All the Missing Girls (9 page)

Were he and Corinne ever involved?
they had asked. They'd asked him. They'd asked all of us.

Never,
said Daniel.

Never,
said Bailey.

Never,
said I.

DINNER WAS BARBECUE CHICKEN
and vegetables that Laura had grown herself. She'd also made the sweet tea, which Everett had obviously never tasted before. His eyes gave him away when he took a gulp, but he recovered well enough, and I squeezed his leg under the table.

“Sugar and liquor,” I said. “We take them very seriously.”

He smiled, and I thought maybe we would get through this all right. But it took only until the second gap of silence—knives sliding against the dishes, bread crunching in my mouth—for Laura to start up again.

“They should be looking at the workers from ten years ago, see if there's any working the fair. I told them that. Two makes a pattern, right?” The ends of her long blond hair were centimeters from brushing her dinner, and I motioned my fork toward her plate. “Oh,” she said. “Thanks.” She brushed it back behind her shoulders.

“Dinner's delicious,” I said.

“Pass the butter?” Daniel asked.

“They're looking in all the wrong places,” Laura went on. I tried to catch Daniel's eye, but he was focused on the chicken he was cutting from the bone, his expression unreadable. She pushed her chair a little farther out, twisting to the side. “Honestly, they should be talking to Tyler more.” My hand froze, my knife over the chicken. She leaned closer, conspiratorially. “No offense, Nic. But he
was
seeing her, and I heard he was the last phone call on record—”

Daniel put his cup down on the table a little too hard.

“Who's Tyler?” Everett asked.

Laura laughed at him before she realized he was serious.

Daniel cleared his throat and answered for her. “A friend we grew up with. He was seeing Annaleise. He and his dad own a construction company, and they've been helping us with a few repairs.”

“You know, Nic's Tyler,” Laura said, like that should clear it all up.

“Oh my God,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Ex-boyfriend, Everett. Tyler was my high school boyfriend.”

Everett smiled tightly at Laura. “Nic's Tyler, huh?” Then to me, “And he's helping with the house?”

“Oh,” Laura cut in. “But that was years ago. He's good people. You'd like him.”

Daniel choked, coughed into the crook of his elbow, and Laura reached an arm for him. “Are you okay?”

My fork trembled over my plate, and I pressed my hands to my legs to still them. “You think he's involved in Annaleise's disappearance?” I asked. “Is that what you told the cops?”

“No, I didn't mean to imply
that.
I just meant they should be asking
him
questions, not us. He probably knows more— Oh!” Laura gasped, grabbed my hand, and pressed it to her stomach. I froze, trying to politely pull away, when something rolled, slowly and languidly, and I felt myself sucking in a breath, leaning closer, moving my hands, trying to find it again.

“You feel that?” she asked.

I looked into her face—a little rounder than pretty, balancing out Daniel's harsh edges—and I felt in that moment how lucky this baby would be. Unlike my mother, Laura would live. And Daniel would know what to do, wouldn't cower under the weight of responsibilities.

“This will be you guys someday,” Laura said, and I gently pulled back my hands.

Everett finally pretended not to hear part of our conversation, concentrating on his food. Daniel was doing the same.

“This is really good, Laura,” I said.

“It really is,” Everett said.

I CLEARED THE TABLE
with Everett's help. “Join me for a drink out back?” Daniel said to Everett.

“I'll join you out back, but I'll have to pass on the drink.” He grinned at me. “Nicolette took me out and got me toasted last night. You guys don't mess around down here.”

Daniel laughed. “No, I suppose we don't. Where'd she take you?”

“Murry's?” Everett said. “Kenny's?”

“Kelly's,” Daniel corrected as I scrubbed the dishes in the sink. “You don't say.”

I spun around. “Daniel, show him the backyard. Seriously, Everett, if you thought our view was nice? This place is amazing.

“Sit,” I told Laura as she tried to help.

“Thanks. I didn't mean to get you into trouble with Everett.”

“You didn't get me into trouble,” I said. “I just don't talk about home much. Probably caught him by surprise.”

“Okay. Well, I'm sorry,” she said. “I was just shaken. From the cops showing up. And when I'm nervous, I talk too much.”

