we’re not . . . he’s not really talking to me right now.”
Daniel let out a bark of laughter. “Un-fucking-believable. You’ve actually done it, Nic. You’ve pissed off the one person who seemed immune. You’ve finally gone too far. Congratulations.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“And you’re so fucking stupid sometimes, it’s infuriating.”
He stared at me and I stared back, my head tilted to the side—his cheeks bright red, his neck splotchy, his fists balled up, something dark and ugly coursing through my veins. “Are you going to hit me now?” I asked.
He breathed heavily, furiously, and whatever fragile ground we stood on shattered.
One question, creating so much distance between us yet pulling us right there. His knuckles colliding with my cheek and the beginning of the end of everything.
Daniel walked around me in a wide berth. He left the front door ajar.
* * *
I SLOUCHED AGAINST THE wall, cradling my phone to my chest.
This place messed with me. Made me forget myself. I called Everett, but his cell went to voicemail. I called the office and kept my voice practiced and steady as I talked to the secretary, Olivia, who’d become one of my closest friends. A tied-to-Everett friend but a friend.
“He’s prepping witnesses,” she said. “I’d love to chat, but this place is falling apart this week. Can you hear that?” And I could: the ringing phones in the background, the low hum of voices. She went on, “Jesus Christ, I need a girls’ night so bad. When are you coming back? Shit. I gotta go. I’ll tell him you called.”
I stared at my phone, wondering whom to call to ground myself. The truth is, I’m not good at close friends. I’m great at casual, at meeting up after work and bringing lasagna to the potluck. I’m excellent at being friends with Everett’s friends. But not at exchanging numbers and calling up just to talk.
I always leave people behind. Holiday greeting cards last one apartment, and then I move, no forwarding address. Emails go unanswered. Phone calls unreturned. It’s a habit. It’s easier. I’m the friend in the group they’ll throw a going-away party for but never keep in touch with. I had ladder rungs to climb, debts to repay, a life to create.
And whom did I have after so many moves? Everett, for a year. My college roommate, Arden, but she was a doctor, and busy, and every decision she made was life-or-death, which made everything I said seem trivial. My thesis adviser, Marcus. I could call him, vent my issues in a normal way. Surface level. Not like this: My best friend disappeared when I was eighteen, and it’s all coming back, and I’m losing my dad, and someone’s been in this house. Maybe the cops, but maybe not.
They were the people you called with news: I met a guy. I’m engaged. I got a new job. To share the highs and the lows. But friends to call for the deep things, the things that live in the dark spaces of our hearts? Those people didn’t exist for me any longer. Not since I’d left Cooley Ridge.
* * *
EVERETT CALLED BACK AT night, when I was cleaning the house—guilted into action by Daniel’s disapproval. I heard voices in the background, fading as he walked away. “Hey, sorry. I thought it was earlier. You weren’t sleeping, were you?”
“Nope,” I said. “What’s going on there?”