“Doesn’t help you don’t even look like you’re telling the truth.”
It makes me—makes me want to get out of the car. How can he see that—how can he see that, if he can’t see her? Does he see her? I can’t—I turn my face from him so there’s less of it to look at and then, before I can stop myself, “What do I look like?”
“Romy, come on.” He sighs. “Something’s not right here.”
No. I’m wearing the red. I’m—I pull at the seat belt, my hands clumsily reaching to unbuckle it and he says, what are you—what are you doing? I taste metal in my mouth. If he can see it—he touches my arm, keeps me in place. I force myself to breathe, to not give anything away.
“It started with my dad,” I say. “Imagine … you go missing the same night as a girl everyone loves—and you’re the girl everyone hates, and you’re the one who comes back.” He doesn’t say anything, but I don’t know what it means. I don’t know Leon’s silences like I should. “You showed up at the search and—you think I’d hurt you like that on purpose? You’re the good part—”
“They couldn’t have done anything to me,” he interrupts. “If I’d known why you didn’t want me there, I’d have left to give you the peace of mind. All you had to do was tell me. But you didn’t. You made it so much worse—”
“You’re right,” I say. “I fucked up.”
I stare out the window at the sky, waiting for the sun to part the clouds. It’s funny, to go all this time wanting for rain, but now it’s too much.
“So I’m the good part,” he says.
I exhale shakily. “Yeah. But how I treated you was ugly and something ugly happened to you because of it and there’s no excuse for that. I’m sorry.”
I turn to him. He’s not looking at me. “I want you to be the good part too,” he says. “And if you want to be the good part, then don’t ever do something like that to me again, Romy.”
“I won’t.”
He turns the keys, gets the car going. He reverses out of the lot. I listen to the hiss of tires as they skim the rain-coated road. Sheet lightning flashes across the sky when we reach the YOU ARE NOW ENTERING GREBE sign.
“So I’ll see you at work,” he says.
Our eyes meet. I see myself in his and something inside me locks into place. It’s slower this time, but whatever he thought he saw before—is not there anymore. She’s not there anymore. Impulsively, I reach out and touch his jaw, running my fingertips down that line, and he stops breathing. I lower my hand and get out of the car. I make my way up the walk and when I look back, Leon is still there, his fingers gently wondering over the places mine were.
i get my stitches out.
I sit in the doctor’s office with my head tilted up and after it’s over, he declares me good as new. Mom takes me to Ibis and we get milkshakes and sit in the New Yorker in a parking lot overlooking Egret River, watching the rain come down. I don’t talk and she has no words to offer. She reaches over and squeezes my hand. On the way out of Ibis, she comes to a red light and Penny’s MISSING poster is plastered to its pole. It’s weatherworn. Curled at the edges and creased in the center. It feels like she’s been gone forever.
“You girls,” Mom says, staring at it. “Such fast friends.”
The nostalgia in her voice forces memories I don’t want. Me, at the dinner table with my head ducked, texting frantically with Penny on my phone, and—when dinner was over—in my room talking with her until I could see her at school, and then school. Seeing her at school.
After Dad was fired for calling Helen Turner a cunt and Alek and I got paired for that English project, Alek wanted it difficult, wanted it as awful as it is now. He held me responsible for my father so it was only fair I hold Penny responsible for him. I don’t know why it’s the girls who always seem to have to take on that kind of burden. After my dad got fired, it was my mom who got the brunt of the town’s pity and disgust, never him.
I must have impressed Penny, must have made a good case for myself because she talked to Alek and he got nicer. It was like I wasn’t my father’s daughter—I was one of them. We were fast friends, too fast … and both of those girls went missing and now neither of them exist.
The light turns green. When we get back to Grebe, it’s different. Ugly. This place is always ugly, but in a way I could at least count on. I can’t count on anything, now that he’s back.
when todd drives me to work Tuesday, I ask him if he heard anything about Alek.
“Like what?” he asks.
Like if he was in a wreck because he was drunk driving. If he spent the night in the drunk tank. If they took his license away. But I just shrug and say, “Anything.”
“Nope.”
We pull up to Swan’s, which is some kind of dingy picture, the rain bringing the outside of the building down a few shades in color. I climb out of the car and thank Todd for the ride.
“See you in a few hours,” he says. I cross the parking lot as quick as I can and when I step in through the back, to the kitchen, I’m only half-soaked.
“Hi,” Leon says as I shake myself off.
“Hi.”
He smiles, a very tentative smile. A smile that is still not sure it’s what I deserve. A small gift. Tracey steps out of her office and smiles at me too. “I hope you’re ready to work. The rain’s been driving people in like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Hey there, stranger,” Holly calls. I turn. She holds up a newspaper. “You’ve been gone so long, I almost forgot what you looked like ’til I saw this.”
“What?”
I take the paper from her and my stomach sinks. The Ibis Daily, a week old, and there I am in black-and-white. It must have been before Leon arrived at the search because I don’t see him—just me with my arms crossed, staring at a sea of people, all wearing the same shirt, all looking for one girl. But the girl that I’m looking at is undeniably, unmistakably me.