Chapter 43 After
After
The days tick by, one after the other. I take sick days, skip a training, leave a text from Dev unanswered. Another girl gets a name. Every article discusses Terry Butler as if proving his guilt is merely a formality. I take Barry up to Eden Crest most evenings, but I always turn back before dark.
“Does it matter?” I ask Barry as we stand at the peak.
He seems to sense my unease, leaning his whole weight against me and looking up at me with big, earnest eyes.
“They’re both dead, Mason Hill and Terry Butler.
Does it matter which of them gets the blame?
Does it matter if the Hills get away with it? ”
He whuffs at me anxiously.
“Maybe they didn’t even know,” I say. Or they suspected, but had no proof.
Maybe I’ve made them into villains without any cause at all, except the crime of surviving their upbringing.
The trophies were in Butler’s attic, after all, and I have no evidence but my own gut instinct to say Mason Hill is the one truly to blame.
“Does it matter?” I ask again, but I know the answer, because the hum in my bones is an inescapable pressure now. This isn’t done. I’m not done.
They’re lying.
The comment had probably just been some random internet conspiracy theorist. There was no way to track them down, anyway, and the name could have been a coincidence. But I can’t shake the connection. There are only a handful of people who know about the words carved down there.
My phone starts to ring. I don’t recognize the number and I’m about to reject the call when I realize it’s a Los Angeles area code. Liam.
“Hello?” I say. At first, I think the poor signal has already dropped the call, because there is a long, thick moment of silence before a raspy breath.
“Audrey Dixon,” Liam says, and instantly I know he isn’t sober. “You’re not going to be a problem. Did you know that? Kind of nice, really. To not be a problem. I’ve never managed it.”
His words are slurred, fading in and out. Alarm zings through me. “Where are you?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer. “I did what you said.”
Meghan. He means he asked about Meghan. “What did Emily say?”
He’s quiet again, the silence syrupy. “Sometimes it’s better not to know the answer.
If you leave it shut, then you don’t—-it’s Schrodinger’s box, you know?
Don’t open it, and you didn’t kill the cat, not really, it wasn’t you, it might not have happened at all.
She gets to be alive and dead at the same time.
Open the box, and you’re going to have to do something about it. ”
It’s a struggle to make out what he’s saying, and I don’t like the sound of his breathing. “Meghan. Tell me about Meghan,” I say.
“It’s not my fault,” Liam says. “It was too late. We couldn’t stop now. Not after everything. It couldn’t all be for nothing. We couldn’t have done all that and then it doesn’t even matter.”
My heart is hammering. Barry gives a low, undirected growl, looking to me for direction, and I realize I have wrapped the leash tight around my fist. “What did you do?” I demand.
There’s a pause, a hiccup of breath. “Nothing,” he says distantly. “I never do anything. I’m not the one. Do you think I’m a bad person, Audrey?”
“No,” I say, trying to sound soothing, not sure at all that it’s true. “Liam, I don’t think you’re a bad person, but you need to tell me where you are.”
“But that’s it,” Liam says. “Everything was going to be okay. It was going to work just like Melinda said, but she was so angry, she wouldn’t listen, and I told . . .” He trails off.
“Liam?” I say. I repeat his name twice more. I can’t tell if I can hear him breathing anymore. “Damn it, Liam, talk to me.”
No answer. I jam the button to end the call and rake my hand through my hair.
Calling 9--1--1 is useless when I have no idea where he is.
I dig in my coat pocket again, and stab my finger on the crisp corner of Melinda’s business card.
I dial the number wrong twice before I get my fingers under control.
To my relief, she picks up. “Melinda Hill speaking,” she says.
“Melinda, it’s Audrey,” I say, and I can practically hear her lips pressing together in annoyance.
“Audrey, let me be clear—-”
“Liam just called me,” I say, cutting her off. “He was on something. A lot of something.”
“Liam’s been clean for two years,” Melinda says. And then, “Where is he?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t get him to tell me, and I think he passed out,” I say.
“Okay. I think I know where he might have gone,” Melinda says. She hangs up without another word. I didn’t ask her about Meghan. It would be useless anyway. There’s only one person I need answers from on that front now.
I tug Barry’s leash. “Come on.”
Taking the downhill path at nearly a run, we reach the car in record time. Barry launches himself into the back seat, having decided we’re on an adventure, and sticks his massive head over my shoulder as I buckle in. I bat him back and get a slobbery hand for my trouble.
We’re only a few minutes from the Hills’ place. The barrier is still there, and I park right in front of it. I leave Barry in the car. It’s a cool day, and I don’t want Andrew meeting us at the door with a gun.
I needn’t have worried. There are no cars in the driveway when I arrive, no lights on inside. I pace around the house, but the place is empty. Emily isn’t here, unless she’s hiding in there.
With her family around, the house isn’t a sanctuary right now. She’ll be somewhere else, somewhere private. The only place I know about is the studio.
I scrub my hands on my jeans as I stride back to the car. The rational, logical part of me knows that my rush probably has no purpose. Whatever happened to Meghan, it happened months ago. But Liam called me now, broke his sobriety now. Something changed, and Emily was the cause.
The studio is tucked into the second story of a nondescript building.
There’s a laundromat around the back and a vacuum repair place at the front.
I’ve never actually seen anyone go inside.
Len and I used to joke that it must be a front for the Russian mob.
The door Emily emerged from is unadorned and unlabeled—-and locked.
There’s an intercom button by the door. I hesitate, then press it. The harsh blat makes me jump, and Barry gives a half--hearted bark from the back seat.
It’s a solid thirty seconds before an answer comes. “Hello?”
I tense. She’s here. “It’s Audrey,” I say. “We need to talk. It’s about—-Liam.”