I nodded, and then I did something that surprised us both as she walked to the back door. I hugged her. My hands were soapy, and the ends of her hair held some crumbs, and I felt her abdomen pressing into my side. “You and Daniel will be fine,” I said, and when I pulled back, she nodded quickly, tears in her eyes. She cleared her throat. “You coming?” She motioned for the back porch, where Everett and Daniel were sitting under the light, watching the sunset.

“In a sec. Gotta use the bathroom.”

I grabbed my purse and waited in the hall until I heard the screen door bang shut. Now that the nursery was almost done, Daniel's office was mostly a storage area under the stairs, about the size of a walk-in closet. I took out the manila envelope full of cash and used a pen to write Daniel's name across it. I didn't think Laura came in here much, but I figured I should leave it inside his desk drawer, just in case.

I owed Daniel money. But if I sent a check, he wouldn't cash it. If I held it out to him, he wouldn't take it. I probably could've given it to Laura, but I was pretty sure she didn't know about it. Telling her now would only make her wonder what other secrets Daniel was keeping.

I hadn't started paying it back for a long time, and it had been hard to scrape together, after rent and lease, on top of school loans. But I was staying here for the summer, and that kid paid me for the sublet up front, and if I let myself get a month behind on the car payment—just this once—I could leave this for him. Before the baby. All debts settled. All ties severed.

He'd given it to me before I left, out of some misguided sense of responsibility. He'd given it to me and let the garage sit, unfinished.
For school,
he said, and he told me to go. A good sister wouldn't have taken the money. But he still had that broken nose, and it was hard not to remember. Hard to say no to his black eyes. He said he wanted me to take it. To have it.

Mostly, though, he wanted me to go.

I PULLED OPEN DANIEL'S
drawer, pushed the stack of notepads to the side so he'd see the envelope in the bare spot beside them. But the light from the hall caught on something in the back corner. A flash of silver. The gleam of a key. I looked over my shoulder, then
reached deep inside. It looked like a house key, and it was attached by a simple ring to an engraved silver key chain, the loops and swirls coming together in an artistic rendition of the letter
A.

Please, no.

I heard laughter from outside. The screen door creaking open.

I took the key. Left the money on top of the desk and slid the key into my pocket.

“Everett?” I called. “I'm sorry, I'm not feeling well.”

They slowly made their way back inside, discussing when we might next be in town. Daniel took a business card from Everett, promising to call if he ever needed anything, anything at all. Everett put a hand on my arm as we walked in the twilight to my car. “That was fun.”

“Liar,” I said.

I cast a quick glance back at Daniel, who watched us from the front window.

The
A
could stand for anything, I told myself.

The key could be for anywhere.

It didn't have to mean anything. It didn't have to be my brother.

“SO WERE YOU EVER
going to tell me about this Tyler guy?”

If the drive were a straight line on a map, it should take only five minutes. But the roads weaved unnecessarily, cutting around forest and mountain, and it would probably take us closer to twenty.

“You're not about to grill me on ex-boyfriends, are you?” I checked to see if he was kidding. “Oh, you are.”

“Stop trying to be cute,” he said.

“There's nothing to tell, Everett.”

“That's not what Laura thought.”

“This is how it is here. Gossip from ten years ago is still relevant. Because nobody ever leaves.”

“But you did.”

“I did.”

He frowned, unconvinced.

“We were just kids, Everett.”

He stretched and leaned his head against the window, and the side of his mouth quirked up. “Did you go to prom with him?”

“Stop,” I said, but he was teasing, and I was laughing. “No prom.”

“Lose your virginity to him at sixteen in the back of his pickup?”

“You're such a jerk.”

“Because I'm right?” Huge smile.

“No,” I said.
Seventeen. In his room. On his bed that was just a mattress and box spring, with the extra blanket he pulled from the couch because he knew I liked it warmer. It was my birthday, and his hands shook on the buttons of my dress, and I put my hands over his to still them, to help him.

The car was too cramped, too hot, and I rolled our windows down, the air running through my hair like a memory I couldn't grasp.

“A lifetime ago, Everett.”

I PARKED THE CAR
in my driveway, letting the headlights illuminate the empty porch. “Okay, so could this Tyler guy have done something to Annaleise? What do you think?” Everett asked.

God, were we really still talking about this? I turned off the car, the night dark and alive. “Nobody knows if anything even happened to her. Her brother saw her go into the woods. Nobody knows if she came back. Maybe she did. Maybe she left on her own.”

“But could he have?”

Could
he have done it? That was quite the question.

