Chapter Five
We drove through a tiny downtown and continued uphill, moving away from the lake. The uniform residential neighbourhoods gradually gave way to older, sturdier houses, many of which were in visible need of repair—peeling paint, sagging porches, and overgrown yards.
Finally, Mitchell pointed out a driveway leading to one of the hilltop houses, which had no signs or numbers.
I slowly drove into the yard, the gravel crunching beneath the wheels, my heart racing with every turn.
I kept telling myself Lucas isn’t here, but my mind played tricks on me, making me panic.
What if I saw him now? What would I tell him?
My palms grew sweaty on the steering wheel as anxiety gripped me.
The house loomed before us, a Colonial Revival-style home with classical white siding that had faded to a dull sheen. Its dark windows stared like cold, empty eyes, daring us to approach.
June and Mitchell stepped out, but I stayed in my seat, nausea churning in my stomach. I took a few deep breaths and forced myself to follow the siblings.
My hands trembled. I dropped the keys, and their metallic jingle sliced through the silence.
When I bent to pick them up, my phone slipped from my grip.
I winced and glanced at the others, hoping they weren’t annoyed by my nervous clumsiness.
June looked calm, but her posture was stiff, and her knuckles were white around the phone in her hand.
Mitchell scanned the yard, his gaze settling on a shiny new Tacoma parked by the garage. It seemed like an odd choice for a fortune-teller. The truck looked out of place, its spotless surface clashing with the house’s worn, weathered siding. Mitch clicked his tongue in approval.
"Are you sure this is the right address?" June asked her brother, dubious.
Mitchell answered, "Yes." He hesitated, then finally started walking towards the house. "Come on."
He knocked on the door before I was ready.
"Maybe she’s not home," I ventured, hopeful. But it was quickly doused by a pang of guilt. This was my chance to uncover something about Lucas, and I was faltering.
Footsteps approached. My heart hammered in my chest, loud enough that I was sure everyone around me could hear it. The inner door creaked open.
Through the fine mesh of the screen door, a figure appeared the same height and build as Lucas.
My dry mouth seemed to suck all the moisture from my lips.
I stood paralyzed behind Mitchell and June.
Oh God, I kept repeating in my head, Oh God, this can’t be real.
Grateful that they couldn’t see my face, I swatted tears from my eyes.
The man stepped closer to the door, and the light fell on him, pushing his silhouette from the darkness. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, it was most definitely not Lucas.
I swallowed hard, unsure whether I felt relief or disappointment, and hastily wiped my face again with my sleeve.
Mitchell took a decisive step forward, politely introduced himself, and delved straight into why we were there. "Sorry to bother you. We’re looking for our missing relatives. Mind taking a look at their photos, see if you’ve seen them?"
I envied how composed and confident he sounded. The man hesitated, contemplating this suggestion. But then, he opened the screen door, stepping onto the squeaky porch.
He was older than me, probably in his early thirties, dressed in simple blue jeans, a muscle-fit gray T-shirt, and a plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves, looking nothing like the psychic we had expected. Perhaps we did have the wrong address, after all.
He cleared his throat and asked, "Photos?"
I quickly unlocked my phone and handed it to him. But instead of looking at it, he stared at me as if surprised by my presence. I wasn’t sure if it was an "Is this the girl who got away with murder?" look or if I was just being paranoid.
While he studied the photos, Mitchell continued, "We’re actually up in Duluth tracking a lead. We’re looking for someone named Mary Flynn. She owns a business, supposedly registered to this address."
We had agreed on our story beforehand, stating that both Amanda and Lucas had placed orders at an online store to avoid confusing the psychic.
Even if Lucas had no connection to this place, it was better to keep our narrative consistent and straightforward.
We also decided to keep the odd carvings on the tree, as well as Lucas’s scribbles, to ourselves, at least until we established a good rapport.
The resident of the house looked up at Mitchell and slowly shook his head. "No one here by that name, I’m afraid." Then he turned to me and added, "I’m Nick, by the way."
"Do you happen to know where she moved to?" Mitchell asked.
"No."
"And the people in the photos?" Mitchell continued regardless. "Have you seen them?"
"No." He gave me another quizzical look as he handed back my phone.
June impatiently pushed her own toward him. "Are you sure? Take another look."
He stared at the screen for a couple of seconds, then peered at me again. I turned the phone back to him, showing Lucas’s photo.
"I’m really sorry about your relatives, but I’ve never seen them," he said.
As we got ready to leave, Mitchell insisted we give him our contact information in case he remembered something important later. I didn’t expect much, but I went along with it. Nick took our names and numbers, though it was clear he wasn’t thrilled about it.
June didn’t wait for us and headed to the car, disappointment evident in her long, irritated strides. Mitchell and I didn’t linger; we quickly thanked Nick for his time.
It was unusual to be on the other side of the investigation, the one inquiring rather than the one being questioned. Refreshing, even.
On our short drive back to the downtown area, Mitchell, who’d done most of the talking until now, seemed lost in thought.
Before entering the central street that intersected the highway, he finally spoke. "Let’s stop somewhere and grab a bite. I’m starving."
We chose a small brewpub restaurant. After we had taken a table and placed our orders, Mitchell turned to me. "What are your plans for the near future?"
I gave a half-shrug. Nothing specific. Just moving in with my mom and wallowing in misery.
"How about you?"
"I’d like to stick around for a couple of days, talk to the locals, see if anyone heard of this Mary woman. Someone’s gotta know something."
"And what if you don’t find her?" I asked.
"Then we’ll look elsewhere. We have one more lead we’re checking out next."
"Where?"
"West Virginia. Amanda was on a trip there shortly before her disappearance."
