And I had, of course I had. As if I had been waiting for her all along. As if she knew I always would.
In Boston there was an unreachable cabinet above the refrigerator where nothing else could go. Just the things I kept for storage but didn’t need. A box of my own, stuffed with old yearbooks and family pictures. And behind that, hers. I’d used one of my barstools to retrieve it. Had to pull down the rest of the stuff in front of it.
She’d laughed when she saw it, laughed and placed it on the floor, on top of her jacket, beside her shoes. I hadn’t thought of it again. She’d left with it that morning while I was on the computer, figuring out how to leave my life behind and support myself in the middle of nowhere, a place she’d chosen from a dart and a map. Fate, she’d said.
The top was closed but not sealed, edges tucked into one another. I knew she must’ve gone back through it once she left my place with it, taking John Hickelman’s watch, restarting the game. I knew I had passed the test by never looking inside.
But now it was here, and Emmy was gone. And she had hidden it out of sight, behind a lock that must’ve been hers. I pried open the top, unable to wait another moment.
It smelled like cardboard and the cold.
Reaching inside, I felt like I was unearthing one of those time capsules we buried in elementary school, awaiting the next generation: our fashion trends and current events, newspaper clippings laminated in thick plastic, a framed photo of our class; things we thought would mark the time.
The contents of Emmy’s box: the ashtray that she’d taken from a restaurant; the magnet, shaped like the hook of the Massachusetts Cape, with the name of the bar where she’d worked; an oversize cross on a long chain that she’d probably swiped from someone’s bedside table; a see-through neon green lighter with I the Beach that I remembered we once used to light candles when the power went out; and a key. The key was gold, and cold to the touch, attached to a green-and-purple key chain, plastic threads woven together in the way that we’d made our friendship bracelets as children. Below the items was a thin layer of paper material, slightly stuck to the cardboard. It took me a moment to recognize the backing, to realize these were photographs.
My pulse picked up, and the cool air moved against my skin, and I had this feeling—that I was about to uncover Emmy herself. I picked up the first photo, and it was aged, a little yellowed at the corners. It was the image of a woman with long wavy blond hair, with high-waisted, flared pants. She was smiling at something out of view. From the clothes, I imagined this was someone from my mother’s generation. A pendant hung from her neck—and though it was too far to see clearly, it was dark and oval, and there were too many similarities to imagine that this wasn’t the same one Emmy wore. The one I’d found on our back porch.
I imagined that this was Emmy’s mother. I missed the death of my mother, and for what? she’d said.
The second photo was adhered facedown to the cardboard. I gently pried back a corner until it gave. I turned it over, shone my flashlight so the glare caught me too brightly at first. I squinted, waiting for the image to adjust. A girl’s face, up close, blue sky behind it. A girl with brown hair, her eyes shining, smiling straight into the camera, straight to me. For the briefest moment I wondered if this was something Emmy had taken from me. The girl’s features, the way I looked in high school, standing beside Rebecca in family photos.
But I couldn’t place it. Not the background, not the moment of someone saying Smile, not the finer details of the face. My gaze dipped to her smile, to the gap-toothed mouth, open as if she were laughing, and the pieces lined up—the image I’d been shown by the police, but a younger version.
I held in my hands an image of Bethany Jarvitz. From years ago.
Emmy had known her once before.
And suddenly, everything—the dart she said she’d thrown at the map, the random place we had landed, us being here at all—was not so random at all. As if the story had been set in motion months ago and I hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t seen any of it. Maybe it had started even earlier.
Rewind eight years, three apartments, to a girl sitting on the ledge next to an ad for a roommate, looking at me closely.
Hopping down and coming closer.
Closer.
CHAPTER 23
I was scrubbing my nails, using the brush from Emmy’s things under the sink, feeling the dirt and grime that would not come off, when I heard Kyle knocking on the door.
“One sec!” I called.
My hands shook over the sink as I ran through the checklist in my mind: the box, taken and moved to the trunk of my car; the padlock, thrown inside as well; the car keys . . . had I returned them to my purse?
I made sure there was no dirt clinging to my pants or elbows before heading to the living room and letting him inside.
“Hi,” I said. I tried to calm my nerves, focus on Kyle, but my mind kept drifting to that box—what I’d found and what it meant. The police had been under the house already; it was only luck that they hadn’t found it before I did.
Kyle smiled, held out his hand, dangled my car keys from his index finger. “You left these on the roof of your car,” he said.
I swiped them from his grip. “Thanks,” I said. “My mind is so scattered this week.”
He nodded, then looked over his shoulder toward the road. “I don’t have long,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, wondering if he was expecting someone else, like last time.
He hovered just inside the doorway. He didn’t sit at the table, didn’t take a step closer, even though nobody else was watching.
“So, the thing is, Leah, I’m the lead on the Finley case.”
I nodded. I’d seen the way he acted down by the lake, figured he had been in charge from the start. “Okay,” I said, and then I felt the whip-fast reality of his comment. “You can’t talk to me anymore? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No!” he said. “No. But you’re a witness. You’re part of this somehow.”
My stomach dropped, everything I didn’t want and now couldn’t avoid. I’d known it as soon as I saw Emmy’s car pulled from the lake that it was over. I’d felt it even earlier, when I’d held the necklace in my hand and run around the front of my house—when I’d asked to speak with the police. Still, I hadn’t expected this part. Not from this angle. Not from the man I’d been sleeping with, whom I’d invited into my home.
He reached a hand for my elbow, but I stepped away.
“I can’t be seen as playing favorites,” he said.
“Favorites? I’m sorry, are there other witnesses who are going to complain?”
“This isn’t going well,” he mumbled, in an attempt to make me smile, it seemed.
I didn’t smile. “What are you so worried about?”