All the Missing Girls (2 page)

Maybe it was because of the humidity and the way we had to fight our way through it, like syrup sticking to the bottom of our feet, sweet and viscous. Maybe it was from living so close to the mountains—a thousand years in the making, the slow shift of plates under the earth, the trees that have been here since I was born and would be here when I was gone.

Maybe it's the fact that you can't see anything beyond here when you're in it. Just mountains and forest and you. That's it.

One decade later, a hundred miles away, and I cross the state line—
Welcome to North Carolina!
—and the trees grow thicker, and the air goes heavy, and I'm back.

The blurred edges shifting back into focus, my own mind resettling, remembering. The ghosts of us gaining substance: Corinne running down the side of the road in front of me, holding out her thumb, her legs shiny from sweat, her skirt blowing up when a car passes too close. Bailey hanging off my shoulder, her breath hot with vodka. Or maybe that was mine.

My fingers uncurled from the wheel. I wanted to reach out and touch them. Have Corinne turn around and say, “Pull your shit together, Bailey,” catch my eye, and smile. But they faded too fast, like everything else, and all that remained was the sharp pang of missing her.

One decade, twenty miles away, and I can see my house. The front door. The overgrown path and the weeds pushing through the gravel of the driveway. I hear that screen door creak open, and Tyler's voice:
Nic?
And it sounds a little deeper than my memory, a little closer.

Almost home now.

Down the exit, left at the stoplight, the pavement cracked and gray.

A sign freshly staked into the ground at the corner, the bottom streaked with dried mud—the county fair, back in town—and something flutters in my chest.

There's the CVS with the group of teenage boys loitering at the side of the lot, like Charlie Higgins used to do. There's the strip of stores, different letters stenciled in the windows from when I was a kid, except for Kelly's Pub, which was as close to a landmark as we had. There's the elementary school and, across the street, the police station, with Corinne's case file stored in some back closet, gathering dust. I imagined all the evidence boxed away and tucked in a corner, because there was no place else to put her. Lost in the shuffle, forgotten with time.

The electrical cables strung above us on the roadside, the church that most everyone went to, whether you were Protestant or not. And beside it, the cemetery. Corinne used to make us hold our breath as we drove past. Hands on the ceiling over the railroad tracks, a kiss when the church bells chimed twelve, and no breathing around the dead. She made us do it even after my mother died. Like death was a superstition, something we could outwit by throwing salt over our shoulders, crossing our fingers behind our backs.

I took my phone out at the stoplight and called Everett. I got his voicemail, like I knew I would. “Made it,” I said. “I'm here.”

THE HOUSE WAS EVERYTHING
I imagined those last nine hours. The path from the driveway to the front porch now overtaken by the yard, Daniel's car pulled all the way to the side of the carport beside the garage to leave space for mine, the weeds scratching my bare ankles as I walked from smooth stepping-stone to smooth
stepping-stone, my legs stretching by memory. The ivory siding, darker in places, bleached from the sun in others, so I had to squint to look directly at it. I stood halfway between my car and the house, forming a list in my head:
Borrow a pressure washer, find a kid with a riding mower, get a few pots of colored flowers for the porch . . .

I was still squinting, my hand shielding my eyes, as Daniel rounded the corner of the house.

“Thought I heard your car,” he said. His hair was longer than I remembered, at his chin—same length mine was before I left here for good. He used to keep it buzzed short, because the one time he let it grow out, people said he looked like me.

It seemed lighter all grown out—more blond than not blond—whereas mine had turned darker over the years. He was still pale like me, and his bare shoulders were already turning bright red. But he'd gotten thinner, the hard lines of his face more pronounced. We could barely pass for siblings now.

His chest was streaked with dirt, and his hands were coated in soil. He wiped his palms against the sides of his jeans as he walked toward me.

“And before three-thirty,” I said, which was ridiculous. Of the two of us, he was always the responsible one. He was the one who'd dropped out of school to help with our mom. He was the one who'd said we needed to get our dad some help. He was the one now keeping an eye on the money. My being relatively on time was not going to impress him.

