Chapter 34
Now
The darkness outside had softened with the beginnings of morning by the time we cobbled together our plan. The aunts and Bunny headed to their beds to grab a few hours of sleep, while my sister took a shower.
There’d be no rest for me. Not until everyone was down for the night and I could sneak out and take care of Casey.
In the meantime, I waited in my old bedroom.
It surprised me how unchanged it was. It was a time capsule.
The bunk beds—a twin over full—were still pushed against the far wall.
I ran my fingers over their wood, once stained a neutral color now faded to an orangey-brown.
Remnants of stickers we’d stuck to the boards a lifetime ago remained, as did the letter M I’d carved near the ladder. The bedding was new.
Our old chest of drawers sat next to the closet.
However, the vanity, which was cream with lavender glass knobs, was a new addition, sitting in the spot that had once belonged to a dresser.
It was dainty and feminine and out of place.
When had it been added? Perhaps a Christmas gift for my sister, while I was spending the holiday sad and alone.
Stop. I chastised myself. I was almost twenty-eight years old, too old for petty feelings toward Frances over something like childhood furniture.
I sat down on the vanity’s delicate stool. This felt a little like snooping, which was silly. Frances hadn’t been back here, to this house, to this room, in years. If there was anything she didn’t want prying eyes to see, she’d have taken it with her when she moved out.
Honestly, it was surprising the aunts had left the room intact.
Certainly, they could’ve used the space, yet the bedroom was a shrine to our girlhood.
My One Direction poster still hung on the wall next to Frances’s picture of Einstein sticking out his tongue.
Even the sketch Aunt Hattie had made of two little girls—a blond and a brunette—playing beneath a willow tree with near-black leaves was still taped to our closet door, the corners of the drawing beginning to curl, the colors faded.
Still. I listened for my sister. The sound of the water told me I had a few minutes.
God, I need a shower too. The spray of scalding-hot water on my skin would feel amazing, but there was no point in getting clean. Not yet.
I looked at the photographs taped to the vanity’s mirror. Frances smiling in a red cap and gown, laughing with classmates. Frances with a group of girls wearing sweats and cat ears, their noses painted black. Frances next to a boy with brooding eyes and a serious mouth.
The shiny blond girl with happy eyes in these pictures was so different from the quiet girl I’d spent my youth protecting and the broken woman who’d showed up on my doorstep yesterday.
In another photo, Frances wore an oversize sweater and ratty ponytail, grinning with her arm around a short girl with shiny dark hair and a wide, toothy smile.
In the next photo, Frances held one side of a collegiate mathlete trophy, and that same girl held the other. I plucked it from the mirror and looked closer, then frowning, I set it aside and picked up a stack of photos and cards and folded pieces of notebook paper.
I flipped through the stack. Blurry pictures of my sister at a dance. Birthday cards from friends. Notes with doodles and inside jokes.
These were the kinds of experiences I’d never really had. They’d always seemed just out of reach, even when I was in high school.
The only best friend I’d ever had besides my sister was Casey.
Thinking of him while sitting in this house almost undid me.
In middle school, Casey and I had often done homework in this very room, with Ruth yelling from the living room for us to keep the door open, even though at thirteen, we’d had zero interest in each other in that way.
Not yet. I’d been the shortest girl in our grade, but Casey had been the shortest person.
It hadn’t yet occurred to me that he’d grow, sprouting into someone cute.
That even if he hadn’t, there were more important things for a boyfriend to be. He was simply Casey. My friend.
And if he hadn’t been, he’d still be alive.
I pushed the thought away. I’d be unable to do what I had to do if I allowed my mind to linger here. Ghosts weren’t real, but memories could be just as haunting.
I opened a folded newspaper clipping. There in black and white was a photo of the girl with shiny dark hair.
The candlelight vigil for Matilda Cook will be held Friday, April 2 at 6:00 p.m. on Cater Lawn. At 6:30, attendees will light their candles, followed by a prayer from Pastor Eric Moore of University Christian Church.
It clicked. That’s where I’d seen this girl—this Matilda Cook—before. Matilda was Frances’s college roommate, until she’d gone missing from a bar near campus.
Frances told me it was right after that when she met Burt.
Any lingering envy of my sister I had been harboring was replaced by guilt. I should’ve tried harder to reach out to her. If I’d been there when she needed me, Burt wouldn’t have stood a chance.
While I’d struggled to keep my own life together, my sister had bounced from tragedy to tragedy until she was scooped up by someone with dimples, the right last name, and a hunger for hurt.
