“Chloe,” he said, softly. “It’s not too much. I love you.”
Daniel then went on to tell me that he understood my pain; not in the artificial way friends and family claim to know what you’re going through, but really understood it. He had lost his sister when he was seventeen; she had gone missing, too, the same year as the Breaux Bridge girls. For one horrifying second, my father’s face flashed through my mind. Had he killed outside of town? Had he traveled an hour away into Baton Rouge and murdered here, too? I thought briefly of Tara King, the other missing girl who was not like the rest. The break in the pattern. The one that didn’t fit—still a mystery, decades later. And although Daniel shook his head, he provided little explanation other than her name. Sophie. She was thirteen.
“What happened?” I finally asked, my voice a distant whisper. I had been praying for a resolution, for concrete evidence that my father couldn’t have possibly been involved. But I never got it.
“We don’t really know,” he had said. “That’s the worst part. She was at a friend’s house one night and was walking home in the dark. It was only a few blocks; she did it all the time. And nothing bad had ever happened, until that night.”
I nodded, imagining Sophie walking alone down an old abandoned road. I had no idea what she looked like, so her face was blacked out. It was just a body. A girl’s body. Lena’s body.
My skin is scalding now, an unnatural bright red as my toes find their way to the bath mat. I wrap myself in a towel and walk into my closet, my fingers flipping between a handful of button-up blouses before selecting a hanger at random and hooking it on the doorknob. I drop my towel and start to dress, remembering Daniel’s words. I love you. I had no idea how starved I had been for those words; how glaringly absent they had been from my life up until that moment. When Daniel had said them only a month into our courtship, for a fleeting second I had racked my brain to try to remember the last time I had heard them, the last time they had been uttered to me and me alone.
I couldn’t remember.
I walk into the kitchen and pour a cup of coffee into my to-go mug, scratching my fingers through my still-damp hair, trying to dry the strands. You would think that strange coincidence between Daniel and me would have wedged distance between us—my father was a taker, and his sister had been taken—but it did the opposite. It brought us closer, gave us an unspoken bond. It made Daniel possessive of me, almost, but in a good way. A caring way. The same way Cooper is possessive, I suppose—because they both understand the inherent danger of existing as a woman. Because they both understand death, and how quickly it can take you. How unfairly it can claim possession over its next victim.
And they both understand me. They understand why I am the way that I am.
I walk toward the door with my coffee in one hand and purse in the other, stepping outside into the humid morning air. It’s amazing what a single text message from Daniel can do to me—how thinking about him can alter my entire mood, my outlook on life. I feel invigorated, as if the shower water had washed not only the dirt from my nails but the memories that had come with it; for the first time since seeing Aubrey Gravino’s picture on my TV screen, that sense of impending dread that has been hovering over me has all but evaporated.
I’m starting to feel normal. I’m starting to feel safe.
I get into my car and crank the engine; the drive to work is automatic. I keep the radio off, knowing I’ll be too tempted to flip to the news and listen to the grisly details of Aubrey’s recovered body. I don’t need to know that. I don’t want to know that. I imagine it’s front-page news; avoiding it will be impossible. But for now, I want to stay clean. I pull into my office and swing open the front door, the light from inside indicating that my receptionist has already arrived. I walk into the lobby and turn toward the center of the room, expecting to see the regular venti Starbucks cup perched on top of her desk, hear her singsong voice greeting me hello.
But that’s not the scene before me.
“Melissa,” I say, stopping abruptly. She’s standing in the middle of the office, her cheeks patchy and red. She’s been crying. “Is everything okay?”
She shakes her head no, buries her face into her hands. I hear a sniffle before she starts wailing into her palms, the tears dripping to the ground from between her fingers.
“It’s so awful,” she says, shaking her head over and over again. “Did you see the news?”
I exhale, relax slightly. She’s talking about Aubrey’s body. For a second, I’m irritated. I don’t want to talk about this right now. I want to move on; I want to forget. I keep walking, pushing toward my closed office door.
“I did,” I say, inserting my keys into the lock. “You’re right, it’s awful. But at least her parents have some closure now.”
She lifts her head from her hands and stares at me, her face confused.
“Her body,” I clarify. “At least they found it. That’s not always the case.”
Melissa knows about my father, my history. She knows about the Breaux Bridge girls and how those parents weren’t lucky enough to get their bodies back. If murder was judged on a sliding scale, presumed dead would be the furthest to the end. There’s nothing worse than a lack of answers, a lack of closure. A lack of certainty despite all the evidence pointing squarely in the face of the horrible reality you know in your heart to be true—but without a body, can’t possibly prove. There’s always that shred of doubt, that sliver of hope. But false hope is worse than no hope at all.
Melissa sniffs again. “What—what are you talking about?”
“Aubrey Gravino,” I say, my tone harsher than I intend it to be. “They found her body on Saturday in Cypress Cemetery.”
“I’m not talking about Aubrey,” she says slowly.
I turn toward her, my face the one twisted now. My key is still stuck in the lock, but I haven’t turned it yet. Instead, my arm hangs limp in the air. She walks to the coffee table and grabs a black remote, pointing it to the television mounted on the wall. I usually keep the TV off during office hours, but now she turns it on, the black screen coming alive to reveal another bright red headline:
BREAKING: SECOND BATON ROUGE GIRL GOES MISSING
Above the marquee of scrolling information is the face of another teen girl. I take in her features—sandy blonde hair obscuring her blue eyes and white lashes; muted freckles cascading across her pale, porcelain skin. I’m mesmerized by her perfectly clear complexion—her skin looks like a doll’s, untouchable—when the air exits my lungs and my arm falls to my side.
I recognize her now. I know this girl.
“I’m talking about Lacey,” she says, a tear gliding down her cheek as she stares into the eyes of the girl who sat in this very lobby three days ago. “Lacey Deckler is missing.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN