Chapter 19
Anna’s skin prickled unpleasantly, the house claustrophobic.
Her rage of earlier had slowly evaporated into the night heat, but sleep once again eluded her.
Mom had wished her a muted good night before she’d left for work, but the tense truce was a cracked eggshell around them, ready to shatter under the lightest pressure.
She leaned out the window, ignoring the fluttering moth-wing tickle of the thin curtains around her face, not wanting to think about Mom and hoping for some cooler air.
The night was silent. No owls or crickets calling to each other in the void.
With no streetlamps or passing cars on the road, she could be staring out at the ocean.
It was a good thought. There was something soothing about the ocean.
The long nothingness of it. The death of it.
She stretched out a little farther until her hips pressed painfully against the frame, her skin wanting every twitch of slight breeze, half tempted to fall into the gloom and drown there, and then she heard it.
A hint of music. A throb of bass, as if the darkness had a heartbeat.
Seconds later a firefly lit up the night, a flashlight going on.
For a moment she was puzzled, and then it came to her. The diner girl. Melissa.
She pulled on her sneakers, grabbed her phone, cigarettes, lighter, and house keys, and crept out into the hallway.
Mom was at work and Caroline was fast asleep.
Downstairs was equally quiet, no noise coming from Grandma’s bedroom or the bathroom.
It was fine. She wouldn’t leave them for long.
Twenty minutes maximum and she’d be back. She wasn’t going far.
She unlocked the front door and left as quietly as she could before running down the porch steps into the enveloping night, heading toward the cemetery, the flashlight growing brighter as she got closer.
The music called her on too, old R&B she didn’t know well, and she tried not to think about growling cars hiding in the darkness, headlights off.
Once she reached the cemetery gates she dug her fingers and toes into the chain-link fence and climbed over, the feeling of breaking the rules exhilarating. Momentarily, she was the old Anna again. It both frightened and excited her.
“Who’s there?” The full beam was on her as Anna dropped to the ground, hard on one ankle, and she gasped and then squinted, holding one hand up against the glare.
“I’m Anna. From the diner.” She reached down to rub her ankle. “Fuck, that hurt.”
The flashlight stayed where it was, blinding her for a moment longer, and then dropped, leaving Anna’s vision full of sparks and shadows.
“And?”
Anna blinked hard, trying to see. Finally, Melissa came into view.
Low-slung jeans and a torn T-shirt showing off her taut midriff.
Her body was tight and muscular, a proud sheaf of corn next to Anna’s willowy, weak weed.
They were the same but different. Country versus city.
Her hair, though, like Anna’s, was up in a loose ponytail, out of the way of the heat.
“You’re Melissa, right?” Anna got out her cigarettes and lit one, offering the pack to the other girl, who, after a moment’s pause, took one. “I walked back this way on Saturday from the diner and saw you here then. Heard the music and figured it was you again.”
“Oh, yeah.” Melissa lit her own smoke and handed back the lighter. “The new waitress.”
“I was going to say hi on Saturday night, but a car came up behind me. Had its headlights off like it was following me, then all of a sudden they came on. Freaked me out, so I ran home, but I saw it stopped here. Who was it?”
“You saw that too? No idea who it was. I grabbed my shit and was gone.” She held out her wrist where a nasty cut was scabbed over.
“Tore myself on the fence.” She was thoughtful, looking at Anna.
“But could have been anyone. Lot of bored farmers looking for a fuck around here while their wives sleep, or maybe someone just trying to goose you or me.” She paused. “You want a beer?”
Anna glanced back to where the house lurked invisible in the night.
Twenty minutes. She’d go back in twenty minutes.
“Sure. I can’t stay long. My mom’s working nights and my sister’s sleeping.
” She followed Melissa over to where a backpack was slung on the ground and they sat down together, cross-legged.
“You live in the old Beech house? Up there?” She flicked her head in the direction of home, and Anna nodded.
“If that’s what it’s called. My grandma bought it. She came from Harper’s Creek originally.”
As Melissa cracked open the bottles and handed her one, Anna stared at the grave they were sitting in front of.
Lila Clarke—beloved daughter, now with the angels.
The stone was modern marble, bright in the light of the torch, and at the center was an oval photo where Lila was brought to life in glorious color.
It had been taken somewhere formal, a patterned scarf wrapped loose to show bare shoulders and the top of a strapless dress.
Her blond hair was up in a chignon, and her smiling face tilted professionally toward the camera.
If she’d lived to see prom, no photo from there could match it.
“That’s from her cousin’s wedding. She was a bridesmaid,” Melissa said.
“It was in Atlanta, I think. Not long before she died. She loved that scarf. Some vintage designer. Her folks never found it, so she must have had it with her when she was killed. Maybe he strangled her with it. Motherfucker. You heard what happened to her, I guess?”
Anna nodded. “She was very beautiful.”
“Hey, look at this video.” Melissa grinned and scrolled through her phone until she found what she was looking for. “Recognize it?” She pressed play and handed the phone to Anna to watch.
Horror rose like bile, rushing Anna with panic, the terror threatening to overwhelm her. The world lurched and lights sparkled in the corner of Anna’s eyes. No, no, no. It couldn’t be. Not that video. Melissa couldn’t have it, she couldn’t.
