Chapter 2
Loxahatchee had changed.
When I was growing up, it had been a rural landscape forty minutes west of Palm Beach.
It was swampy and secluded and distinctly blue collar.
The kind of place where you could still build a brand-new house for cheap and keep an RV in your yard without endless bitching and moaning from an HOA.
People had moved there for the quiet, the space.
But now, nearly a decade since I’d last visited, it looked completely different.
Homes I’d used as markers for directions were sold and painted.
Lots full of trees and shrubs had been cleared for construction, and average homes were going for well over a million dollars.
A hotly contested gated community had been built on the outskirts of town, comprising large, tasteless houses for people who wanted brand-new everything but still wanted to feel as though they’d escaped the trappings of city life.
It had made the area expensive, sending the older, more inflexible rednecks running for the neighboring town of Okeechobee.
Dirt roads were paved. Restaurants had appeared.
They even had Uber Eats now. My mother would have loved it if she’d stuck around long enough to experience it.
I didn’t have a problem with the changes. The locals I’d grown up with had been vicious enough to us that I hoped they’d been outnumbered and priced out. I hadn’t been back since I left for college in New Hampshire seven years ago.
My wrists locked as I gripped the steering wheel. It had gotten dark on the ride home from the airport, and despite all of its updates, Loxahatchee had apparently still refused to get streetlights on most of the roads, making the drive more treacherous than it needed to be.
Deep down, I knew I had to have some good associations with this place.
There had been family Christmases, picnics, birthday parties.
I had the pictures and memorabilia to prove it.
But they’d been superseded the moment Alex was killed.
The painful years thereafter stuck out far more than any family gathering before.
As I got closer to home, those memories flooded back.
The fruit stand where Mrs. Strause had called me a whore, an epithet spat at me over a bunch of overpriced mini-bananas.
My middle school, where my mother had been PTA president all of my childhood and unceremoniously stripped of the title a few weeks after Will’s arrest.
The street the Hopelys lived on.
It was impossible to not flinch as I passed it. I hated that house. For a lot of reasons.
As far as I knew, the mother, Deborah Hopely still lived there, though I couldn’t confirm this without asking someone, and I’d studiously avoided doing so.
The house sat directly behind our own, with a wooded acreage and small path separating the two.
There had been a time, before Alex was killed, that I had spent every waking minute at their house.
Alex’s younger sisters, Cassandra and Victoria, had been my best childhood friends, and Cassandra and I had ended up in the same pre-K class.
Their oldest sister, Samantha, was Hazel’s built-in babysitter.
So by the time Will and Alex started dating during their freshman year of high school, our families were already very used to having at least one member of the opposite group at their place.
Turning onto our street, I noticed it was unusually packed, and I had to squeeze past cars that were lined up on both sides of the dirt road the entire way down to the canal.
Loxahatchee was littered with canals. They lined every major road.
When I’d lived here, they’d seemed completely normal.
But now, they seemed like a death trap. A giant body of water waiting to swallow every unsuspecting person whole.
Getting out of my car, I gasped at the sight of my childhood home.
The paint, once a stark army green, was sun bleached and fading.
The wooden rails on the front porch were broken, and in some places missing completely.
The yard also looked like shit. Mom and Dad used to take pride in lawn care, mowing and gardening together, diligently picking up the scraps of debris after every hurricane.
The house’s decline had started after everything happened, but this was something else.
I sighed and retrieved my luggage from the trunk. I’d packed light, thinking we would soon find Hazel holed up somewhere close by and that I wouldn’t have to stay in this godforsaken place for long. I didn’t care if it was naive.
A cop, shuffling around my porch, helped me carry my bags up the stairs.
“Thanks,” I said begrudgingly.
He smiled. “No problem, ma’am.” He must not have recognized me yet.
I stopped again when I got to the front door, contemplating my options. Knocking felt weird. I’d lived here once, slammed this very door countless times. But walking straight in also felt wrong after having not been back for so long.
I yanked the door open, and for a second, I took in the scene in front of me.