He seized on my pause. “I don't want you staying here by yourself anymore.”

“You're not serious.”

“Your ex was the last call on record to a girl who disappeared from the woods in your backyard. And he's been working on your house.”

“Tyler wouldn't hurt me,” I said as we walked inside.

“People change over the course of ten years, Nicolette.”

“I know that,” I said. Except not really.
Not really.
People were like Russian nesting dolls—versions stacked inside the latest edition. But they all still lived inside, unchanged, just out of sight. Tyler was
Tyler.
A man who would never hurt me, I had no doubt. But a man who also once loved it when his girlfriend hung off the edge of a Ferris wheel, a man who pushed Corinne in full view of a party and never made excuses for it.

I checked the kitchen chair, wedged under the back door. Was it off just a bit? To the side? Was this exactly how I'd left it?

“You okay?” Everett called.

I felt electricity everywhere. In the air, in the walls. “Just thinking,” I said.

“Come to bed.”

“Not tired,” I said. I watched our reflection in the window. Everett coming closer. His hand brushing my hair over my shoulder. His mouth pressed to the skin of my neck. “Come to bed with me,” he said again.

I focused on the distance past our reflections, beyond the trees. “Not tired,” I said again.

I felt the weight of the key in my pocket, the ridges pressing up against my skin—all the possibilities, existing all at once.

The Day Before

DAY
12

T
here was something in
this house.

With the skeletons,
my dad had said yesterday. He hadn't been making any sense, but if people got desperate enough, they might try to find meaning in his twisted thoughts, just as I was. And then I wouldn't be the only one searching.

I had called Everett for advice about my dad, and he'd said he would handle it. But he was in Philadelphia and I was here, and I hadn't heard from him since yesterday's phone call. If Everett couldn't tell me how to get this to stop, they'd eventually search this house, just like I'd been searching all night. Until I realized what Dad must've meant: the closet. He'd meant his closet. I'd already gone through mine. And Daniel's was completely bare.

He meant here, in the unlit closet off the master bedroom. He had to.

But all I could find were his old work clothes that he'd never
use again, and the ratty slippers that I really needed to toss, and a few coins scattered across the wood floor, strewn with dust.

I yanked all the clothes off the hangers in a desperate last-ditch attempt to find anything, the metal hangers colliding as they swayed. Until I became a girl sitting in the middle of a heap of musty clothes trying to hold her shit together.

This is what you get for listening to the senile, Nic.

This is what you get.

I stood back up and took a deep breath to steady my hands, but the tremor still ran through my fingers. My head dipped down and I tried again, bracing my arms on the wall in front of me, my forehead resting on the plaster, my eyes focusing on the grains of wood below me.

Dust on the floor, a bobby pin that must've been here since my mom was alive, and two tiny screws beside my left foot, kicked into the corner.
If I were slowly losing my mind, where would I keep things?
I tapped the screws with my bare toe, and as they rolled, I saw that the faces were painted white, like the walls. I checked above me—there was an air-conditioning vent missing its two bottom screws. The top right corner was only partially secured. I sucked in a breath and felt a surge of discovery, of hope. My shaking hands twisted the loose screw until it fell to the floor with the others, the vent hanging at an odd angle, the rectangular duct behind it now exposed.

I couldn't see in from this angle, but I reached inside and felt paper—notebooks with spiral binding. I pulled them out, letting them crash to the floor, a few loose-leaf sheets raining down on top. I stood on my toes, reached deep inside, and scooped what I could out of the vent. Papers and dust and notebooks littering the closet floor. How much deeper did this go? How far into this house did my father's secrets seep? I imagined papers lining the spaces between the walls, like skeletons.

I jammed the heap of clothes against the wall and stepped on top, pushing myself higher so I could see into the darkness. The vent cut at an angle, jutting upward at ninety degrees near the back. I'd reached for the few remaining scraps, my fingertips just grasping the corner of a yellowed page, when the doorbell rang.

Shit.

Shit shit shit.

Not enough time. Not fast enough. Could they get a search warrant this fast? Would they know what they were looking for? Where to look?

I froze, holding my breath. My car was out front. They knew I was home.

The bell again, and the dull thud of someone knocking. I didn't have to answer.
Out for a walk; in the shower; picked up by friends.
But did it matter if I was here or not? If they had a warrant, they didn't need me to be present to gain entry, I was pretty sure.

