All the Missing Girls (25 page)

His bed was made. He had a queen, and the comforter was plain and beige. The dresser that he'd had growing up was in the corner, and there was a newer one that was so far from matching, it somehow managed to work. The bathroom door was open—shaving cream on the counter, soap in a dish. I checked the closet on the way out. Men's clothes only, camping gear in the corner.

“Does it pass inspection?” he called as I wandered back to the kitchen. He handed me a plate over the island.

“You got my favorite,” I said.

“I know I did.” He walked to the couch, slid to the floor, his back resting against the cushions, and placed two beers on the coffee table in front of him.

I sat beside him on the floor. “Not a fan of chairs, I see.”

“I've only been here six months. Chairs are next on my list,” he said, scooping fried rice into his mouth. “Nic,” he said, pointing his fork to the plate in front of me, “you really need to eat something.”

My stomach clenched as I stared at the pile of food. I took a sip of the beer, leaning back against the couch. “What kind of purse did Annaleise use?” I asked.

I felt Tyler tense beside me. “I don't want to talk about Annaleise.”

“It's important. I need to know.”

“Okay. It was . . .” He paused, thinking. “I don't know, it was dark green.”

“But do you know the brand?”

“No, I definitely don't know the brand. Are you going to tell me why you're asking?”

“We found something in my group. A buckle. From a Michael Kors purse. Down by the river.” I took a deep breath. “I'm pretty sure it's hers.”

He slid his plate onto the table, took a long pull from the beer bottle. “And where is this buckle now?”

I looked over at him, into his bloodshot eyes. “In the garbage can in the women's restroom of CVS.”

He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “Nic, you can't do this. You can't mess with the investigation or people will wonder why. I really think she's fine.”

“I really think she's
not,
” I said. “I think when people disappear, it's because they're not okay, Tyler.”

“Hey,” he said. “Don't cry.”

“I'm not,” I said, resting my head on my arm, wiping away the evidence. “Sorry. God. I've barely slept in—what, almost three days?—and I'm losing it.”

“You're not losing it,” he said. “You're here with me, and you're fine.”

I laughed. “That's not the definition of fine. I feel like the whole world is off balance. Like I'm losing my shit. Like there's this cliff and I don't even realize I'm on the edge.”

“But you do realize it, and that's the definition of holding your shit together.”

I shook my head but took a bite of the pork roll, forcing it down. “Are you okay?” I asked him.

“Not really.”

Our plates sat on the table beside half-empty bottles of beer.

“I don't know what I'm doing here,” I said.

“We're just friends having dinner after a really shitty day.”

“Are we? Friends, I mean?”

“We're whatever you want us to be, Nic.”

“Don't do that.”

“What?”

“Lie,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. He rested his arm on the couch behind me, making space for me. I leaned in to his side, and he slid an arm around me, and we sat there, staring at the blank television across the room.

“If it was from her purse,” I said, “she's not okay. I should be out there. I should be looking for her purse.”

“Nic, you need to relax.” I felt his slow exhale against my forehead.

We sat in silence, but the sounds of people leaving the bar drifted up from the window.

“I don't know what to do about the house.” Taking a bite of the
dinner had been a mistake. I took a deep breath, trying to hold my shit together. “I can't sleep in that house,” I said.

“So don't,” he said. “This couch pulls out. You can have my bed. You really need to get some rest.”

“People will—”

“Just for tonight. Nobody knows you're here.”

I rested my head on his shoulder. Closed my eyes, felt his fingers absently near the bottom of my hair, which suddenly seemed too intimate, even though he was barely touching me.

But maybe there was nothing more intimate than someone knowing all your secrets, every one of them, and sitting beside you anyway, buying your favorite food, running his fingers absently through your hair so you can sleep.

“By the way,” he said, “I like your hair.”

I smiled, trying not to think of tomorrow. One day I could come back here and he could be gone. One day I could walk through the woods, fade to nothing, leaving behind nothing but the buckle from a purse. All of us eventually stacked up in boxes in the police station or under the earth, passed over, passed by, with nobody left to find us.

I lifted my head off his shoulder, shifting so I was on top of him, one leg on either side, my arms sliding behind his neck, my fingers working through his hair.

