I should’ve seen it. She should’ve seen it. I thought of what I knew of them together, tried to pinpoint the signs, see the warnings in hindsight.
Early morning, woken by low words from her room, a man’s laughter. “Shh, you need to go,” Emmy had said. Firm and unwavering.
“You sure about that?” His laughter again.
My alarm had sounded, and I’d waited in my room. Waited him out. Waited for his steps down the hall. I’d gone out to the hall once I’d heard the front door slide shut, the scent of cigarettes and honey lingering in his wake—stale and sweet. Watched him through the glass as he shrugged on his jacket, tucked his chin-length hair behind his ear. I saw Emmy’s reflection in the glass behind my own.
“My car broke down, he gave me a ride,” she said.
I laughed. “Euphemism?”
I saw her face in the reflection, saw it break into a smile, could imagine the sound of her laughter in the moment before I heard it. “Jim,” she said, as if I had forced it from her.
I had filed it away in a list of names that wouldn’t mean anything: John and Curtis, Levi, Ted, and Owen—a name uttered and soon forgotten.
When he’d called later that day, asked for her, left his name, I almost wanted to tell him: She’s not going to call you back. Let it go.
So I was surprised when I saw him again, then again. When his car pulled up and she tumbled out the passenger side. When I heard his voice in the early morning or the middle of the night. When Emmy didn’t tear herself away from him after he fell asleep, to knock on my door, seeking an escape. When I scrawled his name on the sticky notes and slapped them to the wall, and I heard her on the phone later, her voice indecipherably low, pacing as far as the cord would allow.
“Leah?” Kyle was gesturing toward a paper in front of me.
“What? Sorry.”
“This.” Kyle was pointing to a highlighted call on my bill. Labeled Anonymous. Arriving in the dead of night, late last week. When I’d stood in front of the sliding glass doors, listening to the soft movement of air on the line. “Is this Davis Cobb?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Nobody spoke.” Had they let him go already that evening? Had he meant to scare me? To threaten me, as the police believed? I needed to calm down.
Kyle leaned back in his chair, placed his hands palm-down on the table. “They think she was hit with a rock,” he said. “Bethany Jarvitz. A rock probably picked up from the shoreline.”
An unplanned attack. I pictured a man following her through the woods. A man picturing me instead.
“You have some options here,” he continued. “You can document what you have, especially with the emails, and try to file a restraining order against Davis Cobb, keep him from making contact. But I think it will be tough to make stick. Still, getting it going in the system can’t hurt.”
I was already shaking my head. Definitely not. My stomach churned. If I filed anything, it would go on record, and the police would have to go digging through mine. Then they’d see I had one set against me back in Boston. They’d see the details: harassment, unwanted calls, showing up at the residence of Paige and Aaron Hampton—the whole thing was ridiculous. If the police here found out, everything I said would be tainted—for Kyle, for Emmy. Maybe even for my job.
I would become someone else. They wouldn’t believe me.
I was only trying to warn her. Paige, who was always too good-hearted to see the darkness in people, who was too self-assured, who always smiled. I presented her with the evidence; I begged her to get out. What I should have done before I moved in with Emmy those years earlier, if I’d been a better friend.
But Paige didn’t want to see it. She filed the order against me the month before I left the city. I was banned from going near her house or her place of work. I could not call her number. I could not initiate contact. And now I could not go on the record.
“What about Emmy?” I asked, bringing the line of questioning back around.
“We don’t have anything to go on, Leah. There’s no sign of her anywhere.” He looked around the house again. I remembered the questions he’d asked earlier: This place, it’s only in your name, is that right?
I felt a tremor in my fingers. Nerves or anger, I couldn’t tell the difference. “You don’t believe me,” I said.
There was no evidence she was here—that’s what he was here to tell me. There’s no evidence of a girl named Emmy Grey anywhere. As if I had plucked her from my imagination and set her loose.
“You don’t believe something happened here,” I said. My hands tightened into fists.
Kyle held out his hands. “I do, Leah. I do. I know something’s going on. I just can’t figure out what it is yet.”
“I’m sorry, was there something confusing about a person going missing?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “I thought this information about your roommate was your way of reaching out and talking to me about something else. She was a dead end, and if I’m being totally honest, it was starting to feel like a wild-goose chase. I thought—Well. I was beginning to think maybe this was your way of getting me here to talk about Cobb.”
I let out a bark of laughter. “Kind of like asking for a friend?”
As if I had been scared and needed an excuse. And maybe my roommate would suddenly just turn up a few days later from a vacation I’d conveniently forgotten about.
“This is real, then,” he said, tapping the papers. “Emmy Grey is her name, and she was here until Monday, and you have not seen her since. You don’t know where she is.”
“Yes, this is real. I can’t believe you thought I was lying.”
“Not lying, no.”
“Yes, lying. I found her necklace broken on the back porch. I showed you her necklace.”
“I know, I know. But I couldn’t find anything on her, here or elsewhere. And I thought there was something you were trying to keep from me. I just thought . . . I’m sorry, I was wrong.”
Except he wasn’t; he was so close. Kyle was right that I’d been hiding something, he’d just thought it was about the wrong thing.
“And now,” I said, “you’re telling me the man my missing roommate was seeing is a criminal, and he’s been in my house.” If Jim had hurt her, and he knew I’d seen his face, would he be thinking about loose ends? A witness? Someone who would give his name, his description. “What if he has Emmy’s key?”
I thought of the light on in the house. Wondered if he’d tried to take anything else, anything that would place him here. Covering his tracks. And whether I’d be added to that list.