I look at the dates again. This is the day after the service, and I realize where Hailey had been for those ten minutes on that day. Where Eve must’ve followed her from.
It was my house. She was at my house, trying to talk me out of the darkness, and I sent her away.
I see the dates again. The walks I took at night, when everyone else was sleeping. Running in the dark, where I could hear a steady rumbling, like a river.
But no, not a river. A car engine in the distance, following me.
My hands shake, and the paper trembles faintly in my grip. These are my movements. This is my path. She’s been following me.
—
“Jessa?” Eve calls from the back door. “Is that you?”
I look up to Caleb’s window, then down at my feet again. I start to slowly ease the garbage can aside, but his mother stands at the back door, watching me, frowning.
“Can I help you with something?” she asks.
I drop the notebook into the container, wipe the rain residue from my face. “I was emptying his garbage,” I say, holding the can up to her. A proclamation of innocence. I didn’t see. I want to force the words into her mind. I didn’t see.
“It’s getting late,” she says. “Bring that back up, and we’ll call it a day.”
But I suddenly don’t want to be alone in the house with her. Not up on the third floor, with no exit, trapped behind crooked stairs.
“I need to go home,” I say, taking a step back. I didn’t see. I didn’t see. I didn’t see.
I realize I’m holding my breath, and I make myself exhale slowly. My bag is upstairs, with my car keys. I can’t just take off. But I don’t like the way she’s looking at me, like she suspects something.
She doesn’t answer, just tips her head to the side, looking between me and the garbage can.
Now I’m wondering why she asked me here in the first place. That day I saw her car—had she been about to knock, as she claimed? Or was she watching me, as she had been in the weeks after Caleb disappeared? And if she was watching me, what was she hoping to find?
—
I’m saved by Max coming through the swinging gate. He must see something on my face, because he switches to an indifferent smile toward Eve. “Saw you guys out here,” he says. “Can I help with any lifting?”
Her lips purse together. “No, honey. I’ve got movers coming tomorrow to take some things down to the dump or to consignment. Then we’ll list it.”
“Where are you going?” I ask.
She cuts her eyes to me. “I’m not going anywhere yet.”
I slip back inside, race up to the room to grab my bag. I peer out his window, where Max is standing, talking to Eve. And as if she can sense me, she tips her head slowly back, looking straight up at me.
I back away. I leave out the front door without saying goodbye to either of them.
I call Max once I get home, let him know I think Eve has been following me. That I found a notebook in the trash can, detailing my every move.
He doesn’t speak at first, and I wonder if maybe he thinks I’m cracking up—if maybe I really am. When eventually he says, “She has to know, right? I mean, if something happened to Sean, she has to know. She had that pocket watch.”
And now I have it instead. Oh God. I slide it out of the top drawer, the metal chain faintly chiming in the silence.
Why would she keep this if it’s a piece of evidence? Proof of something she’s been hiding, too?
And now it’s hidden inside my bedroom.
I’ll bring it to the police, I decide. I’ll drive to the station. Act like I don’t know what it is. I’ll hand it to them, sealed in plastic, and say I found it when I was packing up Caleb’s room. I’ll wash my hands of it.
But then I think of Caleb. What do I owe him? What do I really know of him? I owe him at least the truth. I need to know it, before I turn this in. If he ran, I need to know why. Whether it was because of Sean, or something else.
If his mother was watching me, I need to understand what she was after.
—
I spend the night looking through photos, trying to make sense of the different angles to the same events. I’ve plugged Caleb’s name into the search bar of the Internet program, but the only thing that comes up is the details of his memorial service, and a mention in the local paper, the named victim of the bridge flood.
I don’t know his father’s name. He never told me. Based on the letter opener with the initials, I know his grandfather’s first name begins with a D. Is that really all I know? The closest I can come to Caleb Evers?
I search for his last name, plus Eve. Last name plus accident. Last name plus obituary. But the last name is too common, the search absolutely fruitless. I could ask his mother, but I don’t trust anything about her. She makes me nervous, always watching, always following. She makes me want to lock the doors, and ask my parents to stay home with me.
But I can’t do any of that.
I feel, for the moment, that Caleb is in danger again. In a car, tipping over the bridge, the current raging. I picture myself standing on the road, screaming his name. Run! he screams. Run while you can!
I picture him again in his doorway, barring me from his life. Go.
Leave.
Don’t look back.
His words so cutting, so final.
The necklace in his jeans pocket, left on his floor, left behind.
Please hold this for me. Please be careful.
And I know what I must do.
By the time the alarm goes off in the morning, I haven’t slept at all. I hear my dad leave for work in the morning, before dawn. By then, it’s too late to try anymore.
“I don’t feel good,” I tell my mother in the morning, in the kitchen, as she’s draining the last of the orange juice from her cup. I don’t even have to fake it. My stomach churns, and I catch sight of my reflection—pale in the window.
She places a hand to my forehead. “Do you want me to make a doctor’s appointment?”
I shake my head. “Feels like the stomach bug,” I say. Feels like betrayal. Like lies. Like disorientation.
She looks from me to the clock, as if she’s debating staying home with me as well. I hold my breath until she swings her purse over her shoulder and grabs her keys. “Call me if you need anything, okay?”
I nod, and she pauses at the doorway, as if she senses something. But in the end, she doesn’t press, and she waves once, shutting the door behind her.
Immediately, I lock the door. There’s a piece Caleb left for me. A memory he shared. The house he grew up in. If I had the address, I could check back through the public records, to see who owned it when he was younger. I can barely remember the town name. I have to pull up the map program, trying to remember where Max’s game was—but the names all blend together. I remember there was a toll. We veered off course. I think I could find it if I retraced our route, imagining Caleb beside me as we drove.
—
I take a shower to wake up, then pull together the directions and head to my car.
I’m halfway down the driveway when I see Max, walking up the path. He freezes, midstride. “You weren’t at school,” he says.