Chapter 2
ELLA
I sigh and bounce my head against the steering wheel when I park in the driveway and see Kristie’s Mercedes sitting there. Not that I truly mind her being at my house, I mean, Carrie gave her a key for a reason. But... it’s just that I want some alone time to think about what comes next for me. For Carrie.
Kristie has always spent a lot of time with us—sleepovers, dinners, homework—but since Carrie went missing, she’s been at the house far more than normal. If she’s not at school or work, she’s typically here. It’s a little weird having her here because she was always closer to Carrie than me. Her mom died when she was six years old, so it’s just her and her dad, who happens to be the orthopedic surgeon at my father’s surgical practice. Dr. Phillip Vann. In fact, he’s the surgeon who operated on Carrie’s knee two years ago when she fell off her bike during a cycling race. With him working so much, we got used to Kristie showing up unannounced at odd times. She’s never come right out and said it, but I don’t think she likes being alone.
In her second year of college, Kristie’s older than me, but younger than Carrie. She also works at the surgical practice part time, acting as her dad’s personal assistant. Not to mention, she’s in training to be the head office manager one day. She’s the closest thing I have to a friend—now that Carrie is gone.
Well, she and Hudson. If anyone can classify Hudson as a true friend, that is.
I make my way into the house, tossing my purse and phone on the granite kitchen counter and grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. Kristie is sitting on the living room floor with papers spread in every direction around her. Settling on the plush couch, I hug a pillow tightly to my chest. “What are you doing?”
“Studying the medication logs. Dad is teaching me about that.”
I nod, taking a long swallow of my drink.
“So, how’d the meeting with the police go?”
“Not good. They’re done. Well, not really, but they are at a standstill until more tips come in. And no tips are coming in. Nothing. It’s completely stagnant.”
She turns to me, studying my reaction. Her thick auburn hair is pulled back in a ponytail, and her pale skin has a dewy glow, dotted with pale red freckles. Sometimes she wears too much makeup. I like it when her freckles show. She’s pretty, but like me, she doesn’t really date. I don’t date because I haven’t met anyone whom I really want to date. I think Kristie doesn’t date because her father doesn’t let her. Having lost his wife so many years ago, he can be a little overprotective. He’s charming and handsome and powerful, just like my own father, but at least he appears to take an interest in his daughter’s life. Dad has never shown one ounce of interest in me, and the only activity that he and Carrie happen to share is a love of biking, which coincidently, Phillip introduced to my sister. Not our father.
She leans her head back against the loveseat, closing her eyes. She must be worn out between school and work. She’s always dozing off whenever she comes over. “And how do you feel about all that?” she asks in a sleepy whisper.
I rub my temples, squeezing the frustration from my brain. I’m pissed. Really pissed. Of course, I’d never say that. Why? Because I have to be more politically correct. More regal. More polite. I roll my shoulders back and sit up straight. “Someone out there knows what happened to my sister, and they’re keeping the information all to themselves.”
I press my lips into a thin line.
Because I sure as hell know my sister didn’t—and wouldn’t—leave me all alone.
***
I can’t believe I’m doing this. Am I really doing this?
I close my eyes and slowly replay what I know. Unsettled with the stall in Carrie’s case, I quickly ordained myself as an amateur sleuth. I made a timeline of everything I knew from the week of Carrie’s disappearance and the days immediately following, which is hard since I was on vacation with Uncle Ray, Aunt Teresa, and Holt most of the time. I talked with her ex-boyfriend, Caleb. They had broken up about a month and a half before she went missing. I talked with some of her friends—Hannah, Catie, and Dakota, who all share an apartment near the university campus.
I even tried to talk with Mom and Dad upon their return from Bermuda a week and a half ago, but they were both completely and utterly distracted, as per the norm. Dad with rescheduled patients for surgery and rescheduled mistresses for sex, and Mom with rescheduled pseudo-friends for tennis and rescheduled rich bitches for wine tasting. Trying to talk to them and get anywhere is like trying to wrangle a herd of alley cats in heat.
Each night, after finishing my homework, I studied one small aspect of the case. I printed off our bank and credit card statements for the past two years and combed through them so precisely it felt like I was memorizing the entire first act of Romeo and Juliet . Last night I isolated Carrie’s change in spending habits. I feel like I’ve hit on something very important, but I just can’t pinpoint the significance, though.
About fourteen months ago is when things changed. Which would have been about eight months before she disappeared. That’s when Carrie started driving all the way across the county to shop at this one particular gas station.
And then six months before she vanished is when she disabled the GPS tracking system in her car. That was one of the first things that Marcum and Leary did. They tried to obtain all of the GPS data from her SUV. But it had been manually disabled. This was also around the time she started turning off her cell phone for large stretches of time, rendering that form of GPS untraceable as well. There was no answer for any of that. And it wasn’t like any of us knew that she’d done that as we weren’t in the habit of following her every move.
It didn’t take me long to realize that I needed answers. Real answers .
I was banging on the girls’—Hannah, Catie, and Dakota’s—apartment door before school this morning, begging and pleading for any information. They claimed not to know anything, but I have a distinct feeling that they’re hiding something. I went to Caleb’s apartment next, and he finally confirmed my suspicions. Something was— something is —going on at the gas station. He wouldn’t divulge more than that, but his eyes did hold a new pain I hadn’t noticed before.
And then he shut the door, telling me to go to school.
But only after begging me to drop it. Begging me to let this go and just live my life.
Of course, he knew I wouldn’t. That’s probably why he shut the door… because revisiting past demons first thing in the morning is obviously a hard pill for him to swallow.
I tap my fingers on the steering wheel and glare at the overhead signage reflecting in the rearview mirror.
Travis Boys Gas and Country Mart.
The warm January sun of the late afternoon has me quickly breaking into a sweat as I sit in the driver’s seat. Typical Alabama winter. It was forty-five yesterday, and today the high is sixty-eight.
And… now, I’m fixating on the weather in a pitiful attempt to talk myself out of something monumentally stupid.