Chapter 5
My childhood bedroom, like all of the bedrooms aside from Hazel’s, had sat mostly untouched. When we all lived here, the house was never quiet. There were always lights on, a television blaring, people engaged in a loud conversation. Now, it all felt incredibly still.
When I left for college, I had taken three suitcases full of stuff: mostly necessities—clothes, makeup, and my laptop. But also one full of mementos, including scrapbooks and family pictures of Will.
My mother had purged the house after the trial, desperate not to have any lingering evidence of her allegedly murderous child.
But I’d managed to recover a lot of it, digging through the trash late at night before Will’s things, our memories, were taken away for good.
I didn’t know then that these items would become crucial to writing my book.
I just didn’t want to let our history get erased.
My dad had gotten the house in the divorce because mom felt guilty for cheating—and because Steve was loaded.
He initially thought he’d sell it, but ultimately decided against it.
This house was his last connection to our family.
I had begged, pleaded, and bargained with him for years to move out when I still lived here.
I was desperate to be closer to Will, to get out of Loxahatchee, but he wouldn’t budge.
I didn’t understand my father. How could you hold on to a house but not your own son? His tipping point had been the conviction. The day they read out guilty my father’s loyalty dissolved. We had endless fights about it.
“How could you abandon him?” I’d cried that day. I couldn’t understand.
“I saw the look on Gary Hopely’s face when Will was convicted,” my father had told me solemnly.
“The relief that his daughter’s murderer was facing punishment.
I understood it, Rose. I have two daughters.
What would I do if it had been you or Hazel?
I trust our criminal justice system. I have to come to terms with what Will did. ”
From that moment on, he never mentioned Will being innocent again. I held out a little hope he’d change his mind, because at least he still talked about him—unlike my mother, who acted like he’d never existed. After a few years though, I gave up.
Sitting in my old room, I was exhausted but knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I paced back and forth on the carpet, remembering the last time a girl had gone missing from our street. A girl who had been found murdered.
In my experience, when girls went missing, it was because they were dead.
I felt guilty for the thought, the dread creeping back into my stomach and making me nauseous again.
Hazel was my sister. She might be fine. She probably was fine.
We’d find her tomorrow recovering from amnesia after an accidental head injury, or coming down from a bad trip, or at a motel with some guy.
And when she was back, I was going to take that tour of NYU with her and encourage her to go.
To get away from Loxahatchee and all the people who heard her last name and knew her life story.
Hell, I’d help her pay the tuition if I had to.
I felt a desperate longing for my little sister.
I needed to be in her space. Somewhere full of reminders of her.
Tommy and Suzannah were still on the back patio, where I’d left them earlier. I could see them from my bedroom window, holding hands across the table, seemingly silent but settled.
I crept out of my bedroom and down the hall to the door at the very end, Hazel’s room. I looked behind me before I twisted the knob, which was stupid because I was her sister and had every right to be there. Still, as I crept inside, I made sure to close the door behind me.
Hazel’s room had changed considerably since I’d last seen it. Gone were the ponies and dollhouses that I remembered. It had become a teenage girl’s sanctuary in my absence.
The bed was wrought iron and covered in a dusty pink quilted comforter.
The walls were lined with artsy prints from Urban Outfitters and framed photographs of Hazel with her friends.
She had a desk in one corner, and a couple of shelves covered in books and trinkets.
But there were still faint traces of the little girl I’d known if I looked hard enough.
I could see it in the large watercolor horse painting over her bed, and the horse tchotchkes that sat mixed in with her books.
Her room was covered in evidence of a life in Loxahatchee. A life that was maybe even happy.
People wondered why she lived here with Dad, in a place where her family was so hated, instead of with our mom in Tampa.
Truthfully, I didn’t know the reason. After the divorce, my pregnant mom promptly moved in with Steve.
She was desperate to start over where people didn’t know she’d raised a murderer, and might still let her have a career.
Tommy was away at college by then, and I was about to graduate, but Hazel was only seven.
