I SAT BESIDE TYLER on the steps, watching him go.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Come on,” I said. “Come inside.”
They’d be back. That’s what Everett had said. They’d be back with a search warrant, and they were watching us now. As soon as the door shut behind us, I leaned in to Tyler, felt his arms slowly come up around me. “There’s a key in the vent. I need to get rid of it,” I said.
Tyler and I decided we’d flush the key, using a plunger to make sure it wouldn’t float back up. But first I studied the intricate pattern of the A of the key chain, and I told him I’d found it at Daniel’s—told him everything I believed about Daniel and Laura. I whispered all of it under the sound of running water as he scrubbed the mud from his boots.
I noticed now that there was a thin line bisecting the key chain, and I instinctively pulled the two halves in opposite directions. A lid slid off, revealing a flash drive.
My ring for the flash drive. In the end, it turned out I’d paid that debt, too.
I wondered when Annaleise had felt that unbreakable thread growing between her and Corinne. If it was after she saw the pictures. If it was before. If it started all the way back that night at the fair.
I imagined Corinne looking away after Daniel pushed her back, and Annaleise standing there watching, their eyes locking for a moment too long. I imagined Annaleise seeing Corinne cry, all alone, maybe, something I’d never witnessed. Or maybe Corinne looked deep into Annaleise and saw something dark and appealing inside. Something that bound them together.
Or maybe it was brief and one-sided, like most moments we assign weight to. Maybe Corinne didn’t even notice her standing there, but Annaleise saw something she needed. A likeness or a comfort. That even Corinne might fall. Even the strong are lonely. Even the adored are sad. I hoped she loved her in that moment—when no one else did.
Or maybe it wasn’t until later. When she saw the photos shifting back into focus.
I know what it’s like to leave, to come back, to not fit. To feel that distance between you and everything you’ve ever known. But Annaleise couldn’t find a place out there. Couldn’t let go enough. A lonely kid, a lonelier woman. She came back to what she knew.
You want to believe you’re not the saddest person in the world.
Annaleise found her there, in the pictures. The sad, lonely girl. She found her in the old, dark photograph, covered in a blanket. But still she wanted more. To find her in Jackson and Daniel, Bailey and Tyler. To pull her from my father’s guilt. One more thread when I showed up. To take her from me.
I pictured Annaleise staring deeply at the image of Corinne’s limp body with fear, with longing. Am I you? she asks. Is this what we become? How we fade away and disappear?
The woods have eyes and monsters and stories.
We are them as much as they are us.
* * *
ANOTHER CAR PULLED IN before sunset but not much earlier. The fireflies were flashing in the yard. Detective Charles walked up the porch steps, warrant in hand, detailing what they were searching for.
Everett was right—they were looking for a gun. A gun and a body. I stepped aside, grateful that I had burned my father’s ledgers and all the receipts. The history of his debt to me, his money for Annaleise’s silence. I’m late, he’d said to me at Grand Pines. Late on hush money. My daughter’s not safe.
Mark Stewart sat at the dining room table with me and Tyler, like a babysitter, but he wouldn’t look directly at either one of us.
I moved out to the front porch an hour later, when a new team showed up with machines. They tore up the new garage floor, as if the fresh concrete was evidence enough. Dug through the garden. Brought out a dog to sniff around the rest of the property from the road to the dried-up streambed. But eventually they left, too.
And in the late evening, when I was sitting in the kitchen with Tyler as the officers finished dismantling the house, Hannah Pardot walked into the room. Her hair was longer, the curls dyed darker, and she’d traded her red lipstick for a muted maroon. Her body was softer, but her face harder. And she still didn’t smile. “Nic Farrell,” she said. “So it all comes back to this.” As if no time had passed at all. We were merely picking up a conversation left midsentence just a moment ago.
“There’s nothing here,” I said.
She sat down in the chair across from me and said, “Annaleise Carter, I remember her. She was an alibi for your brother, you remember that? For all of you, really.”
“I remember.”
She pulled out a piece of paper sealed inside a Ziploc bag. Evidence removed from the scene. “She was killed with this note on her, Nic. Explain that.” I dare you.
It was written on a small rectangle of paper in neat handwriting—probably from the pad at the motel. But the ink had bled out from the rain, softening the paper, tearing it in places.
“I came home, Tyler dumped her, she blamed us both. She wasn’t a nice person, Detective.”
Hannah tilted her head to the side as Detective Charles came to stand behind her. “You lied to me about your relationship with Tyler,” he said. “Either you’re lying then or you’re lying now. Either way, hard to believe you.”
“You lied first, Detective. Standing in my front yard, putting on this schoolboy act. Telling me you didn’t want to get Tyler in any trouble. Please.”
Hannah frowned at him, then turned her attention back to me. “Explain it to me, then. Who, besides the two of you that she implicated in that note, would have a reason to kill her?”
“Oh, you don’t know Annaleise very well, do you?” I asked. “Annaleise had a lot of enemies.” I turned to Hannah again. “Ask the people she went to school with. She liked to expose them, tell their secrets. Like she was daring them to do something in retaliation. I’m sure she got tangled up in some mess she had no business being a part of. Thought she was so much better than everyone else. Break her open, just like you did to Corinne. You’ll see.”
“Is that so,” Hannah Pardot said.
“Yes,” Tyler said.
Do you hear what I’m saying? She incited too much anger, too much feeling. She’s not at fault, but she’s hardly innocent.
Brought it on herself, you know.
“Okay, let’s get down to the details then, shall we? You know how this goes.” Hannah placed the recorder between us on the table. “Where were you, the both of you, the night she disappeared?”
“Right here, cleaning the house,” I said.
“Anyone who can vouch for you?”
“Tyler. I called him, he was at the bar, and he came. Broke up with Annaleise standing right across the room from me, to do the right thing. He stayed here the whole night.”
“So you’re each other’s alibi, is that it?”
Tyler leaned back in his chair. “Jackson Porter was with me when Nic called. He saw me leave. Knew I was coming here.”
Hannah leaned across the table. “Your father has a gun registered in his name.”
“He does?”
“Yes. Any idea where it might be?”
“I haven’t seen it anywhere.” I shrugged. “We moved him out last year. The back door lock’s been broken for a while—I need to get it fixed. Someone was actually messing around in here the other day.” I stared at Detective Charles. “It could’ve been anyone.”
Hannah’s jaw shifted. “The concrete was fresh in the garage. What were you doing in there, Nic? Tyler? I’m assuming she had help.”
“We’re refinishing it,” Tyler said.
“To bring my dad home,” I added. I smiled at her. “He always liked you, Hannah.”
She frowned. “I thought you were getting married to some lawyer in Philadelphia.”
“Do you see a ring?” I asked.
She shifted in her seat. “You’re filing guardianship to sell the house. We’ve seen the paperwork.”
My mind drifted, but only for a second. I shook my head, smiled to myself. “No, not to sell. There’s no sign. It’s not on the market. We have a court date for guardianship. I’m bringing him home with me.” As if this had been my plan from the start.