He laughed and wiped the backs of his hands against the sides of his jeans again. “Nice to see you, too, Nic.”

“Sorry,” I said, throwing myself into a hug, which was too much. I always did this. Tried to compensate by going to the other extreme. He was stiff in my embrace, and I knew I was getting dirt all over my clothes. “How's the job, how's Laura, how are you?”

“Busy. As irritable as she is pregnant. Glad you're here.”

I smiled, then ducked back in the car for my purse. I wasn't good with niceties from him. Never knew what to do with them, what he meant by them. He was, as my father was fond of saying, hard to read. His expression just naturally looked disapproving, so I always felt on the defensive, that I had something to prove.

“Oh,” I said, opening the back door to my car, shifting boxes around. “I have something for her. For you both. For the baby.” Where the hell was it? It was in one of those gift bags with a rattle on the front, with glitter inside that shifted every time it moved. “It's here somewhere,” I mumbled. And the tissue paper had tiny diapers with pins, which I didn't really understand, but it seemed like a Laura thing.

“Nic,” he said, his long fingers curled on top of the open car door, “it can wait. Her shower's next weekend. I mean, if you're not busy. If you want to go.” He cleared his throat. Uncurled his fingers from the door. “She'd want you to go.”

“Okay,” I said, standing upright. “Sure. Of course.” I shut the door and started walking toward the house, Daniel falling into stride beside me. “How bad is it?” I asked.

I hadn't seen the house since last summer, when we moved our dad to Grand Pines. Back then there was a chance that it was a temporary move. That's what we'd told him.
Just for now, Dad. Just till you're better. Just for a little bit.
It was clear now that he wasn't going to get better, that it wasn't going to be for just a little bit. His mind was a mess. His finances were messier, a disaster that defied all logic. But at least he had the house.
We
had the house.

“I called to have the utilities turned back on yesterday, but something's wrong with the AC.”

I felt my long hair sticking to the back of my neck, my sundress clinging to my skin, the sweat on my bare legs, and I hadn't even been here five minutes. My knees buckled as I stepped onto the splintered wooden porch. “Where's the breeze?” I asked.

“It's been like this all month,” he said. “I brought over some fans. There's nothing structural other than the AC. Needs paint, lightbulbs, a good cleaning, and we need to decide what to do with everything inside, obviously. It would save a lot of money if we can sell it ourselves,” he added with a pointed look in my direction. This was where I came in. In addition to my dealing with Dad's paperwork, Daniel wanted me to sell the house. He had a job, a baby on the way, a whole life here.

I had two months off. An apartment I was subletting for the extra cash. A ring on my hand and a fiancé who worked sixty-hour weeks. And now a name—Corinne Prescott—bouncing around in my skull like a ghost.

He pulled the screen door open, and the familiar creak cut straight to my gut. It always did. Welcome back, Nic.

DANIEL HELPED UNLOAD MY
car, carrying my luggage to the ­second-floor hall, stacking my personal items on the kitchen table. He swiped his arm across the counter, and particles of dust hung in the air, suspended in a beam of sunlight cutting through the window. He coughed, his arm across his face. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn't get to the inside yet. But I got the supplies.” He gestured toward a cardboard box on the counter.

“That's why I'm here,” I said.

I figured if I planned to live here for the duration, I should start in my room, so I had a place to sleep. I passed my suitcase at the top of the stairs and carried the box of cleaning supplies, balanced on my hip, toward my old room. The floorboards squeaked in the hall, a step before my door, like always. The light from the windows cut through the curtains, and everything in the room looked half there in the muted glow. I flipped the switch, but nothing happened, so I left the box in the middle of the floor and pulled back the curtains,
watching as Daniel headed back from the detached garage with a box fan under his arm.

The yellow comforter covered with pale daisies was still rumpled at the bottom of my bed, as if I had never left. The indentations in the sheets—a hip, a knee, the side of a face—as if someone had just woken. I heard Daniel at the front door and I pulled the comforter up quickly, smoothing out the bumps and ridges.

