Then I crept back into the morning light and stared off into the woods. I checked the porch, and around again, but didn’t see anything left for me. An animal, Leah.
I was a creature of habit, sticking to routines, relying on them to get through the day. And now I was wondering how often someone roamed the outside of my house in the time when I was typically in the shower. In the time before Emmy got home.
With the open curtains, before I’d had coffee or gotten dressed, with the shower fog clinging to the mirror and sleep still softening my focus. Someone who knew our routines, who knew when I’d be home and alone. Someone who watched me.
Who watched us both.
CHAPTER 22
I was sitting at my desk before the school bell rang, tapping my heel against the floor. Listening to the footsteps in my memory—and the decision tipped. I pulled up our faculty listings document and scanned the names for Davis Cobb. I needed to know if it could’ve been him. If he could’ve been making it to my place each morning and calling each night.
He lived on Blue Stone Lane, and I entered his address into the map program I’d just opened. According to the map, he lived a good ten miles away, but I guessed he could’ve driven somewhere nearby and walked. Still, it seemed like a leap. Like he was going significantly out of his way, and for what?
And then, on a whim, I did the same for Theo Burton. He also lived miles away, according to the map, but his location looked closer from the aerial view, given the drive time. I switched the overview to Earth, not Streets, and saw that we were much closer than the map program would have you believe, as the bird flies. We both lived near the lake, though he was on the other side, where they were building it up. A few blocks from Lakeside Tavern, which Kyle had volunteered to walk to from my place. If you weren’t going by roads, we were almost neighbors. We certainly could’ve run into each other in these woods, out roaming the land beyond our backyards.
I pulled his sketch of the lake from my locked desk drawer, imagined a boy crouched down and watching.
Did he notice her walk by from his back window? Or see the scene while he was out to meet a girl, meet some friends, do whatever kids did around here in the middle of the night? Did he watch the fight with Bethany Jarvitz, see the hit, the blood spilling onto the ground? Or did he just stumble upon the aftermath? Or was this all his imagination—that he knew where she had been found, and so left this for me? Was he merely drawn to the macabre?
I picked up the phone before the students arrived and called Kyle’s cell. “Donovan,” he answered.
“Hi, it’s Leah, I was wondering: Who was the source who put Davis Cobb down at the lake with Bethany Jarvitz that night? Who was the witness?”
There was a pause, and his voice dropped lower. “Leah, I can’t do this right now.” His voice was overly formal, overly stiff. A tangible distance hung between us.
“Okay,” I said slowly, recognizing the familiar undercurrent in his voice. “Do you want to call me back later?”
“Leah,” he said, as if I should understand. But I didn’t. Not the sharp turn, not after the other night at the motel, the way he’d said my name, the way he’d looked at me.
“What?” I shot back in the lingering silence. There was something he wasn’t saying. Something he was hiding from me.
He let out a sigh. “Listen, I’ll stop by around four, okay? Will you be home?”
“Yes,” I said, and then he hung up, and the students filtered in, and I felt a strange disorientation that I couldn’t quite place.
* * *
I HAD TIME AFTER school, if I left during my free fourth block, to run by the hardware store on the way home. I just had to hope nobody in the school noticed or cared. Figured I’d already run through my allotment of goodwill and understanding from Mitch but went anyway. I sneaked out the side door again, locking my classroom behind me.
By the time I arrived back home, I’d purchased a pair of bolt cutters and a new lock for good measure. I checked my watch—thirty minutes before Kyle showed up. I was running short on time.
I crawled back under the porch straightaway, pulled myself into the dark corner, now unafraid of the dark, of anything that might be lurking here. Driven instead by the pull.
I put the bolt cutters through the hook of the Master lock, heard the snap as I felt the resistance give. I unhooked the broken lock and pulled the door open. It was low to the ground, made of thick wood, about the size of a door for a doghouse or a play set. I pushed myself through the entry, and the darkness was nearly complete, save for a few slivers of dusty light in the distance. As far as I could tell, the crawl space extended all the way under the house. I pointed the flashlight in an arc across the interior. Tubes running under the floor above, pipes and vents, insulation. The ground was cold but covered in a plastic tarp. The whole thing smelled like dirt and exhaust.
I swung the flashlight around the space, caught the light seeping through the vents at the edges around the back of the house, and realized the entrance to the crawl space must’ve been put in place before the deck was added on.
Nothing here, then. Nothing unusual. The lock was probably added by the owners to keep people from messing around down here. To keep out the animals. Time to get back inside, clean the dirt from under my nails, get ready for Kyle’s visit.
Except as I turned back toward the doorway, my flashlight hit a box in the corner. The light reflected sharply off old metallic duct tape—now sliced through. The box had my handwriting, my black Sharpie that had written EMMY on the side in careful capital letters.
I ran my hands over the fraying edges, the mildewed corners.
You have to take nothing with you when you go. That’s the trick. That’s what she’d told me back then, when she was packing up our basement apartment, when she was leaving the state, the country, me. Otherwise it’s hard to move on. You’re a clean slate. You’re anyone. You’re no one at all.
Could you do it? I had asked myself that question then, back when my life felt unfixable, tilted off its axis. No, I thought. Not even then.
But this time I was someone braver. Someone more like Emmy. And the words had been a melody.
You’re a clean slate. You’re anyone. You’re no one at all. And I had followed her here for a fresh start. I had taken very little with me.
This box had moved with me to three apartments over the course of eight years. Emmy had laughed that night when I told her I still had it. My words slurring together with hers. A bottle of empty vodka between us, wine we drank from tumbler glasses. A thought she grabbed out of the air and gave voice to: Hey, did you end up keeping that box? The one I left behind when I moved?