When Denise left, she shut the door behind her. Bex flopped on the bed, loving the smooshing sound of the pillow-top mattress and the soft, ultra-plush comforter. She could be happy here. She rolled over and spied a framed picture of Denise and Michael on one of her bookshelves. They were smiling, arms entwined, standing in front of a fenced-off waterfall somewhere.
They looked like parents. They looked like burger-making, ice-cream-eating parents who maybe had a Volvo sedan in a very neat garage and a shaggy dog and…a teenaged daughter. With her new hair color, Bex even looked a little like Michael, whose brownish hair was salted with gray, like they really could be father and daughter. But the second the elation of maybe actually belonging to a family swelled, it was hacked down by crippling guilt.
You have a father, the little voice in the back of her head hissed. You sent him to prison for the rest of his life, remember?
“I didn’t,” she said, teeth gritted, voice a low growl. “He ran.”
You gave him no choice…
Bex blinked away the tears that swelled below her lashes. “He abandoned me just as much as I abandoned him,” she muttered to herself. That was something the social worker had told her—that in deciding to run, Bex’s father had already decided to abandon her. Bex mumbled the phrase every now and again when the guilt bubbled or she missed her father or she wanted to remember what normal was.
“Normal is ice cream,” she said, tugging a sweatshirt over her head. “Normal is me having ice cream with Michael and Denise.” She paused, then tried out the words. “My parents.”
Three
Michael and Denise were standing at the kitchen counter when Bex got downstairs, a supermarket stock of Ben & Jerry’s pints set out on the counter in front of them. A gooey can of chocolate sauce, whipped cream, chopped nuts, and a half-eaten jar of electric-red maraschino cherries were also set out.
“I told Bex about our ice cream nightcaps,” Denise said, handing Bex a bowl.
Bex blinked. “You said you guys had a little ice cream at night. You didn’t say you were sundae masters.”
Michael grinned at that and drowned his two scoops of chocolate ice cream in whipped cream. “We do all right.”
After Bex finished creating her sundae—a stomach-stretching monstrosity of nearly every flavor on the counter—she followed Michael and Denise to the living room and took a spot on the couch, tucking her long legs underneath her.
The TV was already on the local news channel. From where she sat, Bex had a clear view of the news ticker running across the bottom of the screen and the concerned-looking newscaster standing somewhere that looked beachy.
“Authorities are reporting that another girl was found early this morning, her body discarded among the trash bags behind this local eatery,” the newscaster said. A picture of a grinning blond, head pushed back, blue eyes rich and dark, appeared on the screen. “There has been no official identification, but authorities are speculating that this latest body might be that of seventeen-year-old Erin Malone of—”
Denise clicked the TV off. “We don’t need to see that before bed. Are you excited about your first day of school tomorrow, Bex? You’re barely three weeks into the school year, so the ‘new kid’ thing shouldn’t be that bad.”
Bex tried to tear her eyes away from the now-black screen. The girl in the photograph… There was something about her that Bex recognized, even though she had never heard of the girl or the restaurant where she was found. Maybe this story had made national news?
Ice shot through her veins when the shard of a memory fell into place: the girl with the scarf. All those years ago in Raleigh… This girl, this Erin Malone, was a dead ringer for the girl with the scarf.
The girl her father had supposedly murdered.
Bex pushed her bowl away.
“Are you okay? Michael, get her a glass of water. Bex, are you okay?”
“Yes.” She pushed the word over her teeth.
It couldn’t have been her father. Her father was gone. He didn’t…
Bex was instantly shot to another evening in another time. She was seven years old, and her father had just been released from police custody. She was waiting at home, but over the years, with television and film and time, her memory blurred into her being at the police station, to her hearing the officer say, “Don’t leave town,” to her seeing her father tip his hat just slightly, never a true yes or no.
She had been lying in her postage-stamp-sized bedroom then, half-asleep while the fan lazed overhead. She should have been able to hear him. She should have been able to sense what he was going to do. But she didn’t stir that night. Not when he cleared out his closet, not when he pulled the front door closed, not when he drove away and left his baby daughter to wake up in an empty house the morning after.
She had waited for him until the sun set again. Until the moon came up, until pink fingers of morning light cut through the blinds that second morning. Crowds lined up on the street, yelling about a murderer. And when the police finally came back, they only found Beth Anne.
He had left, and the murders had stopped.