Ashley tugs Cathy’s wrist, bringing her back down to her seat. “Cathy. Sweetheart. Sit and breathe for a bit, okay?”
Cathy plops back down, and it’s as if something in her cracks. She starts to sob. Ashley drags her chair closer and envelops her in a hug. I feel like some creepy voyeur, watching them like that. I move my gaze to the fridge; Bailey’s school photo from last year is tacked up with a Badgers magnet. Her brother, Ben, goes to Madison; Cathy and Ed want Bailey to go too, but she always said anywhere in Wisconsin isn’t far enough from Broken Falls.
The look Jade is giving me now cuts even deeper. Whenever Bailey talked about her lofty plans to go to school out of state, Jade would roll her eyes toward me. At least you’ll be stuck here with me.
I’m really all Jade has left now. And I’m not enough.
Cathy gives a wet sniffle and pauses her sobbing. “They have a special investigator from the state managing the case now. Said the sheriff’s department can’t handle an investigation like this. The detective—he has a high solve rate.”
The detective from yesterday—the one who made my skin crawl. It has to be him Cathy’s talking about.
“That’s good,” Ashley strokes Cathy’s hair. Cathy gives a wet sniffle and pulls away from Ashley. A strangled sound comes from Cathy’s throat. “My baby. My tiny, little baby. Where is she?”
“Shh.” Ashley strokes Cathy’s wrist. “There’s always hope. Miracles do happen. Think about those girls who come home—”
Ashley stops herself. I look over at Jade, who has her hands covering her mouth. The thought is horrific: those girls who come home from being locked up in some creep’s basement after ten years. If they escape at all.
I think of that deputy talking about the bloody clothes they found, and I feel faint. Blood means Bailey probably isn’t being held somewhere against her will.
Cathy dabs at her eyes. “I should have done more.”
Ashley takes Cathy’s hand again. “Sweetheart, don’t say that. You don’t know what you could have done.”
“I shouldn’t have let her out of my sight Saturday,” Cathy says. “Late Friday night, while Ed was sleeping in Ben’s empty room—he snores—Bailey crawled into bed with me. She hasn’t done that since she was a baby.”
Jade and I share a look. Obviously she didn’t know about this. Goose bumps spring up on my skin.
“She was scared of something,” Cathy says. “She wouldn’t tell me, said she wanted to talk to a therapist. I thought it could wait until Monday—maybe it was that awful Grosso boy harassing her again—”
I think of the doe in Cliff Grosso’s freezer again. Think of Bailey, running bloody through the woods like prey. I stand up from the table. The legs of my chair screech against the linoleum. “I have to—bathroom,” I choke out. “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll walk with you,” Jade says.
I open my mouth to protest, but Jade’s already digging her nails into my wrist. She pulls me down the hall and shoves me into Bailey’s bedroom.
Jade is quiet as I sit on the edge of Bailey’s bed. Bailey would be seething, bitching me out if it were her that I’d ditched at a vigil for Jade. Jade hides her anger under apathy. I’ve never been on the other side of it before.
It’s terrifying.
I smooth a hand over Bailey’s chenille bedspread. It feels strange, being in her room without her here.
“Can I explain myself?” I ask.
Jade looks like she wants to stab me. “Whatever.”
“I freaked out—I wanted to go to the vigil, but I couldn’t.”
“So you just left me?” Jade drops her voice to a whisper.
Pressure, behind my eyes. I didn’t know you needed me.
“Do you know how infuriating you’re acting?” Jade says. “Like, I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. But you’re hiding shit from me. Everyone knows you were on Sparrow Kill when they found something yesterday.”
“The cops told me not to say anything to anyone.”
“I’m not just anyone.” Jade looks like she’s going to cry. “God. I can’t believe you.”
I inhale. “There was blood in the barn.”
Jade’s chin snaps up. She’s not wearing her eyeliner. It makes her look tired. Sad. “I figured it was something like that if it wasn’t her body.”
“There wasn’t a lot of it.” My voice comes out hushed, like river water. “It was like, smeared next to the window, but there wasn’t blood anywhere else. J, it looked exactly like it does in the pictures from the Leeds massacre.”
Jade blinks. I can’t tell if she believes me or not. I feel helpless, like I’m clawing at the dark.
“Why were you even at the barn yesterday?” Jade’s voice is quiet.
I inhale. Bunch up a piece of Bailey’s bedspread between my fingers. It smells like her—store-brand fabric softener and the jasmine perfume she makes a bi-yearly pilgrimage to the Sephora in Madison to buy. “I was there because Chloe Strauss told Lauren she saw someone covered in blood running from Sparrow Hill the night Bay went missing. She says it was the Red Woman.”
“And you believed her?” Jade gapes at me. “Jesus, Kacey.”
The fact that she doesn’t ask why I didn’t call the cops and tell them about the bloody woman confirms what I feared: Jade thinks this—a connection to Josephine Leeds’s disappearance—is all bullshit. A distraction from the fact that our best friend is missing, maybe even dead.
“I overheard the cops,” I say quietly. “They found bloody clothes.”
Jade’s face doesn’t change. She’s not surprised.
“How’d you know?” I whisper.
Jade swallows. “I stayed here after the vigil last night. My dad was working, and I just couldn’t stand the thought of going to an empty house—Cathy said I could sleep in Bailey’s bed. She said she’d sleep better knowing I was here.”
Jade closes her eyes. Her lids are shiny, like she didn’t sleep at all. “When the cops came to tell her parents about the car, they said they had something they needed to show them. I came in here, but I left the door open so I could hear what they were saying.”
I suck in a breath.
“They must have shown Cathy a picture,” Jade says. “Because she said, No, that’s not one of Bailey’s sweatshirts. And then the cops asked her dad if it could belong to him or Ben.”
“So it was a men’s sweatshirt,” I say.
Jade nods. “Probably. Kace, I think there was blood on it. After they showed her the picture, her parents started crying.”
A tug in my chest. “Have the cops talked to Cliff? His entire wardrobe is sweatshirts—”
My voice falters as I see how Jade is staring at me. She smooths out a wrinkle in Bailey’s comforter, her eyes avoiding mine. “That cop with the busted teeth, Ellie whatever, she came to talk to me again. I asked her why they hadn’t arrested Cliff, and she said they were exploring all angles.”
“Okay,” I say. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Think about it, Kace,” Jade says. “If Cliff did something to Bailey, why would he be dumb enough to ditch her phone right outside his house?”