I recognized Daniel’s voice and mashed down the little quiver of excitement it caused. There was no chance this time of fate and an empty bottle forcing us to make out by the bonfire, though some small part of me held out hope for that very thing. I turned around to face him. “I was just getting out.”
“So maybe you have a few minutes to talk. If you’re not in a hurry to get back to the party.” A teasing smirk.
“I don’t think anybody’s missing me,” I said.
“You’re wrong there. I don’t know what you did to Jamie, but he’s rocking back and forth like a mental patient.”
“Funny,” I said. I sat down cross-legged on the rocky beach, and he sat next to me, facing the water. “What were you doing, spying from the bushes?”
“Sort of,” he admitted. “You’ve gotta watch out for that guy.”
The muffled sounds of the party blended into the rush of water, the swell of insects. I wanted to sit in the dark with Daniel, not talking, until everyone else went home.
“So,” he said. “Are you gonna tell me what happened the other day at the trailer?”
I hadn’t thought he’d bring it up again. “Nothing happened,” I said. “I told you I wasn’t feeling well. And the place was just creepy. You said so yourself.”
“There’s more,” he said.
“Why are you so worried about it?”
“Because,” he said, his voice low and calm, unlike mine. “You came out of that back room a different person. You shut down. I know we don’t know each other very well. I can’t tell what you’re thinking. It’s like, when you talk to me, there’s some other conversation going on in your head, and I’m not part of it. But when you came down the hallway, it was there, clear on your face. You were scared. You didn’t have time to hide it, or it was just too big to hide.”
How do you decide to trust someone you barely know? It was hard not to be swayed by unreliable portents. His earnest brown eyes. His clean, safe smell, which somehow managed to be sultry. Birdie had taught me a thousand ways to divine unknowable answers, mostly passed down through folk wisdom—watching animals, splitting seeds, examining bones. She also relied heavily on the Bible and the Farmer’s Almanac. But if all else fails, trust your gut, she’d told me. The way it hollows out when things aren’t right, when you’re about to take a bad turn. I wasn’t sure I could trust Daniel. But no pit grew in my stomach. And whether it was wise or not, I wanted to trust him. So I took a chance.
“It’s Cheri,” I said. “We know she was alive, she was staying somewhere. I think she was in that trailer sometime after she disappeared.” I stopped short of suggesting she was killed there.
His expression didn’t change. “What makes you think that?”
If I’d made a mistake in trusting him, I was about to make things worse. “I found something of hers,” I said. “In that back room. And the way the curtains were nailed shut, the carpet ripped out … I thought if she was there, there’d be some kind of evidence. I could figure out what happened to her. But when I went back, the trailer was gone.”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “I helped haul it out. It never occurred to me that Cheri …”
“Did my uncle know where they were taking it—who he sold it to?”
“He said the deal didn’t pan out. So he sold it for scrap.”
My throat tightened. “It’ll get torn to pieces.”
He rested his hand on my shoulder, and I couldn’t help cataloging it along with the other times he’d touched me—his reluctant fingertips on my cheek when we’d kissed; the bone-cracking handshake at Dane’s; the brush of his palm in rock-paper-scissors; now this protective, almost paternal grip of my collarbone—none of them sufficient in duration or intent.
“Have you said anything to Crete?”
“No,” I said. “If he knew anything about Cheri, he’d have said so. I’d ask him about the trailer, but Judd said something about a friend living there, and I don’t want to sound like I’m accusing anybody without knowing more.”
His hand slipped down my arm and away. “I don’t see you as the sort to let things lie. But that’d probably be the smart thing to do.”
“The smart thing’s not always right,” I said.
Daniel was quiet for a minute. “How about Cheri’s mom, you talk to her?”
“No. Cops questioned her up and down. She didn’t tell them anything. I doubt she’d say anything to me.” I rubbed one foot on the other to dislodge the sharp pebbles pressed into my skin.
“Couldn’t hurt to try.”
“Didn’t you say a minute ago that I’d be stupid to get involved?”
A crooked smile. “I never said that. I was only thinking it’s a lot to take on by yourself. You could use some help.”
“I’ve got Bess,” I said, standing up and trying to spot my sandals along the dark shore.
“I dunno, she looked kinda busy to me.” I gave him my best not-funny face, which just made his smile bigger. “At least let me drive you home. I’d hate to see you walk all that way barefoot.”
No one noticed us leaving together. Daniel’s truck was held together by rust and primer, and I was surprised it started after a few feeble coughs. Wind funneled through the cab, snarling my hair. We talked a little bit about school, how he’d been taking night classes at the technical college in Springfield but hoped to have enough money saved up to go full-time in the fall. He asked if I was looking forward to senior year, and I said I was looking forward to it being over.
Birdie’s house was dark when we drove past, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t up, watching. Daniel parked in the yard with the engine running. “Thanks for the ride,” I said, making no move to exit the truck. We weren’t on a date, but I felt like if we sat there long enough, he might get the idea to lean over and kiss me. I was dying to know if the first time was a fluke, if I’d been wasting so much energy feeling anxious about him when the true ingredient to a full-body swoon was something as simple as liquor. I wasn’t opposed to making the first move myself, but so far, Daniel had given no indication that he wanted more than friendship. And I refused to throw myself at someone who wasn’t interested. I didn’t know how Bess could stand it, laying herself out for Gage time and again while he continually saw other girls.
Daniel looked at the darkened house, the rotting gingerbread trim, and toyed with his key chain as though he might turn off the truck. “Can I walk you to the door, or will your dad come out with a shotgun?”
“He would if he were home,” I said, returning his smile. We got out and spent another awkward minute staring at each other on the front porch, serenaded by a chorus of coyotes and whip-poor-wills in the hills behind the house.
“Well, good night,” I said, finally acknowledging that he had no immediate plans to conduct the necessary research to determine whether a kiss would turn my legs to jelly. I stuck out my hand.
He took it in his, not crushing it like he had at Dane’s, not letting it go. “I know it wasn’t easy, earlier, for you to tell me those things. About Cheri and all.” He examined my hand in his, contemplating the confluence of lines as though preparing to read my fortune. “I said I knew you from school, but we met before, at the river. Spin the bottle. I figured you didn’t remember or were too embarrassed to bring it up. But as I recall, it wasn’t half-bad.” He grinned. “Actually, I think you kinda liked it.” He released his grip and stepped off the porch. “So, anyway, just wanted to get that out in the open.”
His truck sputtered down the road as I watched from the living room window, tipsy from our prolonged handshake, which could almost legitimately be classified as hand-holding. Sure, he’d been teasing me, at least a little, but he remembered. I didn’t have many friends, didn’t confide in anyone except Bess, and had never had a boyfriend, but I’d let Daniel right in, based on no more than a gut feeling and the fact that he’d offered to help with Cheri. He hadn’t assumed, as most people did, that it was pointless, that the trail was cold. And as always, when I thought of Cheri, I thought of my mom; as I approached her age at the time of her disappearance, I realized how young she truly was. Cheri and Lila, two lost girls, bookends with a lifetime of mysteries between them. And then it occurred to me: If it was possible to find one, why not the other? It couldn’t hurt to ask around. Someone out there might know what happened to my mother. It might not be too late to find out.
I was tired and beyond ready to take off the white dress, which I looked forward to tearing into dust rags. As I reached up to close the window shade, I saw a lone figure on the road, moving slowly, a bent silhouette. Birdie on her night patrol.