Chapter 71
Kirsten
@Flossythemermaid, TikTok
OMG Maple Clark is actually missing!!! This is like a plot twist from a Freida McFadden novel, and I am here for it! #findMaple
I walk outside, hoping the fresh air will calm me. But the sun’s too strong, the air too accusing in its stillness. Maple knows that Garrett isn’t her real father. Fuck, fuck, fuck. That was never supposed to happen. We have been so careful, for so long.
I walk around the side of the house and into the shade of the roof overhang. I lean back against the cool render, and finally I’m able to breathe.
Garrett was my childhood sweetheart. The two of us getting married was meant to be; everyone said so.
But when he went off to college, instead of missing him, I found that I liked my freedom.
Suddenly my dream to be a singer, to move to New York, felt more like an ambition than a fantasy.
I started a YouTube channel (long since deleted now) and recorded a demo of my favorite songs.
Eventually I got offered a weekly gig at Kilby Court in Salt Lake City.
It was a Tuesday night, and sometimes the audience might only be a dozen students, but I was performing.
Singing my own songs. And people loved me.
People like him. The man who kept catching eyes with me one night when I was singing, and then asked me to join him for a beer after my set.
It’s not like he was the first guy to hit on me in that place, but there was something about him that drew me in.
Him coming all the way from South Dakota maybe.
The guys at Kilby Court knew I wasn’t twenty-one, which meant we couldn’t get a beer there, so we left.
Found a bar a couple of blocks away. Dark and intimate, the kind of place where time stands still.
It took me three years to get pregnant with the twins. With Maple, it was around eight minutes in the back of the guy’s truck.
But I couldn’t bear to be that woman, that cliché.
A single mother singing in dive bars. I had spent my entire life trying to be better, to fit in with all those doe-eyed girls who could trace their lineage back to Joseph Smith.
I wanted a big family to sit with in church, a fat CTR ring on my finger, my hymen still intact on my wedding day.
So when I missed my period, and a pregnancy test confirmed the worst news, I drove to Colorado State University in Fort Collins and begged.
I loved Garrett so much in that moment. How he looked sad at first, then stoic.
And how, before long, his expression turned to pride.
I thought it was aimed at me, that he was proud I’d chosen him to spend the rest of my life with.
But I’ve come to realize he was proud of himself.
For doing his Christian duty to save a fallen woman.
And now my beautiful, rebellious, bastard child has run away because of it.
I open the Uber app. I can’t find a phone number – of course there’s not an actual human who gives a shit about the millions of people who take Uber rides every day – so I navigate to the chat function.
There’s a dropdown box, and I wonder for a moment if ‘I left an item in the car’ might work, but of course that’s not what happened, so I keep scrolling, looking for some way to ask for help to find a missing child.
As I concentrate on the task, a notification appears at the top of the screen. That’s not unusual, and flicking them away is as natural as breathing, but as soon as I do, a new one appears. And another, and then another. Suddenly I can’t get rid of them fast enough. What the hell is going on?
So I look. And I see that Dylan has tagged me in a post shared to TikTok and Instagram. This can only be about Maple. I click into the reel, and as I watch it, I have the strange sensation of slipping underwater.
Hey guys, you might have seen that Maple didn’t turn up for our YouTube Live this morning.
Well, I’ve spoken to her mom, and the really bad news is that they don’t know where she is either.
I know that Maple going missing probably feels like some crazy plot twist to you, but she’s my friend, and I’m really worried about her.
I’m trying to get in touch with Maple’s friend, so if you’re listening, Coco, please DM me.
Or if any of you know Coco, or the name of her YouTube channel, drop me a message.
Her content is about trying to find the killer of a teenager in her neighborhood, but that’s all I know.
And Maple, if you’re watching this, please get in touch.
I know life hasn’t been great lately, but I can’t believe that you’ve run away, not with everything we’ve been doing to find Ella, so now I don’t know what to think. Please let me know you’re safe.
I stare at the now-still image of Dylan, his hand over his tousled hair, those sad puppy-dog eyes that were supposed to seduce Maple, not condemn me to a public shaming. But that’s what he’s doing by creating this post, because everyone always blames the mom. Just ask Selena Hart.
It also means I’ll have to call the police, right now, this second. Answer their questions. Weather their judgment.
I slide down the wall and slump forward. My Maple honey has left me. And I’ve never felt so alone.