I moaned and shoved everything back into the duct. Crumpled the pages and threw them in as far as they would go. Then I replaced two of the screws, but the doorbell rang again and I fumbled with the third screw, so I shoved it into my pocket, then raced down the stairs, my hair a wreck, my clothes a wreck, as if I'd just stumbled out of bed.

Good.

I took a deep breath, made myself yawn, and opened the door.

The sun stood behind Everett, who had his phone out, his hand raised to the door as if about to knock once more. He beamed as I threw myself into his arms with unrestrained relief.
Everett.
Not the police. Everett.

My legs were wrapped around his waist and I breathed in his familiar scent—his hair gel and soap and starch—as he walked us inside, laughing. “Missed you, too,” he said. “Didn't mean to wake you, but I wanted it to be a surprise.”

I slid down his body, took in his jeans, his lightweight polo, the suitcase on the porch. “I'm surprised,” I said, my hands still on him—his solid arms, the strength of his grip—real. “What are you doing here?”

“You asked for my help, and you have it. This is one of those things that needs to be handled in person. Also, I wanted an excuse to see you,” he said, his eyes quickly skimming over my disheveled appearance. His smile faltered, and he tried to hide it under feigned confusion. “Where did I put the suitcase? Oh, there . . .” He pulled his suitcase inside the doorway, and when he looked back at me, his expression was typical Everett, calm and collected.

“So what do we need to do?” I asked, shoulders tense, a headache brewing behind my eyes.

“I already stopped by the police station on the way here. Delivered the paperwork and demanded they cease all questioning with your father, pending evaluation.”

I felt my entire body relax, my muscles turning languid. “Oh, God, I love you.”

He stood in the middle of the living room, taking it all in: the boxes stacked around the dining room and foyer, the rickety table and the screen door that creaked. The floor that had seen better days, the furniture that had been awkwardly pulled away from the walls for painting. And me. He was definitely looking at me. I pressed my palms to my hips to keep them still.

“I told you I'd take care of it,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said.

And then it was just Everett and me in this place I thought he'd never see, and I wasn't sure what to do next.

His eyes skimmed over me one more time. “It'll be okay, Nicolette.”

I nodded.

“Are
you
okay?”

I tried to imagine what he must be seeing: me, a mess. I hadn't showered since yesterday, and I'd been digging through closets all night. I'd had way too much coffee, and my hands kept shaking if they weren't holding on to something. “It's been stressful,” I said.

“I know. I could hear it in your voice yesterday.”

“Oh, crap, don't you have work?” What day was it again? Thursday? No, Friday. Definitely Friday. “How did you get away?”

“I brought it with me. I hate to do this, but I'll be working most of the weekend.”

“How long are you staying?” I asked, brushing by him to drag his suitcase—bigger than an overnight bag—away from the screen door.

“We'll see your dad's doctors today, and hopefully they'll have the papers we need by Monday. But I'll have to go after that.”

I thought of the notebooks in the vents. The door that wouldn't lock. The missing people, then and now. “We should stay in a hotel. This place has no air, and you're going to hate it.”

“Don't be silly,” he said. “The nearest hotel is at least twenty-­five miles away.” So he had checked, and he wasn't counting the budget motel that definitely had vacancy on the road between this town and the next.

“So, show me the place,” he said.

Suddenly, I didn't want to. I shrugged, marginalizing the house and all it represented—no longer thinking,
That's my dad's chair, and my mom's table, that once belonged to my grandparents, that she stripped down and refinished
—instead turning it into a box of wood, trying to see it through Everett's eyes.

“It isn't much. Dining room, living room, kitchen, laundry. Bathroom down that hall and a porch out back, but the furniture's gone and the mosquitoes are killer.”

Everett looked like he was searching for a place to put his laptop,
specifically, the dining room table. “Here,” I said, shuffling the receipts and papers into piles, scooping things up and dumping them into the kitchen drawers I'd just emptied.

He put his laptop on the cleared table, along with his accordion-style briefcase. “Can I work here?”

“Sure. But there's no Internet.”

He made a face, then picked up a receipt I'd missed—Home Depot, the nearly illegible date highlighted in bright yellow—and frowned at it.

