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AT THE AIRPORT, SHE STEPPED out of the car and into Paul’s arms. The airport was far from home, so she wasn’t worried about being seen. She didn’t care. She came alive when Paul was there. That night they shared, so long ago, it lived inside her. It sustained her. She clung to him. He put his mouth over hers, and her whole body released the tension, the worry, the deep unhappiness she’d been carrying around. He was coming with her to Key West. She was going to the wedding, and the rest of the time they’d just hide out in the hotel, being together, figuring out the mess they were in. She’d been counting the seconds. But now that they were here . . .
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She didn’t even know there was something wrong until he asked. The joy of it, the illicit thrill of what they were planning to do, her suppressed desire for him, her love—was it really about Paul, about her? Or was she just trying to get even with Chad? Doing the thing she knew would hurt him more than anything else, a betrayal to match his. But hadn’t she betrayed him, too, long ago? Hadn’t she been betraying him all these years?
Heather and Paul stood there awhile, holding each other. She didn’t have to say a word.
“It’s okay,” he said, pulling back from her, smiling. “I’ll stay. You go.”
They sat in his car and talked—about what had lived between them all these years. About their shared love and loyalty for Chad. How what they wanted could never truly be.
Even after he’d gone, she’d sat a long time thinking. She missed her flight. Then she went home. Because she was a good girl and always, always did what was expected.
thirty-one
“Let me see it,” said Raven.
“Just wait,” said Troy.
He was lying on his belly in front of the locked door, trying to open it with a bobby pin and a paper clip. Claudia knew, had told them, that there was no way that they were going to pick the lock with those things. But they were convinced. After all, they’d watched a YouTube video. She kind of admired their confidence, their complete faith in themselves and their abilities, a kind of DIY mentality that this generation—Generation Z, was it?—seemed to have. They didn’t need to look to authority or professionals for answers. They looked to Google.
Troy pushed out an annoyed breath. They’d been at it an hour, while Claudia looked on, thinking about what came next after the kids gave up. Who could she call? Not someone in this town; Raven had been right about that. Raven and Troy switched places, and then Raven got to work.
“It’s just a matter of lifting the pins—that’s what he said, right?” she said, sounding like she knew what she was talking about even though they all knew she didn’t. “You can kind of feel it.”
“I couldn’t feel anything,” said Troy. He held the flashlight for her. Claudia used Troy’s phone to look for locksmiths out of town.
“Shit,” said Raven.
“Language,” said Claudia.
“What’s wrong?” said Troy.
“The paper clip broke,” she said, dropping her head into her arms. “It broke off deep in the lock. It’s stuck in there.”
Troy issued a sigh. Then, “What about the barn? If you think it’s a tunnel, then there would have to be another door. Where else would the tunnel go?”
Claudia shook her head. “If it is a tunnel, it could lead to anywhere—out in the woods, even. Maybe it’s just a hidden room. Or a crawl space.”
“Can we go look?” asked Raven.
“Go ahead,” Claudia said.
They were on a treasure hunt, she figured. Let them enjoy it. She used to set up elaborate Easter egg hunts around the apartment and the building, even once at Martha’s place in Pecos. Raven would run around excitedly searching for the brightly colored eggs. She’d be so thrilled with any little trinket she found inside, so thrilled with the hunt itself. She had that kind of flushed excitement now.
They weren’t going to find anything, but let them look. They pounded up the stairs, and she heard the front door slam behind them. She got down on her belly for a moment and examined the lock. She tried unsuccessfully to catch the broken bit of metal with her fingernails. She lay there a second until she felt a kind of chill move up her back. She got up quickly and hurried up the stairs. She didn’t want to be down there alone.
It was truly starting to dawn, now, regardless of the upbeat tone she tried to take in her almost-post about it. A darkness, a terrible sadness had settled into a hard knot in her gut. A family had been murdered here, a young girl tortured and left for dead. They couldn’t stay here, could they?
She closed and locked the basement door, crossed the creaking hardwood floor of the hallway and moved into the kitchen. She sat in a chair at the table, and dropped her head into her arms and started to cry. She wept really. Big, gulping sobs. How stupid. What a mess she’d made of all of their lives—hers, poor Ayers’s, Raven’s. The worst part was that she had been trying to do the opposite. She had always actively sought to overcome adversity, let the light in, move through trauma. But no. Melvin Cutter had marked her that day. Her life since then had been little more than a reaction formation, a fight against the encroaching darkness that he brought with him.
And Raven’s, too. Why else would she have sought out Andrew Cutter? Ayers had told Claudia about this boy, of course. Claudia kept waiting for Raven to tell her about it. She never imagined that she’d go looking for him. It was Claudia’s fault. Who was she to keep Raven’s identity from her?
She had to call Ayers, talk all of this through with him. Even now, he was her closest friend, the one she always wanted first when things were good, when things were bad. They spent hours on the phone sometimes, late at night, when Raven was sleeping, just talking and talking. His voice the only honest and sure thing in the world. She needed to tell him about all of it. Where was her phone? Like her reading glasses, she was always putting it down somewhere and then walking all over this huge house looking for them. How many hours did she spend just looking for things she’d lost?