Nowhere Girl (38 page)

“Don't listen to anything that monster has to say. He was screwing with you, getting inside your head.”

I finished my beer and deliberately set the bottle on the table next to the coaster. Fuck Greg. “No, no. I think he may have been onto something, because after I saw him, I ran into Emma and—”

“Jesus, the universe is conspiring against you.”

I smiled. “No shit, but it gets worse. Emma all but told me my family knows who did it and we're covering it up.” I stopped talking long enough to take a breath. “What the fuck is going on here?”

Brady turned toward me and took both my hands in his. I didn't get that swishy feeling in my stomach like I used to when he touched me. It was like my body knew that if we kissed again, I wouldn't feel anything.

“Okay, let's take one thing at a time,” he said. “How do you feel about Savannah having a boyfriend?”

A warmth came over me. “You know what? It makes me happy. Savannah was always in such a hurry to grow up. She started having sex before we were in high school, and she kissed every boy she could. She smoked pot and only wanted to hang out with the senior girls. It was like she was trying to be an adult. And it just made me sad. I know she didn't care about any of those boys, and I wonder if she even liked Scarlet and Camilla and all those other bitchy girls. But knowing she had someone she really loved, even if it was Mr. Fitz…”

“Why did girls like that guy so much?”

“Because he was so cute.” I giggled, and it felt good. “But anyway, I read all three of her diaries four times. Her boyfriend made her happy.”

“Did you find anything else in the storage unit? Pictures or notes or anything?”

I let out my breath slowly. “Nope. I went through every box in there and didn't find anything. Except,” I said, thinking of that one odd picture, “for a photo in our sophomore yearbook.”

“Was she making out with Mr. Fitz?”

I made a face. “Ick. No. She was with that pretty senior girl Brittain, and she was watching someone. I can't explain it, but she looked so happy. Savannah was restless, always ready to try the next thing, experience something new. But in that photograph, she seemed so … content.”

“Okay, I'll bite. Who was she looking at?”

“That's the thing. I don't know; his head had been cut off, but I could tell from the build and the belt buckle that it was definitely a guy.”

“Are you sure?”

“Relatively. If it was a girl, she was awfully tall and must have had a cowboy fetish.”

“Was she wearing cowboy boots?”

I laughed. “No. She, or he, had on this gigantic silver belt buckle like people in rodeos win when they don't get killed by the bulls.”

He shifted awkwardly on the couch and put his hands in his lap.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “Ants in your pants?”

“Sure, sure, I'm fine.” But he kept squirming.

My eyes went to his hands and what they were covering. His face went white.

I scrambled to my feet. “Actually, the belt buckle looked like yours.” I ran to the back of the couch, putting a barrier between us. “It was you.” All at once everything made sense. “You were the secret boyfriend.”

“What? Me? No. I barely knew her.” But he sounded like a bad actor, high pitched and nervous.

“That's why she never told me. Because she knew I was in love with you. It was you.”

He stood up, and I backed away. “Cady, come on. Why do you look like you're about to jump out of your skin? Sit down, and let's talk about this.”

“Not until you admit you were her secret boyfriend.”

He cast his eyes downward. “I was,” he mumbled. “It was me.”

“So you've known. All these years, you've known that I loved you in high school. You and Savannah must have gotten a good laugh over the porky, ugly twin pining over you.”

“You're not ugly, and we never laughed,” Brady said. His voice sounded like a wound, wide open and bleeding. “Savannah adored you; she thought the sun rose and set on you.” He came around the couch, hands out, palms up, but I backed away into the kitchen. “She always said how smart you were, how together you were, how she had this”—he tried to find the words—“this emptiness that—”

“I don't want to hear this,” I said. “I don't think I can.” I heard a strange ringing in my ears, like someone had set off a firecracker right near me. I had the urge to run out the front door, to catapult myself out of this reality, because it was all starting to come together. Brady only wanted to be near me because of Savannah. “You'd been there before,” I said. He had his head down, eyes on the floor. “To that ice cream place on the shore that she loved so much. That's why you took me there.” He didn't deny it. “And you'd been to the old barn. You knew Bliss.”