"Why didn’t you say anything earlier?" I asked in surprise.
"We figured we’d start with you, see if your guy’s tied to this mess. Plus, the psychic. Now that this lead’s gone cold, we’re gonna fly out there, see what’s what."
I was certain they hadn’t mentioned anything earlier because they didn’t trust me. They wanted to meet me first and make sure I wasn’t some creepy, jealous-girlfriend-turned-killer type. Even though they had their reasons, I was still offended.
"And precisely where did Amanda go?" I couldn’t keep the coldness from my tone.
"We ain’t sure. Her credit card was used at a gas station in Ridgewood County last before she turned home."
I choked on my cola and coughed. While Mitchell sympathetically patted my back, I desperately tried to convey something important to him.
June stared straight at me, calmly dipping her fries into ketchup, waiting for me to either suffocate or stop coughing with the imperturbability of a cat watching a glass teeter off the edge of a table.
I was starting to think that maybe Lucas and Amanda’s disappearances weren’t so separate after all.
"I think I know where to look in West Virginia." I finally managed.
"What are you talking about?" Mitchell sat straighter.
"You didn’t know? Lucas is from Black Water, Ridgewood County."
"What? No way!" The siblings spoke over each other.
"We thought he was local," June added, meaning Minnesota.
"No, and like your sister, he’d just returned from visiting his parents a couple of days before." The memory of my last fight with Lucas flashed through my mind, leaving one more scratch on my heart.
"This is insane!" June almost screamed.
The waitress frowned with disapproval. Mitchell signaled his sister to keep her voice down. Unlike her, he quickly regained his composure and adopted a businesslike tone akin to that of a seasoned police officer. After what I’d been through with the police, it gave me the ick.
"Have you been there? You said you met his parents."
June immediately started searching for the mentioned city on the map, forgetting about her food.
I continued, "No, never. We only met once. At the police station in Minneapolis after Lucas disappeared."
Lucas never officially introduced me to his parents, which, to be fair, always bothered me. Whenever I brought it up, he’d brush it off with a promise that it would happen soon. It never did.
When I finally met his parents, we barely exchanged two words. They were withdrawn, likely due to their grief and shock. There were no attempts at further communication on either end. I didn’t want to bother them, and they never reached out.
Mitchell bombarded me with questions about Lucas, hoping to uncover more coincidences, but unfortunately, there were none.
Unlike Amanda, Lucas wasn’t part of any support groups or societies.
He was a typical American student and a talented football player with big dreams of making it to the NFL.
In contrast, Amanda led a quiet life in Kansas City, living alone after her sister rented a room and moved out to start her own life.
Though they didn’t explicitly mention it, I sensed a fallout between June and Amanda shortly before the youngest moved out.
Mitchell fell into thought, chewing on the cold remnants of his fries. After a moment, he looked up, eyes narrowed. "Something must have happened there. I knew we gotta go there. My training doesn’t start for another three weeks, so I’ve got time."
"I don’t care about work. I can just not go back at all," June said with a careless toss of her head, earning a disapproving glance from her brother.
Mitchell turned to me. "You gotta come with us."
I had commitments in Minneapolis, but I caught myself already making mental notes to cancel my shifts at the café and the bar.
Then, there was Ohio and the paper-shuffling job at the VA hospital waiting for me under my mother’s wing.
She expected me home by next Sunday, leaving us with a tight deadline.
If I wasn’t back by then, she’d be furious.
Though they were fading, I clung to these concerns out of habit, the fragile threads connecting me to normalcy unraveling.
The hope of inserting something between me and the life waiting for me at my mom’s was winning out.
"Can we take my car?" I asked. It made sense to do so, allowing me to drive straight to Ohio afterward.
"Sure thing." Mitchell’s expression softened into a nod.
"Ride in that old bucket again? It smells like moldy chips." June shook her head. Her brother nudged her under the table, and she rolled her eyes theatrically.
Mitchell booked two rooms at the motel, one for June and me and another for himself.
This might have been a nod to the old-fashioned practice of segregating accommodations by gender, or perhaps he just wanted his sister and me to bond before our road trip.
Either way, when I entered the room, June was already heading out to join her brother, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
I sat on the second bed, smoothing the worn bedspread.
I finally admitted to myself that I felt excited and alive—perhaps for the first time in a long while.
My mother was right. I had locked myself out from the rest of the world.
But setting off with people I’d only met two days ago to search for Lucas wasn’t exactly what she meant by "living up to my potential.
" On the other hand, I was done justifying myself to her.
And I could still make it home on time. Our trip would likely take less than a week.
I lay on the creaky bed. The pungent scent of old fabric, dust, and disinfectant enveloped me, filling my nostrils and exacerbating my headache.
My stomach twisted with slow-building anxiety, like a tiny whisper in my ear warning me of upcoming danger.
In my head, I ran through all the worst-case scenarios, but none seemed catastrophic.
Yet, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was making me feel so unsettled.
Was it the fear of confirming that Lucas was really dead?
This knowledge had always lingered in the back of my mind.
But what would I do if he came back into my life after all this time? Would I be wracked entirely by it?
Hoping to smother the headache, I took two ibuprofen and surrendered to a restless sleep.
My dreams were dark and tangled. I was either chasing Lucas through a crowded space, desperate to reach him, or running through the woods, calling out his name. Scary symbols from Amanda’s photo were carved into the trees, staring and unblinking.
When I woke up two hours later, darkness had settled outside. My heart raced, and it took a moment to recall my surroundings. June hadn’t returned yet.
My phone was buzzing. I picked it up and saw an unfamiliar number from Minnesota. I decided to take my chances and answered.
"It’s Nick. You came by my house today," said the familiar voice. "Can we meet? I have something to share with you."