I hit redial.
The phone rang four times, and then: You’ve reached the Farrells. We’re not home right now, but we’ll get back to you just as soon as we’re in. Laura’s voice. Annaleise had called my brother’s house. She’d been at this motel, and she’d called my brother, and then she’d disappeared.
* * *
I DROVE HOME. FOUND Daniel working on the house, hosing down the ground beside the garage, loading up his car with debris.
“Any word?” I asked, shielding my eyes from the glare in the front yard.
“Nothing.” He rolled the free hose on a reel, following the trail toward the side of the house.
I shifted from foot to foot. “What haven’t you told me about Annaleise, Daniel?”
He stopped moving, dropped the reel, cut his eyes to me. “Are you saying you don’t believe me?”
What haven’t you told me about Corinne? Would he tell me? Or would he stick to his official statement?
“You can talk to me,” I said.
He picked up the reel again. There were voices coming from the woods, and his head whipped in that direction. “The police are in the woods,” he said. “Have you eaten? Laura sent me with leftovers. Go on in the house, Nic.”
I nodded, went inside. Reheated the stew in a pot on the stove, watched Daniel through the window. Realizing how he knew it was the police just out of sight: He had been watching. Standing out there, watching the woods, and listening.
What haven’t you told me, Daniel?
We communicated in the space between words. And I wondered: What was he saying now?
The Day Before
DAY 4
The rain had trickled to a stop but continued to drip from the leaves, falling on the roof like it was keeping time: Tick-tock, Nic. The clock in the kitchen read five A.M., and there was still no sign of Daniel or Tyler’s truck.
“Have you heard from him?” I asked, filling a glass from the sink tap.
“How would I hear from him, Nic?”
We stared at Daniel’s phone, sitting on the kitchen table. My hands shook as I handed Tyler a glass of water. His fingers stained the base with powder as he gulped it down, rubbing his other hand across the back of his neck. The sky was starting to lighten on the horizon.
“I need to get home,” he said. He was covered in dirt and grime, and his hands were white, like mine. “I have to change before the search. I need a goddamn shower. Can I take your car? I’ll swing by after, when Dan brings my truck back.”
He handed me the glass, and I drained the rest. “I’m not sure how that would look. My car at your place. People will talk.”
“People always talk,” he said.
“It’s different now.”
“Why, because you’re engaged? We can be friends, can’t we?”
We’d never been friends. Not before and not after. I wouldn’t even know how to start. “Because your girlfriend is missing,” I said. “Be smart, Tyler.”
His head snapped to attention. Be smart. Then he leaned back, so his head was resting against the freezer. “I can’t believe this is happening. Tell me this isn’t happening.”
“It’s happening.”
“I’m going to be a suspect if she doesn’t turn up, aren’t I?” he asked.
“Tyler, you’re going to be the suspect.” Like Jackson had been. The Boyfriend—it was the simplest explanation.
He squeezed his eyes shut, and I wanted to run my fingers through his hair, press my thumbs into the base of his skull, like I used to do whenever his neck was stiff from work.
“Use my shower,” I said. “I can find something from my dad’s room for you to wear. You shouldn’t go home like this.”
He looked down at his clothes, at his legs, at his hands. “Yeah. Okay.”
I cleaned the floor with damp rags—trying to mop up all the streaks, all the footprints—and I tossed them into the washing machine after. I heard the groan of the pipes and then the sound of the shower curtain being pulled aside as I went to rifle through my dad’s old things.
Dad’s work clothes would be too small for Tyler; he’d have to settle for gray frayed sweatpants that didn’t make the moving list, and an old stained shirt from the few times Dad worked in the yard.
I let myself into the bathroom, the moisture of the room clinging to my skin, already coating the mirror. “It’s just me,” I said, leaving the clothes on top of the sink.
“Hey,” he said. “Hold on.”
I stood with my back against the door, watching the gray-and-black-striped shower curtain move, the obscured outline of his shadow. It felt easier to talk with the curtain between us, without having to look directly at each other.
“I got a new place,” he said.
“Where?”
“Over Kelly’s. It’s not much. Just an apartment. But there’s a couch and a blanket, and you can stay with me, Nic. No strings attached. You don’t have to stay here.”
I laughed, and it sounded harsh. “That’s a terrible idea, for so many reasons.”
“Wouldn’t be the worst one this week,” he said as I scooped up his dirty pile of clothes.
I opened the bathroom door, felt the rush of cooler air as I stepped outside. “I’m washing your clothes. Save me some hot water.”
By the time I got back to my room, he was in my dad’s clothes, rubbing my towel over his hair. He was looking out the window at the garage, and I stood beside him, doing the same. He turned to face me, used his thumb to wipe the residue from my face.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I said. I felt the tears rising unexpectedly, and Tyler tilted my face up. “How—”
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t do this to yourself. It’s taken care of. Okay?”
I tried to let his words work their way into my head—I’ve got you, at sixteen; I love you, at seventeen; Forever, at eighteen—but the distance was too great. I couldn’t get back to it. Instead, the familiar sound of Tyler’s truck turning in to the driveway jarred me into action. “Daniel’s back,” I said, striding out of the room, racing down the stairs.
Daniel drove up the driveway as I hopped down the front steps, Tyler a step behind. Daniel slid out of the driver’s seat without looking at us, tossed the keys to Tyler, and went straight for his own car. “I gotta go,” he said, not making eye contact.
“Daniel, wait,” I said.
“I need to go,” he said.
I crossed the yard after him but didn’t know what to say once I had his attention. I looked to Tyler for help, but he was loading up his truck, carrying supplies and using a tarp to protect it all.
“What did you tell Laura?” I asked.
Daniel opened the car door. “That I was here. That we were working late.”
“See you at the search,” Tyler called, hopping in the truck.
I made it inside before throwing up, the kitchen sink coated with water and bile and fine white powder.
I cleaned the kitchen, took a scalding shower, and mopped the floors.
When the dryer finished, I folded Tyler’s clothes and stuffed them in the bottom drawer of my empty dresser, out of sight.
* * *
WE MET IN THE church basement. Everyone was there, nearly all of Cooley Ridge taking off from work, cramped together in the rec room, overflowing into the kitchen, crowding down the steps.
We rally in a crisis. We rise to the tragedy. Suffer a death and we will feed you for a year. Disappear and we will scour the earth until you are found.
Bricks was set up in front, standing on a chair. His hairline was starting to recede, which you could see because he kept his hair buzzed almost to the scalp.
I had to stand on my toes, pushing through the crowd, to see what he was gesturing toward. What was he talking about? I started picking up snippets of conversation, losing Bricks’s voice. Disappeared. Corinne Prescott. Wandered off. Taken. Monsters.
“. . . in grids.” There was a hand on my shoulder. I needed to focus. Laura. I looked at her over my shoulder, and she raised an eyebrow. Okay? she mouthed.
I nodded. Bricks was pointing to a map of Cooley Ridge, the woods beyond, the river snaking through.