Chapter Eighteen
Eighteen
It’s only a car.
Aunt Paige hasn’t even started the engine on her little Prius before my heart is racing and sweat is trickling down my spine.
“Ready to go?” Paige asks. She starts the car, and even the quiet engine sound makes me taste metal.
“Uh-huh,” I say. I grip the fabric of the seat with my right hand, beside my leg where Paige can’t see it.
The radio blares to life, a pop ballad, and I jump. Paige lunges to turn down the volume.
“Sorry,” she says. “You know how I like my music.” When I don’t say anything, she adds, “Earsplitting.” She smiles, and I force a smile back.
I triple-check my seat belt. Paige purses her lips and looks at me for another few seconds, and I do my best to look like I’m not wondering whether my aunt has a barf bag somewhere in her car.
She eases the car into reverse, painstakingly cautious in her movements.
She backs us out of the driveway and onto the road.
I dig my fingers into the seat again. Images of pale skin spattered with dark blood flash behind my eyes. The radio still playing as we hit the ditch.
I can’t do this. I almost tell Paige to pull the car over, but a voice echoes in my head. Harper’s.
When we went through lifeguard training a few summers back, I was sure I’d fail out when we got to the treading test. It was meant to be the easiest part: twenty minutes treading water. A test of stamina, physical and mental.
You can survive anything for thirty seconds. And when you get to the end of the first thirty, you start the next, Harper told me.
I take a deep breath. I count to thirty once, twice, five times. Only when Paige slows the car to a stop and puts it in park do I open my eyes.
Instantly, whatever calm I managed to slip into at the end of the drive dissipates at the sight of a cop car parked right outside the bookstore. A man leans against the hood.
The detectives back home were always dressed up in fancy, pressed suits. They radiated cop before they showed a badge. It’s Gonzales, the detective I saw in the store a few weeks back. He’s outfitted similarly, in a jacket and tie. His badge is on his belt, conveniently visible whenever he moves.
The breakfast I forced down threatens to resurface.
Paige shuts off the engine and stares out the window at the cop. She doesn’t say anything, but her distaste fills the car like fog. Her lips purse and her eyes narrow.
“Do you know him?” I ask, hoping my voice comes out even.
“Gonzales? Yeah. It’s his partner I’m less thrilled with,” she says. Her frown deepens with every syllable.
“Not a fan?”
Paige snorts. She jams her fob into her bag and undoes her seat belt. “When your mom and I were kids, we spent all our time with Holden and with Larry Browning. We were friends growing up. I even dated Browning for a little bit.” She pops open the car door and climbs out.
I follow suit, eager to be out of the vehicle, even if it means a potential law enforcement run-in. “You and Browning?”
“For a few months. It never went anywhere. It sounds silly now, but it broke apart our little group. Your mom, Holden, Browning, and I were thick as thieves. He and Holden were close before, but after we graduated, they went their separate ways, your mom moved, and things were never the same. The way it goes, I guess. But the way he’s bungled the investigations of the kids… ”
“Bungled?”
“Not that many kids run away. Vanish like that, with no reason. But a dozen open missing person cases makes the department look bad, puts the pressure on them.” She sighs. “Maybe if they’d fought harder, they might have found some of them. Or at least one of them.”
I meet Paige’s eyes over the top of the car. “What do you think Gonzales is doing here?”
Paige shrugs. “He’s probably waiting for Browning.” She rounds the car, and I join her up on the sidewalk. “They check in with Nora pretty often. If they don’t, she’ll go find one of them. Usually at the station to make a big fuss.”
Gonzales hasn’t noticed us yet, and I doubt we’re close enough for him to hear, but I can’t hold my tongue. “She told me she once showed up at Browning’s house on a holiday,” I say.
“Oh, she didn’t just show up. She let herself in and marched into his kitchen.”
That sounds like Nora. Steadfast and fierce.
I smile and turn toward the shop. I look to Paige, who waves me on.
“You head on in. I’m really not in the mood to reminisce.” She nods toward the coffee shop on the other side of the street. “Want any? I’m buying.”
I nod. The idea of walking past one cop and into a shop I know holds another isn’t appealing, but the caffeine is.
“Usual?”
“Yes, please.”
“Tell Nora I’ll get her usual, too,” Paige says, and heads across the street.
It’s a quiet morning, in between the breakfast rush and the lunch crowd. The sidewalk is empty as I make my way to the Stacks’ front door, so my approach catches the detective’s attention.
I resist the urge to flinch as his head lifts. I meet his eyes briefly and pray my thundering heartbeat doesn’t give me away.
The longer I stare at him, the further back in time I’m drawn. Clad in a hospital gown and those pastel hospital socks, I have a cannula protruding from one elbow, most of my skin is covered in gauze, and an arm and leg are each in a hard cast.