It was only when she heard the tinny music coming from the phone, and the shrieks of girls laughing, that she managed to take a breath and her skin cooled.
It wasn’t the men and her. Of course it wasn’t.
She took a trembling drag on her cigarette, hoping Melissa hadn’t noticed her moment of panic, and focused.
She was watching a group of teens partying, hip-hop music playing in the background, and at center stage, Lila was dancing, in jeans and a T-shirt, no fancy clothes, and she laughed and stuck her tongue out at the camera.
“Stop filming, Melissa, don’t be a freak!
” A boy’s face, zits in full bloom, blocked the lens momentarily, and he repeated, “Freeaaaak,” and laughed.
“You’re such a prick, Al.” Melissa’s voice, unimpressed. “And get out of the way.”
Lila came back into view, dancing with a hot-if-you-like-jock dark-haired boy who was all biceps and chest. He took a mouthful of beer and then kissed Lila, transferring it into hers, and then they both laughed, coughing.
“Gross!” Lila said, but then kissed him again anyway.
The boy came up close to the camera, smiling.
“Enough already, Melissa.” Something about his eyes—
“Wait,” Anna said. “Is that Jamie?” How could this be the same person?
So strong and full of life and different from the scrawny junkie at the motel.
She needed a photo like this for her piece.
Compared with a picture of how he was now, it would be a perfect representation of what trauma and loss could do.
“You met him already, then?”
“Putting up posters.”
“Yeah, he’s tragic now. But that wasn’t what I was showing you. Look again.”
Anna did and frowned. “Not getting it.”
“That’s your house, dumbass!”
Anna suddenly saw it. The hallway. In the video, the kids were dancing and drinking in her hallway. “No way!”
Melissa laughed. “I know, right? People always partied there. Always empty and out of town enough that no one would notice or care.”
“How did you get in?”
“The little window in the basement doesn’t lock properly. Lila would crawl through, then open up. Not just us either. Kids have probably been partying there right up until you bought the place.”
Anna muted the video and watched it again. Lila dancing in her house. It was a strange feeling. Almost dread. She handed the phone back. “Sorry to have killed the vibe.”
“I’m sure they’ve already found somewhere else.”
“Lila was your friend, right?” Anna glanced over at the fierce girl. “You must still miss her.”
“Yeah, although not every day anymore. Well, not until recently. I guess with it being three years since Bonnie, it’s not only Jamie who’s thinking about their murders again.
Figured I’d try to say my final goodbyes.
” She sniffed. “But then sometimes I wonder if the dead ever really leave us.” She glanced around.
“Maybe this place is full of ghosts trying to find some rest, or maybe they’re waiting for all of us to catch them up.
I know people think when you’re gone, you’re gone, or in heaven or wherever, but I think sometimes energy is left behind, you know?
A part of a person, maybe. The trauma or whatever.
I can’t help feeling like Lila and Bonnie haven’t quite left town yet. ”
“Is Bonnie buried here too?”
“Over there. Family plot.”
Anna got up and wandered along the line until she found it. No photo but a simple epitaph: Bonnie Buchanan, only child of Don and Sandra, gone too soon. Melissa came alongside.
“I didn’t know Bonnie so well but I feel connected to her, after what happened.” She sniffed as Anna looked at her, quizzical. “It was me who found her.”
“You?”
“Yeah, the killer put her body on our farm. It was horrible.”
“No shit.” Anna stared at her.
“Yeah shit.” Melissa drained her beer and let out a belch.
“Not gonna lie, when that car stopped on Saturday night, I thought maybe I was going to be next. I kind of feel like if there’s going to be another murder, then it’ll be me.
You know, with one being my friend and the other being put on my farm. Like, me next. I sound insane, huh?”
“We’re all crazy under the skin.” Anna studied her, thoughtful. “You don’t think they got the right guy either? Like Jamie?”
“I don’t know if they did or they didn’t.
Maybe. Maybe not. But I can feel the tension building in this town.
Everyone’s on edge. Crops are failing. Like we’re all waiting for a storm of one kind or another.
The whole town’s skin tingling as if something is going to happen.
Something bad.” She smiled, rueful. “You picked a great time to move here.”
Anna couldn’t argue with that. She felt it too. All the oppressive heat. She looked at her phone. She’d been thirty minutes, and that was too long. “I need to get back.” She paused. “You want to trade numbers? Maybe we should look out for each other, just in case.”
“Sure.” Melissa dictated her digits and Anna stored them. “Although cell service is shit around here.” Melissa packed up her flashlight and the beer bottles and then they both scaled the fence and dropped down in the dark by the road.
Anna looked into the night. “You sure you’re okay to get home?”
“It’s fine.” Melissa grinned, her teeth white in the gloom. “And anyway, there’s still a week or so till death day. Lila died on the fifteenth, and Bonnie on the sixteenth. I guess if there’s a third murder, it’ll be Friday the seventeenth. Not quite the same horror movie ring to it.”
“Comforting. But message me when you’re home.”
Melissa nodded. “Good to meet you, City Anna.”
“You too, Country Melissa.” They went their separate ways into the night.