All the Missing Girls (3 page)

I GATHERED UP THE
guardianship paperwork to bring to Dad's doctor—to start
the process.
So that, in life's biggest irony, we would become guardians to our father and his assets. As I prepared to leave, I heard faint, muffled noises from outside—closing of doors, revving of a motor. I figured Daniel must've called someone about the yard. But then the screen door creaked, cutting through the noise of the fan.

“Nic?” I knew that voice like twelve years of history filed down into a single memory, a single syllable.

I leaned toward my window. Saw Tyler's truck idling on the
side of the road. Some girl in the passenger seat. Daniel's sun-scorched back facing me as he leaned against the open window of the truck, talking to her.

Shit.

I spun around just in time to see Tyler standing in front of my open bedroom door.

“Figured it'd be rude not to come in and say hi.”

I smiled without meaning to, because it was Tyler. A knee-jerk reaction.

“Kind of like not knocking?” I said, which made him laugh—but
at
me. I was going transparent, and I hated it.

He didn't say
How've you been
or
What have you been up to
or ask if I missed him, joking but not. He didn't mention the boxes or the luggage or my hair, which was longer than last year and curled into submission. But I saw him taking it all in. I was doing the same.

Face just a bit fuller, brown hair just a bit wilder, blue eyes just a bit brighter. When we were younger, he had these dark circles under his eyes that never went away, even if he'd spent the entire day sleeping. They kind of added to his appeal, but now that they were gone, he looked just as good. More youthful. Happier.

“Dan didn't tell me you'd be getting here today,” he said, now fully inside my room.

Daniel liked us both fine apart, just not together. When I was sixteen, he told me I'd get a reputation if I started hanging around a guy like Tyler—I'm still not sure whether the slight was against me or against Tyler—and he never seemed to get over the fact that he was wrong.

“He didn't tell me you were coming today, either,” I said, crossing my arms.

“In his defense, I was supposed to drop the mower off on my lunch break five hours ago.” He shrugged. “But I had to be in the area anyway. Two birds, right?”

I peered over my shoulder to check out the girl, but also for the opportunity to look anywhere other than at him. While it took Daniel and me days to slide back into some form of comfort with each other, Tyler and I took no time at all. Didn't matter how long it had been or what we last said to each other. He stands in my room and it's spring break two years ago. He takes a step forward and it's the summer after college graduation. He says my name and I'm seventeen.

“Date?” I asked, seeing a blond ponytail, a skinny arm hanging out the window.

He grinned. “Something like that.”

I looked over my shoulder again. “Better get back out there,” I said. “Daniel's probably warning her off.” Daniel's upper body disappeared farther into the truck, and I jumped at the sound of the horn. “By the way,” I said, “that wasn't your date.”

When I turned back around, Tyler was even closer. “If I didn't know any better,” he said, “I'd guess he didn't want me around his little sister.”

I kept myself from smiling at the running joke, because this was the dangerous part. Didn't matter that there was a girl in his car or that he was heading out on a date this very second. Because every time I came back, this was what happened. Didn't matter that I'd leave again or that he wouldn't. That we never talked about the past or the future. That he'd give up something else for me and I'd pretend not to notice.

“I'm engaged,” I said. I said it fast, forcing out the words.

“Yeah, that part he told me.” He eyed my hand, my bare finger.

I ran my thumb against the skin. “It's on the nightstand,” I said. “Didn't want to get it dirty.” Which seemed ridiculous and pretentious and everything Tyler would hate about a girl and a ring.

It made him laugh. “Well, let's see it, then.” Like a dare.

“Tyler . . .”

“Nic . . .”

I tipped the ceramic bowl over into my palm and tossed him the ring as if it weren't worth more than him and me combined. His eyes went wide for a minute as he turned it over in his hand. “No shit, Nic. Good for you. Who's the lucky guy?”

“His name's Everett.”