Initially, Hazel had joined her, but only a year and a half ago, she’d begged my father to let her come live with him.
Our mother hadn’t liked it, but Hazel had apparently kicked up quite the fit.
She despised living with Steve and the twins, and felt like an outsider in her own home.
That was one of the few things I’d picked up on when we did talk—nothing held my attention like criticizing my mother.
I think Hazel never forgave her for the divorce.
Even as a young child, she had enough happy memories to know that her new life was a pale comparison.
“It was very Rose of her,” Tommy had told me at the time.
I was too preoccupied to notice. Just six months after Hazel moved back in with my father, The Smileys Next Door published, and the neighborhood’s hatred of us was reignited.
Our mother swore she never would have let Hazel go back to Loxahatchee if she had known what I was writing.
But somehow, Hazel had managed to create what seemed like a happy life here, to get people to accept her for who she was.
But the room had a strange, cold quality to it now. I knew the police had been in and out all day, since Hazel was reported missing, taking anything they considered evidence. Evidence of what, I didn’t know, but Suzannah had told me earlier that they’d left with diaries, notebooks, her MacBook.
On one of her shelves there were several overturned picture frames, probably knocked over during the search, the usual carelessness from Loxahatchee’s finest. I turned them the right way around.
One was a photo of Hazel and her friends at the beach.
Another was an older image of Hazel and Tommy.
Hazel was probably four years old, which would have made Tommy sixteen.
They wore matching orange shirts emboldened with the McCullough Farm logo.
Tommy was always the one who went with her to the stables.
Will and I would do drop-offs, but Tommy actually liked to spend time with the horses too.
I felt the tears come again before I could stop them. I curled up on Hazel’s green rug, wrapping my arms around my knees as I sobbed. The little girl in that picture, the one who ate the middle of her cinnamon roll first, was missing. She was gone, and yet again, I was unable to help.
My phone rang loudly then, making me jump. Flannery’s picture filled the screen, showcasing her perfectly glossed lips and adorable mass of tight curls. I felt instant relief as I answered the call.
“You picked up. Thank GOD.” Flannery’s frantic voice rang out over the line.
“Hi, Flannery,” I said guiltily. I’d already missed one of her calls since I’d been here.
“I thought the Loxahatchee townspeople had stoned you to death,” she said, her panic decreasing. “I’ve been driving Marta insane with how much I’ve been calling. I think she might’ve finally blocked me.”
I stifled a laugh, relieved to hear her voice and her familiar sense of humor. “Sorry, Flan. It’s been crazy here. I haven’t had any time to myself. But no, there have been no public stonings so far.”
“What about tarring and featherings?”
“Not yet. But give it time; I’ve only been here for a few hours. A few very long hours.”
“So, no updates on Hazel?” Flannery pressed.
I sighed deeply. “No.”
There was silence on the other end of the line as she gathered her thoughts. “You’ll find her,” she said, desperation mingling with hopefulness.
“Yeah. I hope so,” I said, feeling defeated. It had been several hours since I’d left Manhattan, and so far we didn’t know anything more than when I’d left.
“Do you want me to come down there and help?” Flannery added. “You know I hate Florida, but I’d do it. For you.”
I shook my head, even though I knew she couldn’t see. “I appreciate it, but there’s no point. I’m not even sure that my being here is helpful.”
Flannery sighed. “Is your family being a bunch of cunts?”
She knew how strained my relationship with my family was. She was also one of the few people who believed me implicitly about Will, even having never met him.
“It’s complicated,” I said, meaning it. “I just feel like the shittiest sister on earth.” I fought back the angry tears that were forming in the corners of my eye. “I don’t even know enough about Hazel to know where to look for her.”
“You are not a shitty sister, Rose. Look at what you’ve done for Will. You’ve devoted your entire life to proving his innocence.”
“Yeah, I’m a great sister to Will. But to Hazel? I’m a deadbeat. I’m completely fucking useless.”