“Wait. Don't think this is . . . That's not why I—”

I pulled my shirt over my head, saw his gaze drift to the scar on my shoulder and then away, as it always did.

Tyler gripped my thighs, holding me still. Rested his forehead against my bare shoulder, his breathing shallow.

If there's a feeling to coming home—something comforting and nostalgic: a mother's cooking, a family pet sleeping at the foot of the bed, an old hammock strung between trees in the yard—for me, it's this. It's Tyler. Knowing that there's someone who has seen
all the different versions of me; watched as they stacked themselves away inside one another; knows all the choices I've made, the lies I've told, the things I've lost, and still.

“Are you going to make me say please?” I asked.

I felt his breath on the space between my shoulder and my neck, his lips moving as he spoke. “No,” he said, “never,” and he pulled my head down to his.

Because the thing about Tyler is he always gives me exactly what I'm asking for.

The Day Before

DAY
3

A
nnaleise was unofficially declared
missing when the police station opened that morning, but the storms rolling through the mountains meant there would be no searching today. She was twenty-three years old and had been missing only a day, but it was the circumstances that got the police curious: Her brother said he saw her walk into the woods sometime after midnight. Her mother went to get her for their trip to visit a grad school around lunch, but she wasn't there. Her cell went straight to voicemail. Her purse was gone.

And then there was the text message. The one she sent to Officer Mark Stewart, the one that asked if they could set up a time to discuss the Corinne Prescott case.

Tyler showed up at my place just after breakfast, dressed in khakis and a button-down. He was pacing the downstairs, leaving rainy footprints across the floor. “That message is going to make everyone uneasy around here.”

“Do the police have any idea why she sent it?”

“Not that I heard. Doesn't matter, though. It's one hell of a coincidence, don't you think?” He opened his mouth to say more, but we heard tires crunching gravel under the rain.

“Someone's here,” I said, walking to the window.

A red SUV I didn't recognize had pulled into my driveway and parked behind Tyler's truck. A woman about my dad's age stepped out—hair gray like his, face round and soft—and pulled an umbrella over her head, keeping her eyes on the woods as she walked up the front porch steps. She was built thicker than Annaleise, but her eyes were as large and unsettling.

“Annaleise's mom,” I said, heading for the door. I pressed my back to the door, watched him stare at the wall past me as if he could see through it. “Why are you here, Tyler?
Why are you here?
”

He blinked twice before responding. “I'm fixing the air-­conditioning,” he said.

“Then go fix it,” I hissed before pulling open the front door.

Her mother was facing the driveway, her umbrella still up even though she was under the protection of the porch; the rain dripped off the spokes in slow motion. “Hi, Mrs. Carter.” I pushed open the screen door and stood on the threshold.

She turned her face slowly toward me, her eyes lingering a moment behind. She was looking at my driveway, at Tyler's truck. “Good morning, Nic. It's nice to see you home.” Manners first, always.

“You, too. I heard about Annaleise. Any word?”

She shook her head, let the umbrella rest against her side. “My son says he saw her walking in the woods. She's like that, you know. Keeps her own company, goes for walks. I've seen her out there; it's not too unusual, really. But she and I had plans yesterday . . . and her phone . . . Well.” She pressed her lips together. “It would've been
late, after midnight. Since we share property, I wanted to check. Any chance you saw her? Or anyone? Anything?”

“No, I'm sorry. I was cleaning the house, and I fell asleep early. I didn't notice anything.”

She nodded. “Is that Tyler Ellison's truck, dear?”

“Oh, yes. My brother hired him to do some work on the house for us.”

“I don't have his number, and I need to talk to him. Do you mind?” She moved forward, forcing me to back up, and stepped inside my house, placing the open umbrella on the ground.

“Sure, I'll just go find him. Sorry about the heat. It's the air-­conditioning unit. Busted. That's why he's here. Tyler?” I called from the hallway. “Tyler, someone's here to see you!”

He came down the steps, and before we could see his face, before he could see us, he said, “I think it's the condenser fan. If you buy a replacement part, I can— Oh, hi,” he said, his steps slowing.

“I've been trying to reach you,” said Mrs. Carter.