Bodies crowded the kitchen, everyone packed so closely together that people had to put their hands on one another to pass.
Older neighbors I vaguely recognized, a bunch of teenagers—presumably Hazel’s friends—and their mothers, people in uniform.
There was food laid out on the island: sandwich platters, cheese and crackers, chips and dip.
I was reminded of the massive Christmas parties we’d once had here.
A house full of people for the right reasons. It had been a place of love back then.
I could hear snippets of the conversations bubbling around the room. All of the plans that were being hatched in this crucial time. Search parties. Last seen. Jurisdiction.
“Rosie?”
The softness of Tommy’s voice preceded him as he rounded the corner from the sitting room. My name caught some people’s attention. Several pairs of eyes darted to me as Tommy walked over.
“Hey, Tommy,” I said as his arms wrapped around me, his head burrowing into my shoulder. He let out a strangled noise, his chest shaking as I returned the hug.
He smelled like home, albeit a distant one. I always forgot, until I saw them again, that each of my siblings had a distinct scent that I could probably pick out of a lineup. Even in prison, Will still smelled like Will.
When Tommy finally pulled away, his pupils were bloodshot, with that rash he’d had since he was a kid developing on his undereye.
His hair was rumpled and uncombed, and he was clearly distressed, but I felt relief in reuniting.
I hadn’t seen him in four months. I’d flown into Miami to spend Thanksgiving Day with Will inside, and I’d had lunch with Hazel, Tommy, and his family the day after.
Tommy and I texted here and there, with a phone call thrown in every once in a while, but there was something so different about seeing each other in person.
The dark eyes. The slick black hair. He was such a Dearling.
But it was hard for me to focus on just my brother. I could feel eyes on us, watching Tommy’s tears, my lack of them.
“We have to find her,” Tommy said, sounding panicked.
“Though she’s got to be fine, right? And then you’ll be back on your way.
” He didn’t sound very convincing. Tommy knew how difficult it was for me to be here.
He’d have felt the same way if it hadn’t been for his wife’s ties to the area.
Suzannah was the only reason he’d stuck near Loxahatchee.
“Mmm,” I said, looking around him to survey the scene.
It was eerie to be back. I had spent so many years talking about and reliving the past for the book, but actually being here in person felt poignant and painful.
Every scratch in the floorboard made me think of someone’s hands around Alex’s throat.
“So, what’s the latest? Have you found anything?” I asked.
“Like I said on the phone, they’re thinking she went missing yesterday afternoon,” Tommy replied, still pale.
“Her school confirmed she left at the normal time at the end of the day, but when Dad got home for dinner, she wasn’t here.
Her bike was parked in the driveway, with her phone and backpack still in the basket, but no sign of her.
The police have been searching for evidence and only just let us back in the house this afternoon.
We spent all the time in between driving around looking for her. ”
“And you didn’t find anything?” I crossed my arms impatiently. “You checked everywhere?”
“Everywhere we can think of. The high school. The parks. Her friends’ houses.
The McCullough Farm. We checked empty lots.
The whole thing. We were going to go out again tonight, but the cops told us to stay put.
Said we could do a proper search with volunteers in a couple of days.
They’re focusing on interviewing people now.
That’s why everyone’s here. Suzannah called everyone Hazel knew. ”
Tommy gestured behind him. I could see a teary-looking Suzannah in the corner talking to an officer.
My nephew Felix was on her hip, a chubby toddler trying to grab at his mother’s long blonde hair.
Suzannah spotted us and held up a hand to me as a half-hearted greeting.
Suzannah’s was a comforting presence because she hadn’t been around back then.
She wasn’t a reminder. Behind her, their daughter Daisy was passed out on the stained tan couch I had also napped on as a child.
Her dark hair was splayed out around her calm sleeping face.
She looked nearly identical to Hazel at that age.
The sight was jarring. No matter how much time passed, I would always see Hazel that way.
A sweet four-year-old clinging to Tommy’s and Will’s legs.