There was no secret message waiting. After all, Dad didn’t want to have a conversation; he just wanted the book. He hadn’t even listened when Everett had started his story about the murders.
But Josephine had. She’d responded with all the exclamation points that Everett had deleted and included a whole line of OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG! He felt a little vindicated at the sight of it. It was creepy as hell that his mom had gone on a date with someone else named Alex Bennick. But Josephine had pointed out that if that Alex was forty or so, he would have been barely an adult in 1999, but if he hadn’t lived here, it didn’t matter.
She’d sent a message with another link too. This is so sad. People never even talk about these women anymore. The link took him to a Facebook post.
Crazy story: my aunt went missing twenty years ago, and I didn’t even know about it until LAST YEAR!!! Over Christmas break I heard my dad talking about his sister to another relative, and I thought he meant my aunt Lucy. He said no, he had an older sister named Mary who disappeared in 2001. Like, how had he never told me this???
He said she always wanted to get out of their town and she was kind of a wild child. She dropped out of high school her senior year so she could work and save money to buy a van so she could like cruise around the country, camping out and shit. She wanted to get to California and live up in the mountains somewhere.
He wasn’t even sure when she disappeared because she used to take off sometimes, and their dad (my grandpa is NOT NICE) didn’t really notice she was gone at first. Dad was the one who started wondering, and he was only 17 at the time. So he only knows she disappeared sometime in the spring of 2001, and they finally told the police, but they didn’t even have any information to give them. She hadn’t bought her van yet, so it didn’t make sense that she’d leave, but the police said she’d turn up, and even her family figured she’d tumble back into town in a few months, and then it just . . . didn’t happen. Nothing.
When my dad turned eighteen, he went back to the police to file an official report. I’m not sure they even questioned anyone! Just filed it and moved on.
She’s literally never been heard from again. Her name is Mary Elizabeth Sooner. I haven’t been to church in a long time, but I’m going to go light a candle for her after I post this.
Anyway, stay safe out there, chicas.
Everett shivered. He couldn’t believe how little people paid attention. If you got stuck with a parent who didn’t love you, no one else cared what happened either.
What would have become of him if he didn’t have Mom? Would his dad have taken off and left him at daycare or school, and never returned?
Probably.
Strangely, that made him feel a little steadier. Dad was going to do what he was going to do. Everett’s focus had to be on his mom.
And Alex Bennick.
He opened a new message for Josephine. I’ll tell my mom I have robotics again tomorrow. Can you meet me after school? I’ve got an idea. We need to go to that nursing home.
Without leaving a message for his dad, he closed the window and tucked the tablet under his bed. Dad could wait. He’d sure made Everett wait long enough.
CHAPTER 22
It was a hobby of hers, ruining families and betraying husbands. Inserting her nose into other families’ business, probably because she’d been abandoned over and over and couldn’t stand to see other women thrive with what she lacked. What a waste.
She was one of those women who’d been thrown away. Her own father had tossed her aside, her mother was a whore, and now she was riddled with weakness like so many others.
These women simply didn’t matter, not even to those who made a show of pretending they cared. Some people were discarded by life so quickly they never left even a hint of a mark on it.
Back then, only four women had ever been officially reported as missing, but he knew there were five. The fifth girl so used up and discarded by age seventeen that no one had bothered looking for her. If no one notices a girl disappear, was she ever really there?
No. No, she wasn’t. She was nothing but a phantom stain on the world.
Lily Brown had found a toehold of sorts in life. One little edge of solid ground to stop her descent. A job and a place to live, even if that place was on the boundary of society, the quiet, empty border of town.
But she didn’t deserve that little toehold at the margins. She was a lying, conniving bitch, and she didn’t respect fatherhood or family or loyalty. She’d proven that. She’d lived that belief.
She lied about everything. Lied like the deceitful, whoring piece of crap she was. She couldn’t open her mouth without bullshit falling from it like blood from a wound. And she’d been doing it so long she thought she could fool everyone.
But he wasn’t everyone. He knew her. He knew women like her. And she needed to learn a very important lesson about honesty.
He was just the man to teach her. Like he’d taught so many others.
They’d say, She lived out here all alone, what did she expect? They’d say, With a husband like that, who’s even surprised she disappeared? Then they wouldn’t say anything at all because someone else would fill her place and the world would move on and on, churning out more girls just like her. More girls to fall through the cracks into his arms, where he saved them from the misery that floated around them and fouled others.
And Lily Brown deserved that more than any other woman he’d ever met. Because she’d stolen his heart.
CHAPTER 23
Lily grimaced as she watched Alex’s vehicle pull in on her monitor. She should confess to him. Tell him her son had been looking through his things. She should, but she wouldn’t. She couldn’t risk that, couldn’t risk her job.
She felt even more guilty when he waved at the camera as he drove by, flashing his cute grin just in case she was watching.
“Ugh,” she complained to herself. How the hell had a simple flirtation become so fraught?
Whatever it was, the guilt that was mixed up in her attraction to him was compelling her to go see him.
To make sure he didn’t suspect anything? Or just to see him again? Everett’s story had made her curious. What the hell was in that storage unit? Alex had been acting self-conscious about the locker the whole time.
She’d found herself turning over Everett’s claims this morning, calculating Alex’s age in the ’90s. That had been reassuring, at least. He’d still been a kid, a teenager or a college student. But what if he was covering up something his uncle had done?
She’d tried googling a few things, but she’d found only two missing women from Herriman and a couple of teenagers who’d run away. She imagined a lot of kids wanted to run away from small Midwestern towns. Hell, it was basically the same story in the paper this morning.
Mendelson had been trying to scare her, obviously. The eighteen-year-old girl who’d gone missing was only reported as an “at-risk” adult in the town’s police blotter. It said she’d gotten out of drug treatment a week before. Her name was withheld for privacy. It wasn’t exactly being pursued as a kidnapping.
Poor Everett. He’d been so freaked out about all of this. He read too many scary books, but she really didn’t want to smother his love for reading. She was already so strict about everything else.
Sighing, she checked the cameras and saw Alex’s SUV parked. He was probably already busy. Or maybe he was waiting for her to come by after promising not to stalk her. She stared at the monitor for a while before finally giving in and pushing out the office door.
She heard music as she approached, growing louder as she drew near. Slowing, she finally came to an awkward stop at the back of his SUV because she’d forgotten to come up with an excuse. Alex was inside the unit, already bent over a box. The open windows of his vehicle blasted music she didn’t recognize. He probably had all-new music every month after covering the scene in Memphis.