Twenty-Seven Grace
I get to Murphy’s house first using the address he sent me. He lives on the edge of town, almost not in Raven at all. He has a lot of land, which isn’t possible closer to downtown. I never pictured Murphy as a country guy, but it fits with the image I have of him now.
I walk up his front walk, and he appears in the doorway like he already knew I was here.
“Were you just waiting in the window for me to pull up?” I ask.
He laughs. “Your headlights lit up my whole house. I thought I was about to be abducted by a spaceship or something.”
“You leave my headlights alone. They help me see at night.”
“Well, that’s good because no one else on the road with you can.” He holds the door open for me to come in.
I get a whiff of a subtle cologne when I walk by him. I walk farther into his house without invitation and take in the home of Murphy Hanlon.
“Is Tara here?” I ask.
“No, not yet. She should be on her way.”
There’s a brown leather couch against the wall. A rug. Coffee table. It’s styled in a masculine way with browns and blacks with natural textures, but it almost looks like a woman did it. Men like Murphy Hanlon don’t know how to match nonmatching furniture like this.
“Is Tara here a lot?” I ask. I look over at him and he’s smirking. “What?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing. No, she’s not. The funeral was actually the first time I’d seen her in a while.”
“Oh. So you guys didn’t stay close.”
“We were never really that close,” he says.
I narrow my eyes at him.
“We weren’t.” He laughs. “We fooled around a bit, but we weren’t close. Couldn’t tell you her middle name.”
“Ann.”
“I guess I could have guessed Ann or Marie and had a pretty good chance.”
“But that doesn’t mean you weren’t close. That just means you were a bad boyfriend.”
“Hey now,” he says. “I was never her boyfriend. I’m a good boyfriend. She couldn’t tell you my middle name either.”
I think for a second. “Archibald.”
He snorts. “Murphy Archibald Hanlon. You got it.”
There’s a knock on the door and I almost feel disappointed. The door opens, the person on the other end comfortable enough to let themselves in. I watch the hall, and Wyatt appears, Geny behind him.
He and Murphy do the whole man handclap, half hug thing, and then Murphy hugs Geny.
“Tara should be here any minute,” Murphy says. “Oh, there she is now.” He shuffles around Wyatt and Geny to the door.
The three of us stand awkwardly in the living room until Wyatt excuses himself into the kitchen to put the beer he brought in the fridge. I didn’t think to bring anything. Geny looks like she might bolt for the door any second. I take a step closer to her and reach out to touch her arm.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Mm? Yeah. I’m fine.”
She’s not. But I don’t push. Did we always lie to each other this much?
Are we just better now at catching it? I sure had my share of secrets.
But back then, I was too caught up in my own crap to notice or care what was going on with Geny all the time.
I don’t think I was always such a rotten sister. But I was toward the end.
I hear Tara before I see her. She’s laughing and her face as a teenager instantly fills my mind.
She was angsty and angry, but she laughed with her whole body as though she were really soaking in the experience of happiness.
Tara and I went through so many phases of friendship while growing up.
Best friends until one of us found someone else that seemed like a better fit.
Then we’d get distant. Never not friends. But not always as close.
She appears in the hallway, and my brain plays catch-up with the adult version of her. She has long hair and less black clothing now.
“Hi!” Tara says and grabs me into a hug.
I squeeze her, and when she takes a step back, she smiles and lifts her hand to say hello to Geny.
It’s awkward. She and Geny weren’t close when we were young, but she’s been around longer than I have.
It makes me a little sad that Geny didn’t lean on our friends when she lost me.
That she probably didn’t feel like she could.
Wyatt comes back into the room at the same time Murphy does.
“I got a big bonfire prepared out back if you guys are down. Otherwise, we can hang out inside.”
“Bonfire,” Wyatt and I say at the same time as Geny mumbles, “It’s kind of cold . . .”
“But the bonfire sounds nice,” Geny says quickly in a mousy voice.
Murphy doesn’t miss a beat. “Tara? Tie breaker?”
“Bonfire for sure,” she says.
“All right.” Murphy claps his hands and gestures toward the back of his house. “Wyatt, lead the way.”
I glance at Murphy as we walk to the back door. It was kind of him to side with my sister, though he clearly wanted the fire, seeing as he set it all up. The old Murphy wouldn’t have done that. Not because he wasn’t kind, but because he’d probably have been too high to clock the situation.
Everyone I know has either grown up into someone different or died, and it makes me feel out of place.
I feel the urge to put on that familiar mask to ward off that uncomfortable feeling.
As a teen, I was always performing. Always the center of attention and the life of the party.
I didn’t know how to sit back and be myself. Not like Geny did.
She never cared what people thought of her.
She did only what she was comfortable with, never afraid to be called lame or no fun.
I wasn’t like that. I lived off others’ perceptions of me.
It drove most of my decisions. And eventually my decisions to lie to the people I love.
I couldn’t handle what they’d think of me if they knew the truth.
The cold air feels good on my bare face.
I inhale deeply and hold the chilled breath in my lungs for a few extra seconds.
There’s a giant pile of logs and branches about thirty yards away from the house.
When we get closer, I see that there are tree stumps for chairs and a blanket folded on each one.
“This is nice, Murphy,” I say.
He smiles. “Thanks.”
He starts working on getting the fire going while we pick our seats.
They’re arranged in a semicircle so we can all see each other even if we’re not sitting right next to one another.
Wyatt takes the first seat on the end, and Geny takes the one next to him.
I sit next to my sister and Tara next to me, leaving the other end seat for Murphy.
All at once, the fire erupts into a tall blaze, burning my cheeks.
“Whoa!” Tara yells with a laugh. “Trying to light us all on fire, Murph?”
“Sorry! A little more gasoline than I thought. Everyone good?”
