58. Sydney
fifty-eight
sydney
Dad and Carter follow us in, but not all the way. They both take seats in the lobby while Mr. Asher and I are escorted through the bullpen—a collection of desks, police officers swarming around the place—and into a small room. There’s a camera in the top corner. A desk. Spots for four people to sit, if necessary.
I take a seat, and Mr. Asher takes the one beside me.
A few minutes later, a detective enters.
“Thank you for coming in, Ms. Windsor,” he says. “I’m Detective Lassiter. You’ve had an exciting few months, haven’t you?”
I glance at my lawyer.
Feels weird to have a lawyer at all…
“Exciting?” Mr. Asher frowns. “Poor choice of words, don’t you think, Detective?”
Lassiter frowns. “Mom goes missing, you have to change schools, students can’t seem to keep your name out of their mouths, now your apartment gets broken into and your friend hurt. Maybe not the good kind of exciting, sure.”
There’s a lump in my throat that won’t go away.
“Now, Sydney. Can you take me back to the day your mom went missing?” He opens a file. “Your report is a little scarce.”
I lick my lips. “Because I don’t really know much, sir.”
Mr. Asher inclines his chin. I take that to mean, you can keep talking .
“I live in Framingham. I was staying here over the summer. Mom was back home in EC, although she stopped returning my messages. I’ll be honest, that’s not entirely unusual. But after a week, I got concerned and went home to check on her. Her home seemed abandoned, which is when I went to you.”
The detective is eyeing me like I personally drove my mother off the side of the planet.
“But she has a history of leaving?”
“Yes.” It comes out so faint, I have to repeat myself. “Yes, she has a history of going away and coming back.”
“And this couldn’t have been one of those times?”
“She wouldn’t…” I glance at my lawyer. “I don’t think she’d do that to me. Not for this long.”
But really, anything is possible.
“It’s different,” I say instead. “She always comes back, and this time, she didn’t. She still hasn’t.”
Detective Lassiter leans back in his chair. “What would cause her to leave?”
“Money.” I suck my lower lip between my teeth, releasing it when he doesn’t seem to take that answer as enough. “I think she had a boyfriend or something. She’d go for a day or two when I was a kid, then two or three days.”
“How old were you when this started?”
"Six?”
He sighs and closes the file. “So how long did you wait to actually report her missing, Sydney?”
I don’t answer.
I have a lot of excuses built up, but none of them seem sufficient.
She always came back.
“Mom?” I drop my bag and look around the trailer. It’s been an eon since I’ve been here—at least, that’s what it feels like. Old memories threaten to press in, which in and of itself is new.
That only happens when you’ve been gone a while. When it isn’t home anymore. Otherwise, memories don’t crowd to the forefront of your mind. You just exist in the space.
That thought gives me a chill, but what’s worse is the silence.
It’s empty.
I flick the light switch, but nothing happens. There’s no noise, not even the buzz of the fridge. Which means the electric bill didn’t get paid.
I double-check the calendar she keeps taped to the fridge, making sure she’s not at work. There’s nothing written for today. Nothing for this week either.
Her bedroom, down the hall, is pristine. The bed is made, there’s nothing in the hamper.
“Mom,” I say when her voicemail clicks over. “Where are you? I’m seriously worried.”
I hang up and throw my phone. She’d been so good, too. Drug-free, at least as far as I could tell. She hadn’t disappeared in a long, long time.
Part of me wants to run back to Framingham. Maybe call up Carter Masters and get lost with him for a time.
But another part of me can’t move without knowing what happened to her. The dread is starting to wind through me, icy-cold tendrils that I can’t shake.
I sit on the couch and curl my legs up to my chest, and I wait.
I wait.
I wait.
And when I can wait any longer, I make two phone calls: one to the police to report her missing, and the second to my father.
Finally asking for help.
“I thought she’d come back,” I repeat.
“You were probably furious,” he says in a low voice, leaning forward. “Were you mad at her, too? Underneath all that worry, were you mad that she decided to pull the same stunt? Disappear when you need her? And before that, the bracelet she sold out from under you?”
I jerk. “I was upset that I couldn’t find her, Detective…”
He taps his fingers on the table. “So what did you do when she came back without the money? When she walked in the door three, four, five days after walking out, and said, ‘Sorry, Sydney, I lost it all. I blew it on drugs.’”
“She didn’t?—”
“Were you mad enough to kill her?”
“Don’t answer that, Sydney,” Mr. Asher snaps. “Detective. What is going on?”
He slides another folder out from under the first. I hadn’t noticed it, or realized, but now he opens it and retrieves two photos. He shoves them toward me.
My chest seizes up.
The first is of her lying in the snow at an odd angle. There’s blood around her head.
The second is a close-up of her face… her skin has a grayish pallor, her eyes are closed. She’s lying on metal, her hair brushed back. Not the way she’d ever wear it.
She’s dead.
There’s absolutely no fucking question that she’s dead. I don’t think the horror could echo inside me any deeper. I grip the edge of the table and squeeze my eyes shut. If there was a way I could go back thirty seconds and erase those images from my mind, I would.
But when I open them, the photos are still in front of me. My stomach rolls, and saliva fills my mouth. I’m going to throw up.
In the back of my head, maybe I knew she wasn’t coming back. But seeing her like that…
Mr. Asher moves suddenly, flipping the photos to face the table.
This detective—he thinks I did it? Is that why he showed those awful pictures to me?
“Where is this?” Mr. Asher asks. “And when?”
“She was found here. In Framingham, on the St. James side.” His gaze sears into me. “Yesterday.”
My chest hurts. But now I can’t take in a deep breath, or any breath at all. I sit back and cover my face. Not that it matters. All I can see is her face behind my eyelids, permanently burned there. I think I’ll be seeing her like this in my nightmares.
“We’re leaving.” Mr. Asher helps me up, his grip on my elbow firm and stabilizing.
I drop my hands and focus on my feet. Everything is blurry, but he navigates us through the door, past the bullpen, and into the lobby with little trouble. My breath is coming fast and shallow, but he shakes his head at my dad and Carter. He doesn’t let me stop for them.
Not until we’re outside and he bodily puts me into the backseat of Dad’s truck.
Carter slides in behind me.
I let out a sob, finally , and fall into his embrace.