He started to laugh again, and I bit my lip to keep from smiling. I'd thought the same thing when we met—my neighbor's Ivy Leaguing college roommate, partner in Daddy's law firm. I'd thought,
Of course that's his name. Of course.
But Everett had surprised me. He kept on surprising me.

“His name is Everett and he got you this ring,” Tyler continued. “Of course he did. When's the date?”

“No date yet,” I said. “Just . . . eventually.”

He nodded and tossed it back the same way I'd thrown it to him. Like flipping a coin or tossing one into a fountain.
Heads or tails. Make a wish. Penny for your thoughts.

“How long are you staying?” he asked as I dropped the ring back in the bowl.

“Not sure. As long as it takes. I'm off for the summer.”

“I guess I'll be seeing you around, then.”

He was halfway out the door already. “Anyone I know?” I asked, gesturing toward the window.

He shrugged. “Annaleise Carter.”

That's why he was in the area. The Carter property backed up to ours, and Annaleise was the oldest Carter, but not as old as we were. “What is she, thirteen?” I asked.

He laughed like he could see right through me. “Bye, Nic,” he said.

Annaleise Carter used to have these big doe eyes, so she always looked both innocent and surprised. I saw those eyes now—saw her leaning out the car window, eyes fixed on me, blinking slowly,
like she was seeing a ghost. I raised my hand—
hi
—and then the other—
not guilty.

Tyler got into the driver's seat with one last wave to my window before pulling away.

What was she now, twenty-three? She would always be thirteen to me. And Tyler would be nineteen and Corinne eighteen. Frozen at the moment when everything changed. When Corinne disappeared. And I left.

TEN YEARS AGO, RIGHT
around this time—the last two weeks of June—the fair had been in town. I hadn't been home for it since then. And yet for all the time and distance, this still remained my sharpest memory—the thing that came to me first, before I could push it away, any time Everett asked about home:

Hanging over the edge of the Ferris wheel cart, the metal digging into my stomach, calling his name. Tyler down below, too far to focus on his face, frozen with his hands in his pockets as people weave around him. Watching us. Watching me. Corinne whispering in my ear: “Do it.” Bailey's laughter, tight and nervous, and the cart rocking slowly back and forth, suspended over all of Cooley Ridge. “Tick-tock, Nic.”

Me, climbing over the edge though we were all wearing skirts, the shift in my weight swinging the cart even more, my elbows gripping the bar at the top of the cage behind me, my feet balancing on the waist-high ledge below. Corinne's hands at my elbows, her breath in my ear. Tyler watching as the Ferris wheel started to circle downward again. The wind rushing up with the ground, my stomach dropping, my heart racing. The ride screeching to a stop at the base and me stepping off a moment too soon.

The impact from the metal loading dock jarring my knees as I ran down the ramp, dizzy and full of adrenaline, calling back to the
worker who was yelling after me, “I know, I know, I'm leaving!” Racing toward Tyler, faintly smiling, his eyes telling me everything he wanted in that moment as he stood near the exit. An
enabler.
That was what Daniel called him, trying to find someone to blame other than me.

Run,
Tyler had mouthed to me. I was out of breath, not quite laughing but something close, as I raced toward him. His lips curled into one of his half-smiles, and I knew we wouldn't make it out of the parking lot. We'd be lucky if we made it to his truck.

But then a hand gripped me—“I said I'm leaving,” and I yanked my arm away.

But it wasn't security. It was Daniel. He grabbed me, solid and forceful, and hit me. He hit me across the face with a closed fist, and the impact knocked me off my feet onto my side, my arm twisted on the ground between my stomach and the dirt.

Shock and pain, fear and shame, they all felt like the same thing in my memory, all tangled up with the taste of blood and dirt. He'd never hit me before. Not even when we were little kids, really. Ten years later and that moment hangs between us in every interaction, in every passive-aggressive text message and ignored phone call.