“I'm sorry, I've been working. We've got a project with a crazy deadline. I've actually got a meeting at ten down at the county clerk's office. I should probably be heading that way.”

“Of course. I was just wondering if you've heard from Annaleise?”

“I haven't.”

She took another step into the house. “When did you last see her? What did she say?”

Tyler paused, removed his hat, ran his hand through his hair, pulled the hat back down. “We went to a movie after dinner Monday night. I dropped her off a little before ten. Had an early morning myself the next day.”

“Did she mention anything else? What she was planning?”

“No, I haven't seen her since.”

“Did she mention going to look at grad schools?”

“No,” he said.

“Do you know what she was doing in the woods?”

“No. I'm sorry.”

Her questions came fast, but Tyler's answers came faster. “I'm so sorry,” I said, opening the screen door for her. “Please let us know if you hear anything.”

“Okay,” she said, dragging her eyes from Tyler. “If she doesn't turn up by tomorrow, they're going to organize a search—” Her voice broke.

“I'll be there,” Tyler said. “But I'm sure she's okay.”

She picked up her umbrella, her eyes shifting between me and Tyler as she backed out of the house.

CORINNE'S MOTHER HAD COME
to see me a week after she went missing, after we'd scoured the woods, the river, the caverns. “Just tell me, Nic. Tell me the things you think I don't want to know. Tell me so we can find her.”

I remembered the feeling of wanting to tell her something, to give her something. I remembered thinking she was so young, too young to lose a full-grown daughter.

But I shook my head because I didn't know. This was before Hannah Pardot broke Corinne open, and all I had to tell her mother was
She had a meanness. A darkness. She loved me and hated me, and I felt the same.
I couldn't say that to the broken woman on my front porch, not with my father in the kitchen, not with Daniel upstairs in his room, probably listening out the window.

“Tell me this,” she'd said. “Do you think she's okay?”

A week was too long to keep up the charade, even for Corinne. “No,” I'd said. Because that, too, was something I could give her.

A year later, when the investigation was fading to a memory for
everyone else, Mrs. Prescott got divorced. She took those kids, and she left Cooley Ridge. I don't know where they went. Somewhere there aren't any woods to cut through or caverns to crawl inside. Or a river to cross and logs to slip from. Where a man does not push her down stairs or throw plates near her head. Where her other children will not hold dominion over a town and where, I hope, they will never be abandoned.

TYLER STOOD BESIDE ME
on the porch as Annaleise's mother drove away. “I have to go,” he said. “I have to be in a meeting about a land survey. But I'll come back later.”

“Okay, so go.”

He stood too close, like he was going to kiss my forehead, and had to change movement at the last minute. He put an arm around my shoulder and pressed down, like Daniel might do. “Don't look at me like that. I can't bring you with me to work.”

“I didn't ask you to.”

“No, you just looked at me
like that.
”

I pushed him in the arm. “Go.”

He changed his mind, pulled me to his chest anyway, and said, “Everything's okay.” I wanted to stay like that indefinitely. Everything was not even close to okay, but that was the thing about Tyler—he made me think that it might be.

I clung to him much longer than what might be considered appropriate for a girl with a fiancé and a guy with a missing girlfriend.

“I'll be back tonight,” he said, pulling away.

“Maybe you shouldn't,” I said.

“Why not? Her mother just showed up and saw my truck here. There are going to be rumors anyway,” he said.

“Your missing girlfriend really isn't something to joke about.”

“She's not missing. She's just not here. And I think it's safe to say, whenever she shows up, that we're over.”

“Oh my God, stop joking.”

He sighed. “I don't know what else to do, Nic.”

I nodded at him, squeezed his hand. And then I watched him go.

As soon as his truck was out of sight, I went back inside and pulled open the kitchen drawers, dumping the contents on the floor, trying to piece together my father's life over the last ten years.

THE RAIN WAS SUPPOSED
to break the heat, but it didn't. It was a hot rain, as if it had manifested out of the humidity, the air unable to hold it any longer. The only thing it did was keep us all from searching the woods.

