Chapter 14
Now
Casey?
My chest constricted. “Um. Yes. We…we were friends. A long time ago.”
More than friends. He’d loved me.
“Can you tell me about the last time you spoke with him?”
My brow furrowed. Something was off with the detective’s voice. It set my teeth on edge. It was too even. Too perfect. Like when you call the pharmacy and get an AI chatbot that keeps asking how it can help.
“Ms. Waters? Are you there?”
“Yeah. Sorry.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. I was not awake enough nor prepared for this conversation. “What was the question?”
“I asked if you could tell me about the last time you spoke with Casey Montgomery?”
“Um. Sure.” I took a breath. I have to be careful.
Get this right. “I guess…the last time I talked to Casey was maybe a decade ago? We were friends, but I haven’t heard from him since he ran away.
” I squeezed my hand into a fist until the nubs of my nails bit my palm.
“I don’t understand why you’re calling me. Did…did, um, something happen?”
There was a pause. A heavy breath.
The back of my neck prickled.
“We have reason to believe Casey Montgomery didn’t run away. We’ve been reaching out to everyone who knew him.”
“Wait.” I paused, absorbing his words. “What do you mean you think he didn’t run away?” My heart pounded, and I let my fear slip over my words. “You think something happened to him?”
“That’s right.”
I waited for the detective to say more. He didn’t.
“I…” Be careful. Watch what you say. “I guess I don’t understand. Why… Who told you to contact me?”
“Your name came up quite a lot. We talked to your aunt, a Ms. Ruth Robbins, and—”
Aunt Ruth? Ruth would never talk to a cop.
Me and my aunts had only spoken once since I’d ran away. I’d borrowed a stranger’s cell and called home and told Aunt Ruth I was okay. I told her I wasn’t missing, but that I had to disappear for a bit. She’d been quiet, then assured me she understood.
Her words had been an arrow in my heart, because I’d known she couldn’t understand. Not when she didn’t know the truth of what I’d done.
Even then, she wouldn’t have talked to the cops. Not about me. Not about family.
The sound of the apartment door opening and shutting cut into my thoughts. “Mill? You home, babe?”
Shit.
I stepped into the hallway and held up a finger. Mouthed, one sec.
Carla looked me over and wrinkled her nose. “What in the world?”
I peered down at my clothes. Oh. I’d never made it to the shower and looked like someone who’d spent the night sleeping next to a toilet after nearly twelve hours of driving. It’s certainly how I felt.
I ignored the question on my roommate’s face and disappeared back into my bedroom.
On the phone, the cop was still talking “…and so if you remember—”
“I’m sorry, I missed that,” I interrupted, keeping my voice down. “What did you say?”
He sighed a wet, heavy breath, followed by another beat of silence before speaking in his perfect voice, “No problem, ma’am. I was saying, why don’t you give me a call back if you remember anything? I’d like to go over all the details from that night.”
That night?
It was a strange way to put it. Unless someone told him about Casey and me at the bonfire. No. No, that was absurd. No one remembered details from a random high school party a decade ago.
“Of course,” I lied. Everything about this call set me on edge. “Whatever you need.”
The call ended and for a long moment, I stared at the phone, my senses shot.
I raked a hand over my face and blew out a sour breath. Like it or not, I knew what I needed to do. Ruth hadn’t talked to the police, but perhaps she knew why a cop would lie and say she had.
Aunt Ruth never cared for change. There wasn’t a doubt in my head that she still wore the same jeans, got the same haircut, smoked the same brand of cigarettes that she had for as long as I could remember.
I had to believe that her cell number was the same one I’d memorized in high school, when she’d finally broken down and purchased a cheap flip phone that she insisted was only for emergencies, girls!
Even though I felt like a wrung-out washcloth, I couldn’t help the half smile that curled over my lips as my thumbs hovered over the keypad. Well, Aunt Ruth, I think this qualifies as an emergency…
I opened a new message.
It’s Milly. Puddle Creek detective called me. What’s going on?
Short and sweet. I decided. Blunt like Ruth.
Send.
My cell rang almost immediately.
“Aunt Ruth!” The name pushed out of me like a prayer.
“What’s this about a cop calling you?” Ruth got straight to the point, a decade of silence erased in an instant. “Are you okay?”
“Hey. Yeah. I’m fine.” There was no hiding the lie. Even without the call from the cop, I hadn’t been fine for quite a while.
A cabinet door banged closed in the apartment’s kitchen, reminding me I wasn’t alone.
I lowered my voice. “This cop—” I considered how much to tell her. “He’s a detective from Puddle Creek. He said he spoke with you, and…” My voice came out scared. Nervous. Like the girl I’d been ten years ago.
“Hold on a damn minute.” Ruth’s words were always razor sharp but rarely unkind. “You’re saying a Puddle Creek cop called you? When?”
“Just now,” I said. “He wasn’t, I don’t know… It was weird. He wanted to ask some questions. Said he talked to you and made it sound like you gave him my number…” All the emotions I’d pushed down came flooding back, and I squeezed my eyes shut as I crumpled my hand in the bedsheets.
“He said he talked to me? That I gave him your number? Shit… You know I don’t talk to cops, and I don’t even have your number, child.” Ruth sucked in a deep breath, and when she spoke, I could tell she was working hard to sound gentle. “Did you tell him anything?”
“No, Aunt Ruth, nothing. I got off the phone with him as quickly as I could. The whole thing just… It freaked me out.”
“I bet it did.” Ruth paused, as if collecting her words. “Listen to me, Milly. I don’t know what’s going on, but no cop talked to me or Aunt Hattie. And as far as I know, there ain’t no investigation, new or otherwise.”