“Cady.”

“She introduced you to her horse.”

“Yes.” He sounded resigned.

And I saw now that of course Savannah had loved him. Brady was sexy, but he was kind too, and that was what Savannah did: she brought kind people into her midst and made them love her, and then they did things like drive her to ice cream places two hours away and make friends with a horse who hated people. She would have loved how quiet Brady was, how he went to his car during lunch to listen to music and wasn't wrapped up in sports and keg parties.

“And all this time, I thought that maybe the chubby sister had a chance,” I said. My cell phone rang, but I didn't answer it.

“Please, Cady, it's not like that. I've been trying to find a way to tell you since that first day at the prison, but then you asked me to help you, and we started spending all this time together. And I really, really enjoyed it. I loved being with you, and I didn't want to ruin that by telling you I had a past with your sister.”

The house phone rang six times before the answering machine picked up, Greg's voice echoing, telling callers to leave a message. I heard Patrick talking.

“Cady,” he was saying. “Something's happened with the case. Call me immediately.”

Brady was quiet while we listened. When Patrick quit talking, I said, “Brady, I need you to leave.”

“We didn't laugh at you,” he said again. “She never told you about me because she knew how you felt about me and didn't want to hurt your feelings. She didn't want you to think she was taking me away from you.”

“Okay,” I said, but I wasn't sure I believed it. “Just go.” I came around the counter. “I have to call Patrick back.” I grabbed for the phone, but my hands were shaking, and I dropped it. “Thanks for telling me the truth.” I could hear the bitterness in my voice, and I hated it. I'd been so happy when I found out Savannah had loved someone. Why couldn't I be thankful? I reached down and picked up the phone, waiting for him to leave. Why was I still so jealous of my sister? “Go,” I said. I knew I was being horrible. Savannah had loved him. He had loved Savannah. He probably knew things about her that I never did, but all she'd had and all I didn't was coming back to me in a rush, and I couldn't stand looking at him.

Brady raised his hand in what seemed like a final wave. And then I watched him open the door and walk through it. While I was dialing Patrick's number, I heard the motorcycle roar off.

“I need to talk to you about something,” Patrick said as soon as he answered. “And I don't want you to say no right away.”

Jesus. Why did everyone need to tell me something today? Had he secretly been in love with my sister too?

I felt spent, wrecked inside, and I said, “Okay.”

“I want to bring in a psychic. Her name is Charlotte Reid, and she's the real deal. I would have talked to you about her sooner, but she—”

“Retired ten years ago,” I finished for him. “I know who she is.” She was a twin whose brother had killed himself. I'd read an interview with her after his death. She said Michael was also psychic and ended his life because he didn't know how to process the unspeakable things he knew.

“Believe me,” he said. “I've worked with plenty of psychics, most of whom are brought in by the families of victims desperate for answers. And the majority of them are crackpots. Charlotte is different. She has a gift.”

“It's not a gift.” I went to the front door and opened it. Brady was gone.

“Call it what you want, but she's for real.”

“That's not what I'm saying.” I closed the door and felt sick. “I don't think what she can do is a gift. It must be terribly painful to know and feel the things that she does.”

“That's why she quit. She wanted to shut it off; she said it disturbed her whole life. It was like a staticky radio station that got left on, and she could never get away from the noise.”

“I know.” I had a flash of Michael, a man I'd never met, hanging in his bedroom closet. “What brought her back?”

He sighed into the phone. “Savannah.”

I was still thinking about Brady. “Can we see her now, before dinner?”

“Yes,” he said. “I'll come pick you up.”

I started to hang up, but I heard Patrick's voice. “Cady?” he asked. “Charlotte said she needs two things from you to make this work.”

I was so drained I didn't think I could write my name at that moment, never mind come up with trinkets for a psychic.

“She needs a picture of Savannah, and she needs you to completely clear your mind of anything but your sister.”