I took it from his hands and balled it up like it was inconsequential. “Nobody's lived here in over a year. Kind of wasteful to pay for Internet.” Not to mention we didn't have an Internet line before that. Around here, service cut in and out from the satellite if there was an inkling of bad weather, and it wasn't worth the annoyance for my dad. Most everyone could check email on a phone, but only one service provider worked, and it wasn't Everett's. “You could use the library? It's near the police station. Not too far. I could drive you.”

“This is fine, Nicolette. But maybe we can hit the library on the way to see your dad, so I can send a file.”

“Are you sure? Because—”

“I'm here to see you,” he said. “Not sit in a library. I missed you.”

Now that he mentioned it, we hadn't been apart for this long. Not like we went out of our way to never be separated, but I wondered if we'd just been stuck in the pull of forward momentum, never taking a step back or a step away. What would happen if we paused the track, took a breath?

He missed me, sure. He wanted to help, sure. But I also had the feeling that his case was getting to him. Maybe he needed a break. Distance. I could hear that in his voice on the phone.

“What did the police say?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Not much they can say. They
didn't look too happy to see me, but it doesn't seem to be their top priority at the moment. I'm not sure his statement will help with the current situation.” He looked at me from the corner of his eye as he set up his work on the table. “Tell me about this missing girl. The posters are everywhere.”

“I wouldn't call her a girl, exactly, but her name is Annaleise Carter. Her brother saw her walk into the woods, and she wasn't home the next morning. Nobody's seen her since.” My eyes involuntarily strayed to the backyard, toward her property.

“You know her?”

“Everett, you know everyone in a town like this. We weren't ever friends or anything, if that's what you mean. She's younger than me, but she lived behind us.” I tilted my head toward the kitchen, and Everett went to the window.

“I only see trees.”

“Okay, well, not right behind us. But they're our closest neighbors.”

“Huh.” He didn't pull away from the window, and that made me nervous. There were secrets in those woods—the past rising up and overlapping, an unstoppable trail of dominoes already set in motion. I shook my head to clear the thought as Everett turned around. “What's the matter?” he asked.

The disappearing girls; the police and my father and the things he was saying; the papers in the closet that I had to get rid of before someone else came looking.

“I lost the ring,” I said, my breath coming in shallow spurts as I tried to tamp down the panic. The sting as tears rushed to my eyes, and Everett going all fuzzy. “I'm so sorry. I took it off to box things up, and we were moving everything around, and now I can't find it.” My hands started shaking, and he grabbed them and pulled me close. I rested my forehead against his chest.

“Okay. It's okay. It's somewhere in the house, then?”

“I don't know. I lost it.” I heard an echo in the house, my ghost, maybe, another version of myself in these halls from another time. I pulled my hands back, balled them into fists. “I lost it.” Two missing girls, ten years apart. The fair, back in town. And all of us. Closing the gap of ten years like it was nothing but an inch. Just a blink. A quick glance over the shoulder.

“Don't cry,” he said, running his thumb across my cheek, wiping up the tears.
Just a piece of metal,
Tyler had said.
Just money.
“It's insured,” Everett added. “I'm sure it'll turn up.”

I nodded into his chest. His hands pressed lightly against my shoulder blades. “Are you sure you're okay?” I nodded again. Felt him laugh in his chest. “I never pictured you as a girl who'd cry over a lost ring.”

I took a slow breath and pulled back. “It was a really nice ring.”

He laughed for real, louder this time, his head tilted back, like always. “Come on.” He slung an arm over my shoulder as he walked up the stairs, luggage in his other hand. “Finish the tour?”

I laughed into his side. “You're going to wish you picked the hotel.” We stood together in the narrow hall that extended the length of the upstairs. One master with a bath, two other bedrooms, connected by a shared bathroom.

“That's my dad's room,” I said, gesturing to the queen bed and the old armoire. I pulled Everett along, shut the door as we passed. “This one was Daniel's,” I said at the next door, “but he took his furniture.” It had become a dumping ground of things my dad didn't know what to do with: old novels, teaching material, boxes of lesson plans, dog-eared philosophy books, and notes written in slanted script. “We're getting a Dumpster delivered next week. Moving on.” I cleared my throat. “This is mine.” The yellow bed looked drab. And the room looked way too small now that Everett was here. He didn't like staying at my studio; I couldn't imagine his feelings on this.

“Maybe we should stay in the other room? It's got a bigger bed,” he said.

“I am
not
sleeping in my parents' bed. I'll take the couch if it's too small for you.”