—
Half an hour later, I’m still sitting on a couch in the Grossos’ living room. Sheriff Moser is standing in the doorway to the kitchen, and Jim Grosso is standing off to the side. Jim is even more frightening than Cliff; he was a linebacker too, back in the day. It’s not hard to imagine his enormous arm muscles slamming a cleaver through a slab of meat.
Cliff is on an armchair catty-corner to me, and everyone seems generally unconcerned that he was pointing a crossbow at me thirty minutes ago.
There’s a commotion outside the front door; through the living room window, I spot the back of my father’s head, his hair rumpled from sleeping. The deputy posted outside the Grossos’ house—the same loudmouth who blurted the news about blood being in Bailey’s car—raises his voice to match my father’s. Sheriff Moser’s gaze darts back and forth between the door and me, as if he’s weighing whether it’s a good idea to leave me alone with the Grossos.
“Uh, you all wait right here.” Moser steps outside. “Jim, why don’t you come with me and we’ll sort this out.”
When his father is gone, Cliff folds his arms across his chest and stares me down. I avoid his eyes, trying not to think about what will happen if his father presses charges for trespassing. What the sheriff will do to me for showing up somewhere I don’t belong for the second time this week.
Some muttering outside. Moser steps back in the house, waves me over to him. I feel like a criminal, even though Cliff is the one who rear-ended Ellie Knepper when he was drunk.
“Alrighty. Jim here has agreed not to press charges for trespassing as long as you stay away from his house and his son.”
“His son—like I’m stalking him or something?” I ask.
“I think I’ve got it from here, Bill,” my father says sharply. “Kacey and I are going to go home now, if that’s all right.”
Moser tips his hat. “You take care, you hear? All this just makes me want to go home and be with my daughter.”
My father nods and guides me with a hand on my back to Andrew’s car, which is waiting several hundred yards from the house.
When he speaks, his voice is sharp. The sort of sharp that’s usually reserved for Lauren when she’s acting like a brat. “Follow me home. Straight home.”
And that’s all he says. He never has much to say to me, anyway.
—
Ashley and Andrew get home from the search not long after my father and I get home. The search was supposed to run until five, but the weather made it too dangerous for people to be walking up and down the winding roads between Broken Falls and Pleasant Plains.
When I saw Ashley’s SUV pull into the driveway, I ran into my room like the coward that I am. Which is where I’m hiding when the arguing in the kitchen starts. I can’t help myself; I crack open my door so I can hear.
Ashley’s voice carries down the hall: “What the hell was she doing there?”
My dad’s response is measured, even. “I don’t know, Ash. No one tells me anything that’s going on around here.”
“Maybe if you were home, ever!”
The sound of a fist hitting a hard surface makes me jump. “I was home all day with Lauren!”
“I asked you to check on Kacey at the café,” Ashley says. “Make sure everything was all right.
“I didn’t know she required twenty-four-hour supervision.” His voice is almost inaudible compared to Ashley’s.
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about your daughter, Russ.”
I don’t know what my father’s response would have been, because the sound of the phone ringing interrupts him.
“Hello?” There’s a pause that goes on for days. A Thank you, we’ll be there as soon as possible, end call. I know it’s the sheriff’s office by the polite panic in Ashley’s voice.
“They want to talk to her,” she says.
“Again? They just talked to her!”
“I don’t know, Russ. Do you blame them after what happened today?”
I grab my coat and head down the hall, my heartbeat drowning out the sound of their bickering. When I step into the kitchen, both of them turn and stare at me like they’ve never seen me before.
“Ready when you are,” I say, then add, “to go to the sheriff’s station.”
Ashley and my dad look mortified. They know I must have heard everything, but it doesn’t bother me.
For some reason, I want them to know I heard every word.
—
Ashley brings me to the station so my father can get some sleep before his night shift. This time, there’s no negotiating Ashley being in the room for the interview. She plunks down on the chair in the corner, one protective eye on me as Ellie Knepper puts a hand to my lower back and guides me to the table.
“Detective Burke will be right in. Can I get you folks anything? Coffee? Water?”
“Maybe some water,” Ashley says. As Ellie disappears, Ashley points up at the camera in the corner of the room. A light pulses twice.
“Just be honest.” Ashley’s voice is clipped. Like I haven’t been honest up until now.
My chest constricts. What does she think I’m hiding?
There’s the fact that I snuck out Friday night, but that hardly feels relevant right now. I’m in way deeper shit.
I’m sweating by the time Ellie returns with two bottles of water. I want to twist the top off and shotgun the whole thing greedily, but Burke is with Ellie, and I don’t want him to see that I’m nervous.
“Thanks for coming in.” Burke slides into the seat opposite mine. Moser drags a chair across the room to join us at the table. Burke cringes at the metal legs scraping against linoleum.
“You understand why you’re here, don’t you, Kacey?”
I lick a raw spot on my upper lip. “The Grossos are pressing charges after all?”
“No,” Burke says. “Sheriff Moser is handling that matter. I want to talk more about Bailey.”
My stomach goes into free fall. Sheriff Bill’s got his eye on one of the girl’s friends. I want to ask if I’m a person of interest, but I can’t bring myself to do it with Ashley sitting in the corner.
But Ashley must sense the change in atmosphere, because she pipes up. “Does Kacey need an attorney?”
Burke looks over at Ashley. “That is entirely up to you two. I still think Kacey is a witness, and not a suspect. I just need her help convincing me.”
“No lawyers,” I say. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
Burke sets down a photo on the table in front of me. It’s the blood smear on the wall in the barn. “I want to talk about this. We matched the blood type to what we found on some other evidence.”
The sweatshirt. Probably, her car. My throat goes dry. “Is it hers? Her blood type?”
Burke’s chin quirks.