And later that night, sometime between the fair closing and six
A
.
M
., Corinne disappeared, and everything that had happened that day took on new weight, new meaning. In the weeks that followed, the potential for death became palpable. It was all around us, intangible yet suffocating, existing in every different permutation of events. She could always be dead, in a thousand different ways.

Maybe she left because her father abused her. Maybe that's why her mother divorced him and left town a year later.

Or maybe it was the boyfriend, Jackson, because it's usually the boyfriend, and they'd been fighting. Or the guy she was flirting with at the fair whom none of us knew—the one at the hot dog stand. The one who Bailey swore had been watching us.

Or maybe she stuck her thumb out for a ride home, in her too-short skirt and her long-sleeved, gauzy top, and maybe a stranger passing through town took her, used her, left her.

Maybe she just left. That's what the cops finally decided. She was eighteen—legally, an adult—and she'd had enough of this place.

What happened,
the cops asked,
in those hours, with all of you?
Lay bare your secrets, the Who and the What and the Why, between the hours of ten
P
.
M
. and six
A
.
M
. The same cops who broke up our parties but then drove us home instead of calling our parents. The same cops who dated our friends and drank beer with our brothers or fathers. And those secrets—the
Where were we between ten
P
.
M
. and six
A
.
M
.
, the
What were we doing,
the
Why
—they wouldn't keep with those cops. Not at the bar, not in the bed, not in this town.

By the time the people from the state arrived to help out, it was too late. We'd already turned inward, already had our theories set, already believed what we needed to believe.

The official line: Corinne last existed to everyone who knew her just inside the entrance to the fair, and from there, she disappeared.

But she didn't, really. There was more. A piece for each of us that we kept hidden away.

For Daniel, she disappeared from outside the fair, behind the ticket booth.

For Jackson, from the parking lot of the caverns.

And for me, she faded to nothing from a curve of the winding road on the way back to Cooley Ridge.

We were a town full of fear, searching for answers. But we were also a town full of liars.

THE CAFETERIA OF GRAND
Pines is a great deception—hardwood floors and dark-linen-covered tables better suited for a restaurant instead of a long-term rehab facility. A piano in the corner, though it
seems to be more for decoration, and faint classical music playing in the background during dinner. The food, I've heard, is the best in any rehab facility in the South—well, that's what Daniel was told when he picked this place, as if that should make him feel better and make
me
feel better, by proxy.
Don't worry, Dad, we'll visit. And the food is to die for.

Today the nurse near reception escorted me into the room, and I caught sight of Dad at a corner table for two. His eyes slid over the nurse and me, then refocused on his fork twirling in the pasta.

“He didn't tell us you were coming or we would've reminded him to wait,” the nurse said, her mouth scrunched up in worry.

Dad looked up as she walked me to the table and opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but the nurse spoke first, her smile practiced and contagious—my own and Dad's stretching in return.

“Patrick, your daughter's here. Nicolette,” she said, facing me, “it's been so nice seeing you again.”

“Nic,” I said to the nurse. My heart squeezed in my chest as I waited, hoping the name caught, contagious as a smile.

“Nic,” Dad repeated. His fingers drummed on the table, slowly, one, two, three, one, two, three—and then something seemed to click. The drumming sped up, onetwothree, onetwothree. “Nic.” He smiled. He was here.

“Hi, Dad.” I sat across from him and reached for his hand. God, it had been a long time. A year since we'd been in the same room. Calls, for a time, when he'd drift in and out of lucidity, until Daniel said they were making him too agitated. And then just letters, my picture enclosed. But here he was now. Like an older version of Daniel but softer, from age and a lifelong appreciation for fast food and liquor.

He closed his hand around mine and squeezed. He was always good at this part. At the physical affection, the outward displays of good-fatherhood. Hugs when he stumbled in late at night, half
drunk. Hand squeezes when we needed groceries but he couldn't pull himself out of bed.
Hand squeeze, take my credit card,
and that should make up for it.