The detective turns his gaze back to the phone in his hand, apparently unconcerned with me, and I let out a sharp breath.
I push through the front door, shaking off the non-encounter. The tiny burst of adrenaline leaves my tongue dry.
Instead of walking into a reprieve, I find Nora and Detective Browning arguing inside.
“—the hell am I supposed to do with that?” Nora barks, standing opposite the counter from Browning. Neither notices my entrance.
Browning winces. “I did everything I could, Nora. But there’s no evidence. There never has been. And with his age and his history—”
“So you call him a runaway and forget about him altogether? How is that justice?”
“He isn’t the only one whose case has been reevaluated. There simply isn’t enough physical—”
Nora waves him off. I’ve never seen her this angry. She is red-faced, fierce, and unwavering, even against a seasoned detective.
“It’s bullshit, and you know it.” She seethes.
I shift my weight, eyeing the stacks to my right, wondering if I can slip into them and make my way to the back office unnoticed. The old floor under the carpet creaks, giving me away, and Nora and Browning stop, finally turning my way.
I clear my throat, cheeks flaming. “Sorry. I can give you a minute—” I start.
“No,” Nora says. She lifts her chin, narrowing her eyes at Browning. “The detective was just leaving.”
The detective opens his mouth, then closes it, reevaluating the fight. I don’t blame him. Instead of pushing, he lets out a heavy sigh. He goes to speak again, but the bell above the door dings.
Oliver Holden, a box of books clutched to his chest, shuffles into the shop.
“Donations!” he announces. “Dug through our attic for these, but—”
His sentence dies in the air when he notices Browning. Time stands still, and the air thins around us. Like the four of us are on a high wire, hundreds of feet up, all afraid to fall.
Then the moment ends, and Holden forces a smile. He nods at the detective. “Larry,” he says.
“Ollie,” Browning says. I don’t miss the muscle that ticks in Holden’s jaw.
Paige’s words outside come back to me. A splintered friend group. Now all four are back within the same county lines.
“You can put those in the back room with the rest of the book drive boxes,” Nora says. Her attention lingers on the detective, only departing long enough to direct Holden toward the office behind the counter.
Holden and Browning hold each other’s gaze another moment. Then Holden heads for the office, not sparing the detective another glance.
Browning clears his throat. “Have a good rest of your day, Miss Shipman,” he says. He doesn’t say another word to Holden, though it could be because Holden is already halfway to the office.
Browning makes for the door, stopping as he pulls it open, looking back at Nora. “I’m sorry, Nora,” he says.
“Sorry isn’t enough,” she says, not meeting his eyes.
“I know, kid. I know.” And then he’s gone, the car outside rumbling to life.
When it starts to pull away, Nora looks at me. “Hey,” she says, voice wobbling. She swallows. Her eyes fill with tears, and she blinks rapidly.
I know what it looks like in the moment before you break. It goes against the rules I’ve laid out, but rather than walking away, I cross the carpet and pull her into a hug.
Nora holds only a second more before she gives in, wrapping her arms around me, silent sobs racking her chest.
When the familiar tightness forms in my chest, I think it’s my old grief making an appearance. But it isn’t. It’s pain for Nora’s loss, for Finn’s loss.
After a minute, Nora pulls away, wiping her face and clearing her throat. “God, I’m sorry,” she says, laughing dryly. “Good morning, I guess.”
I frown. “What happened?”
She huffs, rounding the counter to drop onto the stool. I follow, leaning against the countertop. “They’re closing Finn’s case.”
“What?” I ask, like it will change the words to hear them a second time.
“They’re labeling him a runaway and closing the case.”
“So the task force—”
“Isn’t looking for him anymore.”
“Fuck.”
I think of Finn, beside me at the keyboard or perched on the couch watching TV shows he didn’t choose. Finn, who is anything but the lost cause this town has labeled him as.
“Yeah,” Nora says. “He even tried to pull the whole ‘troubled kids’ card.”
“A dozen of them?”
“Even if they were—which shouldn’t matter, because they’re missing—they should have found at least one.
But there’s nothing. They all…vanished. He vanished.
” Nora shakes her head, face twisting. “He didn’t pack a bag, didn’t even have enough cash on him to last more than a day.
And even if he did, he would never have left without telling me.
He would have said something.” She slumps, shoulders caving in. “Maybe I’m delusional.”
I want so badly to say you’re not and he didn’t. He wouldn’t. I want to tell her about finding Ingrid’s bracelet and about the kids in my house. But opening that can of worms means dealing with the aftermath, and it’s too big a mess to fathom cleaning up.
I have no way to prove it. No way to make her believe. And she has no reason to believe me, the quiet, sad girl she’s only known for a few months. Not yet, at least.
So I don’t tell her. I listen and let her vent, because I can’t bring Finn back to her. But I can be here. It may not be everything, may not even be enough, but it’s what I can give right now.