I drove to the library after lunch, sat at one of the computers in the corner, and pulled up the Yellow Pages site, looking for pawnshop listings. I scribbled down the number and address for any within an hour's drive, then stepped into the back courtyard of the library, which was essentially the backyard of a home encircled by a high brick wall, plants along the sides and benches in the middle. It was abandoned in the rain. I stayed pressed against the wall, under the lip of the roof overhang, the water streaming down six inches in front of my face, and dialed the first number on the list.

“First Rate Pawnshop,” a man answered.

“I'm looking for something,” I explained, keeping my voice low. “It would've come in sometime yesterday, probably. Or maybe today.”

“I'm going to need a little more information than that,” the man responded.

“It's a ring,” I said. “Two-carat diamond. Brilliant setting.”

“We've got some engagement rings,” he said, “but nothing that's come in recently. Have you filed a police report?”

“No, not yet.”

“Because if you don't, if this was stolen from you and it turns up in a shop somewhere, we're not just gonna hand it over to you. That's the first step, honey.”

“Okay, thanks,” I said.

“Do you want to leave a number in the meantime, in case it shows?”

I paused. “No,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”

Shit.
I shoved the list deep in my purse to keep it from getting wet and headed through the library back to my car. I would have to see for myself. Navigating the roads in the rain, browsing the crappy stores on the corners.
Just looking,
I'd say.
Just passing through. The sign just caught my eye, is all.

FIVE HOURS LATER AND
I needed dinner. I hadn't found the ring, and I was irritable, and I knew it was partly because I was hungry, but also because of the ring, and also because Daniel's car was in the driveway and I wanted quiet. I needed time to think, to work this all through. I needed to understand.

I ran through the rain, holding my purse over my head. “Daniel?” I called from just inside the front door. The only noise was from the rain on the roof, the wind against the windows, the distant rumble of thunder. “Daniel!” I called from the bottom of the stairs. Getting no reply again, I took the steps two at a time to the second-floor landing and paced the hall, calling his name.

The rooms were empty.

I went back downstairs for my phone, called his cell, and heard the familiar ringing from somewhere in the house. I pulled the phone from my ear and followed the noise into the kitchen, saw his phone on the edge of the table, beside his wallet and car keys. “Daniel!” I called louder.

I threw open the back door, eyes drilling into the woods. Surely he wouldn't be out there in this storm. I switched on the back porch light and stood in the rain calling his name. Down the steps, around the side of the house, and no sign of Daniel. I ran to his car, peering in the window, now completely drenched. I saw a few tools in the backseat but nothing too out of the norm. Then I heard a sharp thud, like a hammer, just under the thunder—from the garage. A faint light seemed to be coming from the side window. I shielded my eyes from the rain, walking closer.

The sliding doors to the garage were shut, and Daniel had hung something over the windows. I pounded on the side walk-through door. “Daniel!” I yelled. “Are you in there?”

The noise stopped.

“Go in the house, Nic,” he called through the door.

I pounded more. “Open the fucking door!”

He unlocked the handle, pulled it open. His hands were covered in white chalk, and the floor was fractured and splintered—chunks of concrete off to the side, the earth below it exposed.

“What the hell is this?” I asked, pushing past him into the room. “What the fuck are you doing?”

He closed the door behind me. “What does it
look
like I'm doing? I'm digging.” He ran his hand over his face, the white chalk streaking down with his sweat. “I'm
looking.
”

“You're looking . . . for what?” I asked.

“What do you think, Nic?”

For something buried. Something that's been buried for ten years.

“And you think it's
here
? You
know
this?” I stuck my finger in his chest, but he backed away. “Why do you know that, Daniel? Daniel, look at me!”

“I don't know, Nic. Not for sure.”

“Really? Because you're tearing up the goddamn floor. You seem awfully sure of yourself.”

“No, but I already dug up the fucking crawl space and the garden, and this is the only place left I can think of. We were getting ready to lay the floor the day Corinne went missing. But it wasn't done.”

“You didn't finish it?”

“No, I didn't finish it. I assumed it was Tyler and his father, but don't know for sure who finished it. And isn't that a little troubling?”

His face was all shadows. I was shaking from the rain, and I wanted to be anywhere but here.

“Now, get out of here,” he said. “Go check on Laura. Tell her I'm working on the house. Tell her not to worry.”