Silence again, a long silence of considering. And then there’s another buzz and the lock clicks.
I pull it open before she can change her mind. Barry watches me from the back seat, eyebrows twitching together with worry.
Just inside the door is a steep, narrow flight of stairs.
At the top is a small landing and another door, this one unlocked.
It opens onto a well--lit space; a skylight and large windows let the sun flood in.
Several easels adorn the space—-some clearly for display, and one in the center in active use.
There’s a half--finished painting propped on it: a girl’s face interposed with the wings of a moth.
Both girl and insect have a spectral quality to them, though maybe that’s only that both are unfinished, devolving into blocks of color and a sharply contrasting underpainting in umber hues.
The paintings at the house were almost all still life and nature. Almost all of the paintings scattered around the room here are portraits.
I drift between them, taking in one face after another.
You might be forgiven for thinking that she has painted the same portrait again and again and again.
The red--haired girl—-young woman—-with pale skin and bright eyes.
You might be excused for missing how her face shifts, changes.
Narrowing, rounding. Eyes shifting toward green to blue to gray.
Hair like wheat touched only lightly by strawberry tones deepening to copper, to auburn, to a bright ginger.
A dozen paintings. At least half a dozen girls.
Some of them are shown only from the shoulders up, staring straight at the viewer.
Others are painted from farther away, half turned.
Their clothing is indistinct—-white or dove gray, draping clothes like nightgowns.
The sorts of clothes you imagine being worn by a ghost.
There’s a soft footstep behind me. I turn, breath caught in my throat. Emily steps out from a back room carrying a jar of clear water, the rim streaked with mixed paints. She sets it on a stool next to the easel and regards me with eyes that might be calm—-or merely empty.
“What is this?” I ask, my voice a croak. I gesture to the portraits.
“You know what they are,” she says softly.
I look at the nearest painting. Like in all of them, the face is almost familiar. Almost the face of someone I’ve known. The slant of her mouth—-that could be Janie, but isn’t quite. The shape of her jaw—-almost Emily.
There is a name at the bottom right--hand corner. At first, I assume it’s an artist’s signature, but then I look more closely.
Amanda.
I know what I’ll see when I look at the others, but I check all the same. They’re there. All the names—-Madison, Amanda, Isabel.
“You didn’t make these paintings in less than a week,” I say. She shakes her head mutely. “You’ve known about them all along.”
“Why are you here, Audrey?” she asks.
“Liam called me.”
Her eyebrow raises in mild curiosity. “Oh?”
“He said that he’d asked you about Meghan. He was upset. He sounded like he was using. I think he was overdosing.”
“Old habits die hard,” Emily says quietly, looking down as she selects a paintbrush from a jar.
“You don’t sound very upset.”
She draws the paintbrush out slowly. “Liam doesn’t like me very much. I think he might actually hate me.”
I make a frustrated noise in the back of my throat. “He’s your brother. Your twin. Shouldn’t you care about him?”
She fans the brush against the palm of her hand. “I don’t know if I can,” she says. She sounds almost sad. Almost.
I shake my head in disgust. I take out my phone. One by one, I snap pictures of the paintings. The names repeat, I realize—-and the portraits are inconsistent. As if she’s trying to re--create the girls from memory, or from her imagination.
“What are you doing?” Emily asks.
“Getting proof,” I say. I glare at her, but she only stares impassively back. “Why hide all of this? For Melinda’s campaign? For Andrew’s career? For Liam’s show? Did Meghan find out? Did you do something to her?”
“You don’t understand,” Emily says simply, factually.
“Then explain it to me,” I shout, my face hot and my heart pounding. Emily blanches, stumbles back a step, the first real reaction since I’ve walked in the door.
She looks to the side, breathing heavily. The quiver in her limbs is genuine fear, but I don’t think it’s me she’s scared of. For a moment, I think she’s going to speak, to explain—-but she only wraps an arm around her waist. “There are more in the other room,” she says.
“What?”
“If you want photos of all of them. There are more in the back,” she says, eyes fixed on a portrait in the corner.
I wait, but she has nothing more to say. I walk with clipped, angry steps to the back room—-a smaller space, the one window covered with a thick black curtain. There are paintings stacked against the walls and on shelves here. A chorus of dead girls, all different, all eerily alike.
In the back of the room is a large storage closet. The door stands open. Through it, I can see the concrete walls. The mattress against the back wall.
I walk slowly toward it, drawn forward by a feeling that thrums in my bones. Behind me comes the soft sound of a brush drawn over canvas. I reach inside and flick on the light.
Someone—-Emily—-has written on the walls. No, not written—-carved. Scratched. Jagged, hasty letters spelling out messages I’ve seen before.
Do what you have to
Stay alive
Keep him happy
MY NAME IS MY NAME IS MY NAME IS MY NAME IS MY NAME IS MY NAME IS MY NAME IS MY NAME IS—-
I suck in a sharp breath, my lungs burning—-I had forgotten, for a moment, to breathe. It’s all here. The words from below and more, blooming out like fungal spread. Words of warning and fear and frantic hope, an echo and a re--creation.
There’s something on the bed. A book. A diary. It looks a lot like Meghan’s, but this one is older, with a leather cover cracked and fraying at the edges. When I open it, the spine clicks.
Property of Emily Hill, reads the first page. The pages fan in my hands. I begin to read. And I can’t stop. I flip frantically from page to page, drinking in the words, the confessions of the teenage Emily Hill.
And then I stop, staring at the final words of the diary.
We can’t let her go.
I turn, knowing that she’ll be there. She stands in the center of the room, hands empty, watching me intently.
“That bunker wasn’t empty,” I say hollowly.
“No. It wasn’t.”
“What did you do?” The words are almost a whisper.
“I did what I had to,” she says. “We all did.”