Chapter 13 #3
8.18.17 - He was gone when I woke up. He doesn’t come off as the Sunday breakfast type anyway. Worst than waking up solo though is that I can’t find grandma’s ring anywhere. I know I wore it out yesterday but I can’t remember if I took it off to wash my hands? I hope I didn’t leave it at the bar.
8.19.17 - I ripped apart the apartment but I still can’t find my ring.
Went back to the bar but it hasn’t been found there either.
I’m going insane. Also he hasn’t responded to any of my calls.
Fucking bastard. Another one bites the dust. I’m so fucking gutted about the ring!
!! I filed a missing item report with campus security.
I hope to God it’s found. Mom will absolutely kill me if I lost it and I’ll never forgive myself.
“Do you know what ring she’s talking about?” I ask, avoiding the question I should be asking. Is Andy the ‘he’ she keeps talking about?
“Our grandmother’s wedding ring. Lila wore it every day.
It wasn’t recovered with her body, and when we cleaned out her apartment, my mom noticed it was missing.
We figured it must have gotten lost in the crash or on the trip to the hospital.
I didn’t know until I found the journal that it went missing before she died.
Keep reading. The next page is where it will start to make sense. ”
I turn to the next page, and my heart skips a beat.
It’s a newspaper clipping of Jo and Andy’s wedding announcement with a grainy photo of the two of them in front of the Rock Salt Ranch sign.
Jo is smiling with her hand on Andy’s chest, while he looks like the dude from high school who finally landed his dream girl—because he is.
It ran in our local Tribune right after they got married in September of 2017.
They have the article framed in the hallway of their house.
I’ve seen it a thousand times. The name Rock Salt Ranch is circled a bunch of times on this clipping, like whoever clipped this article—Lila, I’m guessing—was not in a good frame of mind at the time.
“So, you think the man Lila was talking about in her journal, the man who ghosted her, was Andy, and she came up—to what? Confront him?” I ask, shaken to my core.
“I don’t know, Paige. I have suspicions, obviously, but I don’t know anything for sure.
When I found the article, I asked around and heard that Rock Salt was looking for temporary help.
I had my buddy put me up for the job, and here I am.
When I saw the photo of them in the paper, I didn’t recognize Andy, of course.
But then…when I met him up here…” Something shifts in Shayne, and his mouth twists, more a grimace than a smile.
“It hit me like a thunderclap when he walked up to me. I almost went to strangle him instead of shaking his hand.” Shayne meets my gaze, and the look in his eyes is deadly.
“Andy knew her. We went to breakfast last week, and I told him I thought he looked familiar. Told him about my sister and how this was the last photo I had of her, so it sticks with me. I pulled up the picture of him and Lila on my phone, and I could tell he recognized her—his eyes bugged out like I showed him a ghost, which in some way I guess I did. But then he chuckled it off as some bizarre crazy coincidence. Small world, ha ha, and all that. Like I couldn’t smell the bullshit rolling off him.
He came up with some excuse that he used to be a regular in the bars around Albuquerque before he was an ‘old married man’.
” Shayne crouches down in front of me, gripping my hands tightly.
“I know she wouldn’t have come up here without a good reason.
Jo has been kind to me, and I know she is like family to you.
I don’t want to cause her any pain, but I have to know what happened to my sister, and I think Andy knows a shit ton more than what he told me.
Will you help me, Paige?” His blue eyes, so dark they could be black, are filled with fiery determination.
“But what if it is that, Shayne? What if it ends up being a coincidence that she ended up here months after doing karaoke with someone who happens to live here?”
“But she had that article. She posted that picture of them together. They knew each other.”
“Maybe she just recognized him like you did. Maybe they met at the bar. Maybe he made her laugh. I don’t know - people do weird things all the time.
Maybe she liked the name of the ranch?” I know I’m being idiotic and grasping at straws.
Just last night, I myself was convinced Andy must have been having an affair with Lila based solely off the karaoke photo.
But now, I am desperately hoping that it’s just all a coincidence—a nightmare that will dissipate and that Jo’s life is not about to go up in flames.
And what about the letters??
“You swear you didn’t send Andy those letters?”
Shayne drops my hands, an exasperated sigh snaking out of his lips. “I swear I haven’t sent any letters.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
Jo.