Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Istood in the doorway of Mia's bedroom. "Mia?"
No answer.
The soft glow of her bedside lamp cast a warm circle of light. She lay curled on her side, her back to me, the sage comforter pulled up to her shoulders. Her chocolate-brown hair fanned out across the pillow.
It was Saturday evening. Mia had been in bed for hours. She hadn't eaten, had barely spoken. I'd checked on her several times throughout the day, but she barely acknowledged me, exhausted from the shock and grief of that morning's tragedy.
Our dog pressed into my side, panting as I petted his black-furred head absently.
Apollo was our three-year-old German Shepherd, a lovable 90-pound beast who greeted strangers with delighted enthusiasm but relentlessly protected us from birds, squirrels, and the mailman with the ferocity of a tiger.
His guard dog abilities had been grossly oversold.
I stepped inside Mia's room with Apollo following at my heels. The floorboards creaked beneath my weight as I lowered myself onto the edge of her bed and gently brushed a strand of hair from her face.
Her skin felt cool to the touch. Her expression was slack, as if she were asleep, but I knew better. The tension in her jaw and the slight furrow between her brow were signs of the turmoil beneath the facade. She was awake.
"Mia?"
She didn't acknowledge me. She just lay there, curled on her side, facing the wall.
"I'm so sorry about Leah, sweetheart. I know how much she meant to you."
The heavy silence stretched between us. Just when I thought she might not respond at all, her voice emerged, muffled and distant. "I don't want to talk about it."
"Honey, I know you're hurting. This is awful. Losing Leah is devastating."
Nothing. Not even a flicker.
"I'm here if you need me. For anything."
I reached out, my hand hovering over her shoulder, then pulled back. I was useless, impotent, unable to offer comfort or ease her grief, when that's all I wanted to do for her.
I glanced around the room, at the dirty clothes spilling out of the hamper, piles of books and homework on the desk, the collection of smooth stones and beach glass lining her windowsill: fossilized Petoskey stones—Michigan's state stone—the banded red-and-white Agates, reddish-orange Jasper, smoky quartz pebbles, and the deep, dusky blue of Leland Blue slag glass.
A gallery of photographs she'd taken over the past year hung on the wall above her desk: black and white shots of Lake Michigan at dawn, a close-up of weathered driftwood, and the St. Joseph lighthouse at Tiscornia Beach silhouetted against storm clouds.
And my favorite, a candid photo of Leah laughing on the beach, her black chin-length hair whipping across her round cheeks, pure joy captured in that single fixed moment in time.
Mia had a gifted eye for composition, for finding beauty in unexpected places. She loved her Nikon camera, the yellow strap festooned with pins from our National Park visits to Zion, Arches, Isle Royale, and Yosemite a constant around her neck or slung over her shoulder.
It had been a gift from Marcus for her twelfth birthday, a week before he died. An accountant by trade, he'd loved nature, hiking, and especially photography, and had passed on his passion to our daughter.
I frowned, confused, as I scanned the room again. The camera wasn't on her desk, or the nightstand, or on the shelf next to her dresser, where it usually was. She'd had it last night for the photo shoot, but it wasn't next to her green overnight bag or dumped on the floor in her closet, either.
"Where's your camera?" I asked.
She stiffened but didn't respond.
"Honey, your camera. Where is it?"
A long silence. Then, muffled against the pillow, she said, "I don't know."
"What do you mean?"
"It's gone," she said flatly.
"Gone? What do you mean, gone?"
"Someone took it."
"Took it? When? From Rowan's house?"
"I don't know. Last night it was in my camera case by my overnight bag. When I woke up this morning, it wasn't there anymore."
"Do you think someone might have borrowed it? Maybe one of the other girls wanted to look at the photos?"
"Maybe." But she didn't sound convinced.
"Could it have gotten left at the beach when you were taking pictures?"
"No. We never went down to the beach. We were only at top of the bluff. I put it back in the case last night, okay? I know I did."
"We'll find it, honey. I'm sure it just got mixed up with someone else's things. One of the girls probably picked it up by mistake."
She said nothing.
A buzzing sound vibrated from beneath the covers. Mia propped herself up on her elbow, tugged her phone out, and stared at it grimly. She'd changed into long-sleeved plaid pajamas, hiding the scratches on her arms, and she'd scrubbed the dirt from beneath her fingernails, too.
Her thumb flicked over the screen. Her frown deepened. She tilted the phone away from me to keep me from seeing, but I glimpsed something pink on the screen and a blurred image of something I couldn't make out. I couldn't make out the caption above the image, either. "What's that?"
"It's nothing."
I thought of Camille's daughter, Zara, how she'd helped Mia set up encrypted messaging last year, teaching her about privacy settings with the alacrity of someone who actually understood code. Zara was perpetually on her laptop or spouting some new tech jargon she’d learned.
"Are people texting about what happened? "
"It's just something on Instagram. Some girl drama." Mia shoved the phone under her pillow.
I wanted to press her further, but her walls were up. Pushing now would only make her retreat further. She was a stubborn, moody teenager on her best days. I'd get nothing from her now.
I sighed. "You can tell me anything, you know. I'm here to listen."
She didn't respond. Her arm tightened around her gray stuffed sloth, Flash Slothmore, named after the Zootopia character she'd loved at four years old. She still slept with it every night, though she'd die before admitting that to anyone. Only Leah had known.
I sat with her for a while longer, listening to the sound of her breathing. The shadows in the room grew longer and darker as the thick silence of the house settled deep into my bones. Outside, the distant crash of waves against the bluffs echoed in a relentless rhythm.
"Do you need anything, honey? Water? Something to eat?"
"I just want to sleep."
I leaned down and kissed the top of her head. "I love you, sweetheart. So much."
She didn't answer, though she leaned slightly into the kiss before pulling away again.
I stood and made my way to the door, Apollo trailing behind me, his nails clicking on the worn hardwood, before pausing in the doorway, looking back at her still form beneath the covers.
Above Mia's bed hung the painting that Leah had made for her for Christmas: a vibrant watercolor of the pier at Tiscornia Beach, the sunset sky awash in streaks of violet, rose, and crimson, contrasting with the red-and-white lighthouse in the distance.
In the foreground, clusters of blue wild lupine and purple beach peas bloomed among golden dune grasses.
Leah had loved art as much as Mia loved photography.
Leah had been sweet-natured and smart, a straight-A student as well as a gifted artist. Though she'd been timid and often self-conscious about her full-bodied figure, she had also been incredibly empathetic, observant, and thoughtful.
Her goofy sense of humor only emerged around people she trusted, like Mia.
They would laugh together for hours about the silliest nonsense.
My chest tightened. That talented, vibrant girl was gone forever.
Another photo drew my attention, this one taped to the mirror above Mia’s desk.
The group of six girls—Leah, Mia, Alexis, Chloe, Peyton, and Zara—their arms slung around each other's sun-kissed shoulders as they lounged on Rowan's speedboat, grinning widely with the blue expanse of Lake Michigan glittering behind them.
They looked so young, so innocent, so happy. Beautiful and perfect.
What had gone wrong?