Chapter 37 After #2
“What are you doing here, Liam?” I ask, trying to sound casual and unworried.
“Melinda sounded the trumpets. Called us all in,” Liam says with a vague wave of his hand. “Wants to keep an eye on us in this time of uncertainty.” He lets out a last smoke--plume breath and drops the cigarette, grinding it out.
“I kind of meant what are you doing sitting on my car,” I say, squinting against the sunlight.
He laughs, tucks his hands in his jacket pockets.
“Oh, sorry. I was just getting some air. My family aren’t exactly the easiest people to be cooped up with.
Then I saw your car and I wondered who was dropping by at a time like this.
” He gives me a considering look, that half a smile still pinned in place.
“You came to talk to Emily, didn’t you?”
“What is it to you?” I ask, crossing my arms protectively.
“Yeah. See, she’ll do that to you,” he says with a little laugh under the words.
“Do what?” I ask.
“Draw you in.” He shrugs a little, sniffs, and stands, stepping clear of the car and closer to me. “As someone who’s been there—-keep your distance.”
“People keep telling me that. None of them have told me why,” I say. “No one in your family seems to like talking much at all.”
“We were taught from an early age not to entertain the curiosity of outsiders,” he says, enunciating each word with an almost jovial tone. He’s standing within comfortable conversation range now, no closer, his stance casual. I can smell the layers of stale smoke clinging to him.
He pulls another cigarette from the pack, then tilts it toward me.
I decline with a shake of the head. He shrugs and tucks it away.
“I have kicked a lot of addictions, but never these,” he says idly.
“So what the hell are you doing here? I heard Andrew and Melinda told you to stay the hell away from us.”
“Then why are you talking to me?” I ask him, eyebrows arched.
“I’m a grown adult. I can talk to who I want to,” he says. He pulls out his lighter at last and flicks it open. The glow makes his face momentarily lovely before the shadows reclaim it. He -settles his weight back on his heels. “I heard you found them. The bodies.”
“Just the first one,” I say. I watch him carefully. Liam was a sweet boy. That was a long time ago.
“It’s fucked up,” he says quietly, not quite looking at me. “I mean. They were there the whole time. They haven’t stopped finding more. Do you think they’ll be able to identify them all?”
“I don’t know. Probably not,” I say. I shiver. It’s colder out here than I thought. “That many girls can’t go missing unless nobody’s looking too hard for them, right?”
“Well, that’s fucking depressing,” Liam says.
“Do you think Terry did it?” I ask carefully, watching his reaction.
He just looks back at me steadily. “It certainly looks that way, doesn’t it?”
“It’s convenient, isn’t it? He’s dead. He can’t answer questions.”
“He’s been dying a long time,” Liam replies with a shrug. “Not fast enough, if you ask me. No one’s going to mourn Terry Butler.”
“He and your father were friends.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Liam says with a grimace. “They had common interests and a philosophy that overlapped. Though they did have one big disagreement.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Dad always believed the love of a good woman could save your soul,” Liam says. “Terry didn’t think there was any such thing.”
“A soul?”
“A good woman,” he corrects. “Harlots and jezebels, every one, according to Terry. Dad liked to think his girls were the exception, being born of the saintly loins of our mother.” His voice has a scrape to it, damaged by cigarettes and who knows what else.
The phrasing makes my stomach tighten with discomfort.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Seems like you’ve been asking a lot of those already.”
I huff a little; he smiles, and it’s not unkind. “Emily said you used to be close, but you weren’t anymore.”
“That’s certainly accurate,” he says.
“What happened?”
He takes a long inhale and lets it all out before he answers. “I realized what kind of person she was, that’s all.”
“What kind is that?”
But he only shakes his head. “I should get back,” he says. “It was good to see you again, Audrey.”
“You too,” I say automatically, and he smiles wryly, hearing the lie of it. “I’ll see you around.”
“Probably not,” Liam says. He clears his throat. “Thanks, by the way.”
“For what?”
“For finding them,” he says simply, genuinely.
I give him a long look. “There’s another girl missing, you know,” I say. “Meghan Vale. She went missing in January.”
He squints a little, thinking it through. “The cops said those bodies were old.”
“Meghan was out there. In those woods. She knew about the bunker. She talked to Emily,” I say. “And then she vanished.”
I can’t decide what I heard back there at the house. What was Emily saying? What will they find there? Or What if they find her?
A singular her. Who else could she be talking about but Meghan?
Liam runs the back of his thumbnail along his lower lip. “Meghan Vale,” he repeats, and I’m certain he’s never heard the name before.
“Can you ask Emily about her? She won’t talk to me,” I say, a note of pleading in my voice. “Please. No one else is looking for this girl.”
“I’ll ask,” he promises.
“Do you think . . .” I hesitate. “Could Emily have hurt her?”
He lets out a sound that is not quite a laugh, and looks away from me. “You know, I stopped trying to guess what people are capable of a long time ago.”