“Okay,” I say, nodding. “Okay, let’s go.”
Daniel’s smile grows wider, forging ahead to the kayak stand and lifting one down from the wooden pegs. He drags it across the forest floor and brushes off the debris, clearing out the cobwebs that have collected in the center before pushing it into the water.
“Ladies first,” he says, holding out his arm. I let him grab my hand and take a shaky first step into the boat before instinctively clutching his shoulder as he helps lower me down. He waits until I’m situated before he jumps into the seat behind me and pushes us off from the dirt, and I feel us floating away.
Once we pass the clearing, I can’t help but gasp at the beauty of this place. The bayou is wide and lazy, peppered with cypress trees emerging from the murky water, their knees breaking the surface like fingers reaching for something to grab. There are curtains of Spanish moss cascading the sunlight into millions of twinkling pinpricks, a chorus of frogs croaking in unison with their wet, guttural sounds. Algae floats sluggishly along the surface, and out of the corner of my eye, I see the slow creep of an alligator, his beady eyes watching an egret before it lifts gracefully from its skinny legs and flaps into the safety of the trees.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Daniel is paddling quietly behind me, the sound of the sloshing water pushing past the kayak lulling me into a daze. My eyes stay on the alligator, on the way it lurks so silently, hidden in plain sight.
“Gorgeous,” I say. “It reminds me of…”
I stop, my unfinished thought hanging heavy in the air.
“It reminds me of home. But … in a good way. Cooper and I, we used to go to Lake Martin sometimes. Watch the alligators.”
“I’m sure your mother loved that.”
I smile, remembering. Remembering the way we would scream through the trees: See ya later, alligator! The way we would catch turtles with our bare hands, counting the rings on their shells to learn their age. The way we would slather our faces with mud like war paint, chasing each other through the brush before slamming through the front door of our home, getting scolded by our mother, snickering all the way to the bathroom before she scrubbed our skin until it was fleshy and raw. Pushing our nails into our mosquito bites, little Xs peppering our legs like human tic-tac-toe boards. Somehow, only Daniel could draw these memories from me. Only Daniel could coax them out of their hiding place, out of the hidden recesses of my mind, out of the secret room I had banished them to the moment I saw my father’s face on the television screen, crying not for the six lives he had taken, but because he had gotten caught. Only Daniel could force me to remember that it wasn’t all bad. I lean back into the kayak and close my eyes.
“This is my favorite part,” he says, pushing our boat around a corner. I open my eyes, and there, in the distance, is Cypress Stables. “Only six more weeks.”
The property is even more breathtaking from the water, that large, white farmhouse looming over acres of perfectly manicured grass. The rounded columns holding up its triple wraparound porches, the rocking chairs still dancing in the breeze. I watch them sway, back and forth, back and forth. I imagine myself walking down those magnificent wooden steps, walking toward the water, toward Daniel.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, Detective Thomas’s words start to echo across the water, disturbing my perfect reverie.
What exactly is your connection to Aubrey Gravino?
I don’t have one. I don’t know Aubrey Gravino. I try to silence the sound, but for some reason, I can’t get it out of my head. I can’t get her out of my head. Her liner-smudged eyes and ashy brown hair. Her long, skinny arms. Her youthfully tan skin.
“From the moment I saw it, I wanted it,” Daniel says from behind me. But I barely register his words. I’m too focused on those rocking chairs, swaying back and forth in the wind. They’re empty now, but they weren’t always empty. There was a girl before. A tan, skinny girl rocking lazily against the column in her leather riding boots, sun-bleached and worn.
That’s my granddaughter. This land has been in our family for generations.
I remember Daniel waving. The uncrossing of the legs and the pulling down of the dress. The self-conscious way she dipped her head before waving back. The sudden emptiness of the porch. The rocking chair slowing to a halt.
She likes to come here sometimes after school. Do her homework on the porch.
Until two weeks ago, when she didn’t make it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I’m staring at a picture of Aubrey on my laptop, a picture I’ve never seen before. It’s a small image, slightly pixelated from me zooming in on her face, but clear enough to know for sure. It’s her.
She’s seated on the ground with her legs tucked under a white dress, those same leather riding boots hiked up to her knees, her hands resting on a perfectly manicured lawn of pristine green grass. It’s a family portrait, and she’s surrounded by her parents. Her grandparents. Her aunts and her uncles and her cousins. The image is framed with the same moss-draped oak trees I had envisioned framing the aisle of my wedding; in the background, those same white stairs I had imagined myself walking down, with my veil trailing behind me, are ascending to that giant wraparound porch. To those chairs that never seem to stop moving.
I lift a cardboard cup of coffee to my lips, my eyes still scanning the image. I’m on the official Cypress Stables website, reading about its owners. It really has been in the Gravino family for centuries—what started as a sugarcane farm built in 1787 had gradually transitioned into a horse farm, then eventually, an event venue. Seven generations of Gravinos had lived there, producing some of Louisiana’s best cane syrup. Once they realized they were sitting on such a desirable piece of land, they renovated the farmhouse and decorated the barn, the immaculately ornamented inside and meticulously pruned outside providing the perfect Louisiana backdrop for weddings, corporate events, and other celebrations.
I remember the vague familiarity of seeing Aubrey’s MISSING picture. That nagging feeling that I knew her, somehow. And now I know why. She was there the day we visited the Stables. She was there when we had toured the grounds, when we had booked the venue for our wedding. I had seen her. Daniel had seen her.
And now, she’s dead.
My eyes move from Aubrey’s face to the face of her parents. The parents I had seen on the news almost two weeks ago. Her father had been crying into his hands. Her mother had been pleading into the camera: We want our baby back. Next, I look at her grandmother. That same sweet woman struggling with that iPad, trying to calm my fabricated fears with promises of air-conditioners and bug spray. I imagine the fact that Aubrey Gravino came from a locally famous family was mentioned in the news at some point, but I hadn’t known that. After the discovery of her body, I had been deliberately avoiding the news. I had been driving around town with the radio turned off. And once her headshot was replaced by Lacey’s, that detail no longer mattered. The media had moved on. The world had moved on. Aubrey was just another vaguely familiar face lost in a sea of other faces. Of other missing girls just like her.
“Doctor Davis?”