I set the newspaper clipping aside and pulled open one of the vanity’s two small drawers. Inside were more papers, some trinkets, and a silver ring with a cross etched onto the band. I scooped it up.
No.
No, this couldn’t be the same one.
But it was. It fit perfectly on my index finger. Casey’s ring. The one I’d buried with him.
He’d given it to me when I was hurting, but guilt and shame had kept me from keeping it. Right? Suddenly, I wasn’t sure.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember, but the moments after discovering Casey was dead were distorted, like photographs left in the sun or rain. Think, Milly. I’d pulled the ring from my own finger and slid it back onto his. Hadn’t I?
But if it’s here, I must be remembering wrong. My breathing hitched.
“Whatcha doin?” Frances’s voice came from behind me. I startled and caught her eye in the mirror. She was wrapped in one of Hattie-May’s old-lady floral housecoats, with her hair twisted into a towel.
When had the shower turned off?
“You scared me,” I said.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to.” Frances’s gaze traveled from the open drawer to the ring in my hand, her smile tightening in a way no one but me would’ve noticed. She nudged the drawer closed nonchalantly and nodded to the ring. “What’s that?”
“I found it in your vanity.” Through the mirror, I looked into my sister’s questioning face. “Where’d you get it?”
Her brows steepled, and I turned on the stool to face her.
“I don’t know. Let me see.” She held out her hand.
I considered not giving it to her, but that was ridiculous. There was an explanation here that would make sense. Besides, Casey’s ring had sat in this vanity for a decade without me ever knowing. I dropped it into her palm.
She examined the silver piece of jewelry. “Oh. The cross ring. I forgot about this. I found it.”
“Where?”
She shrugged and held it back to me. “You know, I don’t remember. Maybe outside somewhere?” Her eyes rolled upward, as if she were thinking. “Why do you ask?”
I exhaled. That made sense, didn’t it? It could’ve come off when I was moving him. And anyway, why was my heart pounding? What had I expected her to say? That she’d pulled it from Casey’s hand? That was idiotic.
In my mind, there’s an image. A moment. A flash of silver on my finger as I gripped Casey’s ankles.
But that can’t be right. Any thoughts from that time are all jumbled, filled with blank spots and pain and ten years of trying so desperately to forget.
It’s not only possible, but likely, the moment I imagined is more dream than memory.
Still. I couldn’t shake the image of Casey’s helmet in that desk drawer in Frances’s home. And now here was the ring.
She watched me and I realized I hadn’t answered the question. Why did I ask? “I don’t know.” I shrugged as if I weren’t mentally spiraling. “It reminded me of something. From high school. It’s pretty.”
Why did I lie?
Frances’s smile eased. “Yeah. I guess so. Here.” She tossed the ring to me, and it bounced against my hands, juggling through the air before I caught it.
“Keep it.” She picked up the photo I’d set aside, the one I’d plucked from the vanity mirror of her and her old roommate.
Her expression grew wistful. “I haven’t thought about Matilda in ages.
Breaks my heart too much. You know, she introduced me to Burt? ”
“I thought you said you met him after she disappeared?”
“No.” She frowned and shook her head. “We didn’t get close until after. But Matilda introduced us. She had a huge crush on him. I should’ve let her have him. Then I wouldn’t be in this mess. And maybe she would’ve been on a date with Burt instead of at that seedy bar the night she disappeared.”
I frowned.
She set the photo down. “Shower’s all yours.”
“Thanks. But I have something to do first.”
Frances’s eyes widened. “You can’t be serious. Tonight?”
I nodded. “The aunts can’t know. And it has to be taken care of, it takes away any leverage Burt might have if my plan works and he’s caught.”
“Do you, uh, do you want me to help you?”
I wanted to say yes. It had been a decade since I’d buried my best friend in an unmarked grave. One Burt had somehow found years later, without a problem.
“No. That’s okay. I know what I’m going to do.” It was sort of the truth.
Frances crossed the small room and slid into the bottom bunk. “Okay. If you’re sure.”
It annoyed me that she didn’t try to insist.
“I’m going to get some sleep. If you change your mind, wake me up. Will you get the light?”
“Okay,” I said. I turned off the bedroom light and climbed to the top bunk and lay on top of the covers. I’d wait a few minutes to be sure everyone was down for the night—I couldn’t risk the aunts asking where I was going—then I’d sneak away.