“Do you have people out there looking for Bailey?” I blurt. I balance my heels on the rung of the stool and hug my arms around my middle. “I mean, if you’re here, who’s supposed to find her?”
“The snow’s making it tough to do a ground search.” Ellie taps her pen against the legal pad. “But don’t worry. We’re doing everything we can to find Bailey.”
Ashley sets a carton of milk and a bottle of vanilla creamer in front of Ellie. “I didn’t know which you’d like.”
“Milk is fine. Do you know what I could really use, though?” Ellie gives Ashley a placating smile. “A recent yearbook from Broken Falls High.”
Ashley’s forehead forms a V. “I think my son has his upstairs. I’ll go get it.”
“That would be so helpful. I’ve been searching for one all day.”
I study the curve of Ellie’s lips around the rim of her mug as Ashley hurries out of the kitchen. What are the chances she’s been looking for a yearbook all day and couldn’t find a single one?
“What do you need a yearbook for?” I ask once Ashley’s out of earshot.
Ellie sets her mug down and huddles it with both hands. “There are a lot of names being thrown around right now. I’m better with faces.”
She’s probing my face right now, searching my eyes with her beady brown ones. “So you’ve been friends with Bailey since you moved here?”
I nod. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“How does she get along with her family?”
“Fine, I guess. What do you care about her family? Shouldn’t you be asking about Cliff Grosso?”
Ellie taps her pen to her chin. “Bear with me. I’ve got to cover all the bases. Even the boring ones. How about Bailey and her parents?”
“They’re fine, I guess.”
“What about her mom, in particular?”
“What do you mean?” I pick at the hangnail cornering my thumb. Realize that’s gross. Stop.
“Did they get along?” Ellie asks. “When I was your age, my mom and I used to fight like cats and dogs.”
For as long as I’ve known her, Bailey liked to bitch about her mom—not like how it is with me and my mom, which would be like saying Israel and Palestine don’t “get along”—but she and Cathy argue about curfew, and Bailey’s B average in school. Typical teenage girl stuff.
I shrug. “They argue every now and then, I guess.”
“What about?”
“Usual stuff. Stupid mother-daughter stuff.”
“And her older brother?”
“Is at college.” I have to take a deep breath. Stop myself from reaching across the table and shaking Ellie by her collar. “Again, why are you focusing on her family when she was last seen with a guy who hated her?”
Knepper looks at me for a long beat. Blinks those short, dark lashes. “So that’s why you and Jade Becker went to the Grossos’ house, right? Whose idea was that?”
“We both decided, I guess. Did you see the picture on Kevin Sullivan’s phone? It was definitely Cliff. That’s why we went there—he was the last person who saw her before she left.”
Ellie blows on her coffee. “We’re working on interviewing everyone who was at the party. Big task. Apparently it was quite the rager.”
She must sense my eyes flicking downward. “You weren’t at the party, huh?”
I shake my head.
“Why not?”
For some reason, I don’t want to see Ellie Knepper feeling sorry for me. Or maybe I’m just too embarrassed to admit it: My friends ditched me. “I was tired from work. And I heard about the storm—I don’t know, I just didn’t feel like going out.”
“Responsible kid.”
I can’t tell if Ellie is being sarcastic. She seems too pure, too incapable of sarcasm. Guilt digs at my ribs. I should have been at that party.
“What about Cliff Grosso?” I blurt. “How can he explain her phone being on his property?”
Ellie taps her pen against her pad. “I can’t comment on that. It’s an active investigation.” In other words, she’s not telling me shit about Cliff. “When exactly was the last time you spoke to Bailey?” she asks.
“She stopped by the café Saturday before she went to work.”
“Did she seem upset? Agitated?”
I’ve become mute. I can’t tell Knepper that Bailey was probably pissed at me without telling her why: that we were trespassing, and for the stupidest reason ever—to perform a séance in the local haunted barn. And while we were at it we were almost crushed by the roof. Oh, and that my little sister tagged along and almost got us caught with her screaming.
If Ellie knows that Lauren was with us, she might tell Ashley and my dad. They’ll know that I’m the reason my sister isn’t eating or sleeping.
My throat feels tight. “Maybe she was a little weird. I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know.”
Knepper leans closer to me. “I know you’re worried, but anything you can tell us, anything Bailey said or did that didn’t feel right, it might help.”
A flicker of a memory—lounging in the passenger seat of Bailey’s car with a passion-tea lemonade, parked outside the Starbucks in Pleasant Plains, after we’d finished our road trip project last year.
I would just get on the highway and go.
“She hated it here,” I say. “She told me if she could, she’d just leave.”
Ellie Knepper stares at me. “Okay. That’s helpful.”
I feel like there’s a bomb timer ticking down to go off in my brain. I must be staring, because Knepper writes it down on her pad. “I won’t keep you much longer. But I have to ask…the three of you. Sounds like from everyone we talked to, you’re inseparable.”
I swallow. “Yeah. We do everything together.”
“Did you girls ever fight?” Ellie bats those lashes. I wonder if it’s her nervous tic. My toes clench.
“No,” I say. “Never. We weren’t like that.”
Ellie nods, her hand on the mug of coffee she’s taken a total of two sips from. “Well, you’ve been very helpful, Kacey. I’ll be in touch.”
“Wait.” I think of Ashley upstairs, rooting around in Andrew’s room for his yearbook. “The yearbook.”
Ellie looks at me curiously. “Oh, that’s okay. Next time we talk.”
She stands up and she’s already to the front door when I glance at her coffee, barely touched, and I feel sick. I feel tricked. She just wanted Ashley out of the way so she could talk to me alone.
—
Did you girls ever fight?
I hadn’t lied, exactly. The answer is just too complicated for Ellie Knepper to understand.
Bailey could be moody, prone to snap at Jade and me if she was hungry or bored. Her cruelty was always like a spanking, though; she had a way of making me feel like she was doing it for my own good. Quit being such a baby. People are gonna think you’re uptight.
She did get mad at me once. It was the night of Lauren’s dance recital at Sun Prairie High School. Andrew, Ashley, and I had met her backstage with a bouquet of rainbow carnations. Lauren’s eyes—wide and doll-like from false eyelashes—flicked between the three of us. “Where’s Daddy?”
The lilt to her voice said she’d noticed the empty seat in our row during her first dance number.