“Then learn more about her,” Flannery said firmly. “It’s not too late. Go through her room. Talk to her friends. Figure out who she is and what she was doing before she disappeared. You wrote an entire book piecing together what happened with Alex and Will. You can do the same here.”
I considered her words for a second, letting them slip over me. She was right. I did know how to investigate. I had spent years reflecting and digging up every lead I could on what had happened in 2010. Why couldn’t I do that now for Hazel?
“Will you call me back if there is anything I can do?” Flannery asked, puncturing my silence.
“Yeah, I will. Thanks, Flan.”
“No problem. Take care of yourself.”
I heard her hang up, but her words echoed through me. Figure out who she is and what she was doing.
I unlocked my phone and went straight to Instagram, ignoring the waiting DMs—my interview with TMH had already amassed tons of notifications I did not care to read. Instead, I opened the search bar and typed in Hazel’s name.
Nothing came up.
Fuck.
Tommy or Dad wouldn’t have taken her page down, would they? Or the police? Could they do that? It didn’t ring a bell from any of the true crime shows I’d used for researching the book. Instagram hadn’t even been a thing the last time I had dealt with the police; we’d been in the Facebook era.
Then I remembered that Hazel changed her handle every few weeks so that colleges couldn’t stalk her. Her friends did it too. “Finstas,” she had told me.
I turned to my own DMs to find Hazel’s profile. She and I hadn’t exchanged a lot of messages over the years, but she frequently replied to my stories. The last one was from a month ago. A heart-eye emoji. I hadn’t responded. Her handle was there though: @Hazelnut06.
My stomach lurched, remembering the childhood nickname Will had given her years ago. I clicked the profile. The bio was clean and simple.
Hazel. 17. SRHS. Unapologetic Horse Girl, followed by the horse and sun emojis.
Her profile picture was of half her face, her long hair braided down her back. I clicked her most recent post. It was dated last Friday. A picture of her and another girl sitting on the bleachers at the high school captioned Happy Birthday Kayleigh! Love you girlie.
I kept scrolling. There were pictures of her at the beach, with a gaggle of girls in brightly colored bikinis and subs from Publix. A picture from a sleepover. A selfie. She looked pretty. In one of her posing with her driver’s license, her fingers covered the personal information. Smart girl.
It was a normal teenage girl’s Instagram.
Compared to the slutty pictures and whiny Tumblr quotes I had posted when I was her age, this was wholesome.
After several scrolls up and down the page, I got the measure of who she hung around with.
I remembered the girl Kayleigh from when she was little.
I recognized another girl too, the younger sister of someone I had graduated with.
There was also a tall boy who made frequent appearances in photos whose name I had deduced was Jaxxon.
Classic Florida parents. When I clicked through these kids’ profiles, I was surprised to see that a couple of them followed me.
The ones with public accounts had already posted about Hazel, selfies with captions begging for help finding their friend.
The cynical part of me wondered how much they were enjoying the attention.
Overwhelmingly the most prominent feature on Hazel’s Instagram was the McCullough Farm: scenery at the ranch, the horses in their stables, Hazel riding or posing in their merch.
Hazel had always been obsessed with horses.
A childhood passion that hadn’t faded with time.
When she was younger, everything she owned had a horse on it, from her clothes to her bedspread.
She didn’t have a teddy bear; she had a stuffed pony.
There’d even been talk of her getting her own horse.
We had the land for it, but then our family was in such shambles by the time she was old enough to start riding, not to mention in financial ruin from Will’s legal bills, that it was not an option.
The solution was the McCulloughs’. Owned by a kind and quiet British couple, the farm was just a few minutes away from the house and had several horses, along with other animals.
From the moment Hazel was old enough to go there alone, she spent every free minute helping with farm work in exchange for lessons and riding time.
I scrolled back up the page, looking at a post from five days ago showing Hazel posing in the stables. It was captioned Where else would I be?
Where else, indeed. The McCulloughs’ farm was over thirty acres, with a small office building, three different stables, multiple trailers, and a heavily wooded border.
I would start there first thing in the morning.