Her screen door squeaked open then slammed shut. I pictured her, phone pressed to her ear, walking laps around the sagging front porch. Maybe a cigarette in her other hand, or maybe a cold drink.
“It was pretty well accepted that Shane Fortenberry ran out on his family. Lots of bad stuff came out after he disappeared. Became crystal clear what kind of man he was.” She blew out a steady stream of air.
Cigarette then. Menthol filled my nose like the ache from a phantom limb. “Gossip got so bad his wife left town.”
Frances had said the same thing.
My mind flashed to the photos of Blake. To the phone call at the diner. To the body in Moss Grove. I pressed my mouth closed, teeth clenched to keep anything from spilling out.
Ruth lowered her voice. “No one knows you ran away. Everyone who knew you could tell how miserable you were. You’d talked nonstop about getting away, so when we told everyone you went off on your own, no one batted an eye about it.
And Frances’s boarding school was already in the works.
No reason for anyone to suspect a thing.
” Another drag from her cigarette, a sharp exhale.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t like it. You got the number he called you from?”
Did I? It should’ve been the first thing I checked, but my thoughts felt sluggish. I pulled up the call log.
The number was unfamiliar, but the area code was correct.
I opened my mouth to tell Ruth, but paused. If I gave it to her, she’d go digging. And as helpful as she was, she didn’t have all the information. The call hadn’t been about Shane.
The caller hadn’t even mentioned my old teacher. He only asked about Casey.
I again squeezed my eyes shut. I should’ve thought this through before calling her.
“No,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t sense the lie. “It’s blocked.”
Silence filled the line. Then, “Milly. I don’t know who called you, but I don’t think it was a cop.”
I licked my chapped lips and sat with my aunt’s words, because part of me had feared the same thing.
“Milly? You there?”
“Yes ma’am. Sorry. I just…” The call played in my mind. I’d talked to a lot of cops as a waitress. They had a certain way of speaking, a certain authority and manner, and it wasn’t in the too-perfect cadence of whoever had been on the other end of my call. “I think you’re right.”
“Do you have any idea who it could be? Think hard. Anyone who’d know…anything?”
“No.” I crossed my fingers, hoping, yet again, that she couldn’t sense the lie. And that if she could that she’d let it go. Because if it wasn’t a cop, there was only one person it could be. But he doesn’t know about Casey.
Nobody knows about Casey.
Except someone clearly did.
“Milly?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I got an idea,” Ruth said. “How about you let me take a look at interpreting your fate? Just hear me out. I know you don’t like being read, but this situation’s concerning. You call out of the blue after ten years and, frankly, you sound like shit. Your leaves might—”
“No,” I interrupted curtly. “Absolutely not. I know you want to help, but you can’t read me.”
I’d revoked her access to my fortune when I left Puddle Creek. It was the first time I’d had secrets I couldn’t risk having spelled out in a teacup.
Ruth must’ve known, but to her credit, after her initial surprise she hadn’t pressed. The rules were the closest thing she had to a religion, and she took them seriously.
Aunt Ruth sighed. “Have it your way.” She mumbled, “Hardhead. Always making things ten times worse on yourself.” Looking at my life through her eyes, she wasn’t wrong. “Oh. Shit. My appointment’s here.”
She lowered the phone to greet her client. “How you doing, Mabel?” Then back to me, “I gotta go, but listen. Call me if it happens again, and say nothing to anyone, you understand? I’m going to see what I can find out.” There was the sound of her spitting from the side of the porch. “And, Milly?”
“Ma’am?”
“This is going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. And…and I’m glad…well… It’s so good to hear from you. I’m saving your number. We’ll talk real soon.”
“Yes ma’am,” I said, again smiling into the phone despite the anxiety pumping through my system. “Bye, Aunt Ruth.”
I ended the call and stared blankly at the wall. Ruth was right. I’d known in my gut that whoever called me wasn’t a cop.
Okay. Then who?
But I knew. There was only one person who it could be. The same person who’d called the diner. Blake Willis.
How did he get my number?
Why did he lie about being a cop? About Aunt Ruth? He had to know I’d find out the truth. Unless he wasn’t worried about me finding out and was only calling to fuck with me.
But the biggest question was how he knew about Casey.
I’d lied to Ruth when I told her the number was blocked. It wasn’t.
Almost like he hoped I’d contact him back.
He was going to get his wish, but not until I did a quick search. I opened the call log and copied the number then pasted it into the search engine.
Nothing.
No list of names belonging to the number. Not even a warning saying the number was associated with spam callers. A burner phone, then.
I clutched my cell, typing in a new message.
Who is this?
Immediately, dots bounced across the screen.
Officer Jackson.
No. You’re not. Tell me your name. Tell me what you want.
More dots. Then:
I want you to tell the truth. Every sordid detail.
I stared at the screen. This person was sick. I wanted to scream. To curse. But Carla was in the other room and the apartment walls were thin.
Blake? Are you Blake? Why are you doing this?
He replied.
No. Not Blake. You know who I am.
But I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Tell me why you’re doing this.
This time, there was no delay.
You first. Where is Casey?
I clamped a hand over my mouth and swallowed a sob. Seeing those words—Where is Casey?—so plainly, so out in the open, it was a knife at my throat.
I didn’t answer. There was nothing I could say. Soon enough the dots appeared again.
Okay. I’ll tell you my name.
My breathing hitched as my stomach knotted, almost doubling me over.
This is…
I hunched forward, holding the screen inches from my face.
Shane.
A breath whooshed out of me, and the tears I’d been holding back slipped down my cheeks. I blocked the number and threw my phone across the room.