“But Brady…” I started to say, but then I stopped. “Okay. I'll see you in a few minutes.”

 

CHAPTER

46

Charlotte Reid had been beautiful. I saw it as soon as we walked in the door and caught sight of her wedding picture on the mantel. Cheekbones to die for. Perfect glossy hair, long lashes, and a luscious mouth. Now she was an old woman, and every line on her face seemed to tell a story I was dying to hear. Her eyes were still a captivating denim color, and she was slight, spritelike. She wore lengths of turquoise around her throat and an amber bracelet wound around one arm and rings on every finger. Neither Patrick nor I could take our eyes off her.

“Come in, dear.” She held my elbow and smiled at Patrick over her shoulder. “I made some tea with honey. You've been through some trying times these past days.” Jesus. What had my dead sister told her?

Charlotte sat us down on a velvet love seat, and she settled on a chaise longue with dark wood and gold tacks. It wasn't until she tilted her head slightly to the side that I realized she looked like Savannah might have looked at seventy.

“I feel like I know you,” she said, reaching over and patting my knee. A man came in; I could tell by the color of his eyes and the shape of his mouth that he was Charlotte's son. He set down a pot of tea and a plate of cookies on the coffee table between us. Then he bowed slightly and moved away.

“Don't you?” I asked. Patrick reached out and took a cookie. “Isn't that your secret superpower?” God, this was awkward. “I mean…” But I shut my mouth.

She laughed, letting me off the hook. “It is my superpower, but it's not so secret.” My knees were touching Patrick's, but there was no room for me to move over. And I liked feeling him close to me. Her house was pretty, very comfortable, and filled with leather club chairs, bright rugs, gold-framed portraits, and hanging marionette puppets. With chipping paint and exquisite detail, they must have been antiques. But even in all that comfortable beauty, I felt nervous. I knew this about Charlotte: she used to be called in on the highest-profile cases, kidnappings and missing children of the extremely wealthy. When Michael hanged himself, she'd stopped working, though she stayed in Princeton and was now somewhat of a recluse. I'd written to her, tried to find her number; I'd done it under the guise of research, but as a psychic, she must have known why I really wanted to see her. “Have some tea, and take a moment to relax, dear. This can be a lot to process all at once.”

“Actually, I believe in psychic connections,” I said. “Savannah and I knew things about each other that we shouldn't have.”

“You were identical?”

“Yes.” I passed over one of the last pictures taken of Savannah. It was a beautiful photo from Halloween; she'd been dressed like Little Red Riding Hood with a sassy faux lace-up bodice, a hood, and a flared petticoat that made boys nervous and men stare. She'd been standing on the porch holding on to the railing, with one leg up, a patent leather red shoe on her foot. “Get in the picture,” my dad had said. But I'd been dressed like a chubby Dorothy, not nearly as cute, and I couldn't be persuaded.

“You shared the same cells, the same DNA.” Charlotte was studying the picture. “For all intents and purposes, scientifically speaking, you were essentially the same person. Of course, those cells divided, and you each developed your own souls, your own minds.” Her compassion reminded me of Patrick that first day at the school. He'd never questioned how I knew Savannah was in the Wolfe Mansion. “And she comes to you, doesn't she?”

“In dreams.”

She took a sharp breath in. “She leads you to your books?”

“Has she been talking to you?”

“Yes, my dear.” Charlotte studied the picture. “She is quite persistent, and she loves you very much.” She smiled at me, and I thought perhaps it was the kindest smile I'd ever received. “Now that you're here, I'm hoping she will come back. If she chooses not to come to us today, perhaps you can return with something that belonged to her. Maybe something she wore on her last day.”

Panic gripped me from the inside out. The facilitator of the grief group my parents went to for a little while suggested they give Savannah's wardrobe to Goodwill. “My parents gave her clothes away. The few things I kept are long gone.” I grabbed at my neck. “Oh God. She's not going to come back again, is she?” I tried to think of what was in all those boxes at the storage unit.