I opened both windows—the one with the lock that worked and the one with the lock that broke sometime in middle school, which we never got fixed. The screen was gone, which was no great loss; it had been torn and warped from years of abuse. From me pushing out the bottom, crawling onto the sloped roof, dropping into the mulch that hurt only if you misjudged the distance, night after night. The type of thing that made perfect sense when I was seventeen but now seemed ridiculous. I couldn't climb back in, so I'd sneak in the back door and creep up the stairs, avoiding the creak in the hallway. I probably could've sneaked out the same way, saved myself the jump, saved my screen the damage.

As I turned back around, the room now bathed in light, I noticed all the little things that Daniel had already done: A few of the pictures were off the walls, the yellow paint discolored where they'd hung; the old shoe boxes that had been up high in the closet, stacked neatly against the wall in the back corner; and the woven throw rug that had been my mother's when she was a child, out in the middle of the floor, pulled from under the legs of my bed.

I heard the creak in the floorboard, Daniel in my doorway, box fan under his arm. “Thanks,” I said.

He shrugged. “No problem.” He angled it in the corner and flipped the switch. Heaven. “Thanks for coming, Nic.”

“Thanks for starting my room,” I said, shifting on my feet. I didn't get how other siblings had such an easy relationship. How they could ease back into childhood in a heartbeat, dropping all
formalities. Daniel and I were about to spend the day tiptoeing around our empty house and thanking each other to death.

“Huh?” he said as he turned the power up on the fan, so the low hum became a steady white noise, muffling the sounds from the outside.

“My room.” I gestured toward the walls. “Thanks for taking the pictures down.”

“I didn't,” he said, pausing in front of the fan and closing his eyes for a second. “Must've been Dad.”

Maybe. I couldn't remember. I was here a year ago, the night after we'd moved him out, but the details . . . the details were lost. Were the shoe boxes down? Were the pictures off the wall? I felt like I would've remembered that. That whole night was a blur.

Daniel didn't know I had come back here instead of driving straight home, like I told him I had to—
I have work, I have to go.
I came back here, wandering from room to room, dry-eyed and shaken, like a kid lost in the middle of the county fair, searching the crowd for a familiar face. Curling up on the sheets in the empty house until I heard the engine out front and the doorbell I didn't answer. The creak of the screen, the key in the door, his boots on the steps. Until Tyler was leaning against my bedroom wall.
I almost missed you,
he'd said.
You okay?

“When was the last time you were here?” I asked Daniel.

He scratched his head, stepping closer to the fan. “I don't know. I drive by, pop my head in from time to time, or if I need to get something for Dad. What is it?”

“Nothing,” I said. But it wasn't nothing. Now I was imagining the shadow of someone else in the room. Rifling through my boxes. Moving my rug. Looking.
Searching.
It was the feeling that my things were not where they should be. It was the uneven imprints of dust, revealed in the sunlight. Or maybe it was just my perspective. I grew, and the house got smaller. At my place, I slept
in a queen-size bed that took up about half my apartment, and Everett had a king. This full-size bed looked like it was meant for a child.

I wondered, if I curled up on the mattress, whether I would feel the indentation from someone else. Maybe just the ghost of me. I yanked the sheets off the bed and brushed past Daniel. The crease between his eyes deepened as he watched me.

By the time I got back upstairs after putting in the load of wash, the room felt a little more like mine. Like Daniel and me, the room and I took some time to grow accustomed to each other again. I took off the ring and placed it in the chipped ceramic bowl on my nightstand before tackling the bathroom and the dresser drawers. After, I sat on the floor in front of the fan and leaned back on my elbows.

Hour two and I was already procrastinating. I had to go see Dad. I had to bring the paperwork and listen to him talk in circles. I had to ask him what he meant in that letter and hope that he remembered. I had to pretend it didn't sting when he forgot my name.

Didn't matter how many times it had happened before. It gutted me every time.