We answer in a chorus of yeses. Wyatt opens a beer and hands it to Geny.
She pulls back for a second as though she’s going to turn it down, but then she takes it from his hand.
Then he opens one for himself. Tara takes a drink out of the mini cooler she brought.
I stare into the flames and try to remember what it felt like to be a teenager with these same people. Before everything went wrong.
Murphy leads the conversation and I try to keep up, but all I can think about is how to get Tara alone to ask her about the picture I found at the police station.
I’m taken out of my thoughts by a bottle popping in front of my face.
I look over to see Murphy holding a beer out to me.
I take it with a grateful smile and take a sip.
“We should have music,” Geny announces. “Grace, play the music from the car.” She stands up and takes another bottle from the few that Wyatt brought outside.
“I have a speaker,” Murphy says. “I’ll grab it.”
I take my phone out and prepare to pull up the playlist, but stop when I see I have a text. Another unknown number, different from the last one.
Careful, careful. You know no good comes of you five being together.
My chest constricts and I feel a wave of dizziness.
I sit up straight and look around the dark vastness.
I can’t see past the light of the fire. Everything beyond is lost to the night.
A mystery. A danger. Is someone watching me right now?
I look around at my friends. No one has their phones out.
But that doesn’t mean anything. It could have still come from one of them.
One of them could have scheduled the text to send later, and each of them knew about these plans for half the day.
But what reason would any of them have for trying to scare me?
It doesn’t make sense. Murphy appears with a small Bluetooth speaker and turns it on.
I try to rein in my panic, hide it from my face.
I close the text and find the speaker on my phone to play the music.
When the first song starts, Geny sways in her seat.
She seems like she’s drunk, but we just got here.
“What’s it like being home?” Tara asks. “You know, besides horrible with your dad.”
“That part is horrible,” I say. “The rest is . . . I don’t know. Weird.”
She laughs. “I bet. I think it’s a bit weird for everyone.”
Murphy turns his eyes on Tara like she’s said something wrong, but I don’t mind it. It’s the truth.
“Yeah. It’s strange for everyone to think you’re dead and then look at you like a ghost.”
“Well, that’s what you wanted, right?”
I look over at her, not sure what she means.
Tara leans forward. “You knew everyone would think you were dead after disappearing in the water like you did. You stayed away and let everyone think it and then came back the way you did. That wasn’t an accident.”
“Tara,” Murphy says.
Geny has stopped dancing. She and Wyatt are watching too.
Tara laughs. “What? I’m not trying to be a bitch.”
“She doesn’t remember,” Geny says. “She woke up on a shore and had no memory of any of us.”
Tara looks over at her with a raised eyebrow. “Is that right?”
“Yes,” I say. “That’s right.”
She takes a breath and another drink from her can before setting it down. “Well, shit. That sucks.” Tara gets to her feet. “I’ll be right back. Gotta use the little girls’ room.”
She walks away and everyone is quiet. Her angry inquisition came out of nowhere. It’s bad timing, because she’s in the house and everyone else is out here. This is probably my only shot to talk to her alone. So I get up too.
“I’ll be right back.” I jog to the house, feeling everyone’s eyes on me as I leave.
Goosebumps cover my skin under my clothes.
I glance around the dark, the mysterious text still on my mind.
But there’s no sign of anyone and then I’m inside, feeling a little less like I’m being watched.
I don’t know the layout of the house, but after a second I hear a toilet flush. I wait in the kitchen.
Tara walks in and stops when she sees me.
“I really wasn’t trying to be a bitch,” she says.
“I know.”
“Sorry I came off strong. I don’t always notice I’m doing it until I’ve already done it.”
“It’s okay, Tara. I get it. I, um, there’s something else I wanted to ask you about.”
Her head tilts just slightly. “What’s up?”
I don’t want to beat around the bush, but coming straight out and just saying it feels wrong too.
“I found a picture,” I start. “An old one. It was from high school.”
She nods, waiting for me to continue.
“It was uh . . . from the closet. You know, the make-out closet.”
Her brows pull together but she still doesn’t say anything.
I sigh. “The picture was of you. But it was one of the pictures found on my dad’s work computer. I was just hoping you could tell me who took the picture.” I rush the words out quickly because I can see her starting to withdraw. When they’re out, she takes a step back like I’ve hit her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Which part?” I ask. We all know about the closet. We both know she’s been in it.
“Any of it. No one took a picture,” she says.
“Someone did. You were looking at the camera and smiling.”
Now she takes a step forward. “Watch your fucking mouth.”
“Excuse me?”
She takes another step and we’re face to face. I can smell the cider beer on her breath. “Watch. Your. Mouth. Grace. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It wasn’t my dad, was it? Who was it?”
“It was no one.”
“Why are you protecting them? It’s going to come out with the investigation that your picture was found. The cops will question you. Just tell me who took it.”
My head snaps back before I know what’s happened.
“Tara! What the fuck!” Geny shouts. She runs at her and shoves her back with two hands.
The pain hits and I hold a hand to my nose. My fingers come away with blood. Tara always could throw a punch.
“What the hell is going on?” Geny demands. She looks between the two of us.
There are tears in Tara’s widened eyes. She wipes at them and steps backward. “I have to go,” she says.
Tara bolts for the front door, leaving her cooler behind. The guys rush in through the back door, probably having heard the commotion.
“What’s going on?” Murphy asks, looking around for clues and landing on my bleeding nose.
“Tara is a damned psycho is what’s going on,” Geny says. “I walked in and she punched Grace in the face and then ran off.”
“What?” Wyatt says. “Are you okay?”
I pinch my nose. “I’m fine,” I say nasally. “I could use a paper towel or something though.”
Murphy springs into action and hands me a wad of napkins.