Chapter 9
Now
My car never felt more claustrophobic as I struggled to breathe, parked on the roadside and tapping open my phone’s web browser.
The remainder of my shift had passed in a blur of panic, of second-guessing my sanity, of my intuition pinging with some unnamed horror, until finally Larry, with a swat of his towel against the countertop, ordered me to go home and get it together.
Usually this would piss me off. Leaving early was for people with savings accounts, but what I was dealing with was more important than money.
I didn’t even make it around the corner before I pulled over, desperate to know if my hunch was right.
My search from earlier—Blake Willis—pulled up and I clicked on the first story, a recent news article updated since my last search, the night I read Frances’s leaves.
University of South Alabama softball player Andrea Conway, who was reported missing earlier this month, has been confirmed dead.
Her body was discovered in the Northern Alabama hamlet of Moss Grove.
Sources say she was traveling with boyfriend Blake Willis, who is still missing and is named as a person of interest. Anyone with news of Blake Willis’s whereabouts is encouraged to…
Nothing new here.
My hunch felt impossible—another grasp at connection…yet those eyes. So much time had passed since I’d last seen them. And even then, I’d not paid much attention. Only remembering because they were so blue and so bright. Lashes so thick on a little kid.
I almost wished I was wrong, and a big part of me thought I probably was.
I clicked back to the search results and scrolled through the links, mind swimming. It’s probably nothing. Just panic connecting the dots. Not memory or logic. No way. No freaking way.
Most links were the same news story regurgitated—Blake’s picture, his name, USA student, boyfriend, possible person of interest. I scanned each one, feeling like maybe I was indeed losing it.
I clicked an older article. My heart sank.
The report still referred to Andrea and Blake as missing, with no mention of Andrea’s body or of Blake being a suspect. The students’ parents made statements, begging for information.
Blake’s father wasn’t mentioned, but there was a photo of his mother standing behind a press conference podium, hands pleading. There was a stutter in my chest, because I’d seen this woman before.
Like her son, she was familiar, though less changed than Blake since I’d last seen them both ten years ago, when she’d attend high school football games with her husband. No, no, no, no.
The photo was captioned with a name. Allison Willis Fortenberry.
The wife of Shane Fortenberry. My English teacher.
Blake Willis was Mr. Fortenberry’s stepson.
That was why he looked familiar. He’d been at plenty of school events, plenty of ball games, back in Puddle Creek, following his stepdad around.
Talking to the older kids. His face had changed so much in ten years, but those bright eyes still shone like beacons, same as they had when Puddle Creek High girls fussed over him to win favor with his beloved stepdad.
I spiraled, hands trembling.
Does Blake know what we did? Is he baiting us, burying his girlfriend near a creek? Near my sister? Is he the one calling me at the Huddle Hut? Taunting me. Teasing me.
Then, a punch in my gut. Is Frances in danger?
Is he coming for her next?
Could my sister somehow feel him getting closer? Was that why she’d given our signal?
Because she had given our signal, dammit. It didn’t matter that the photos had been deleted from Instagram. I know what I saw.
My mind felt fried, unhinged. Forging theories faster than I could make sense of them.
I needed to see Frances. Now. My baby bird was always the smartest in the room. Always able to connect dots and set her emotions aside to solve a problem.
Yes, I needed to make sure she was okay, to be there for her, but the truth was I needed her help in figuring this out.
She’d blocked my number years ago, and I couldn’t risk her ignoring a social media DM. The only option was to go to her. Now.
Though she’d never given it to me, I knew my sister’s address by heart. It wasn’t hard to find. She was married to an Alabama Anderson, after all.
I’d spent countless hours on Google Earth, zooming in on her house and property. Imagining walking down her long driveway, having coffee on her front porch as we reminisced about old times.
Now I’d see it all in person. The thought made me dizzy.
I punched the address into my maps app.
With the windows down, the wind whipping stray hairs from my ponytail, I merged onto the causeway, blasting the radio as loud as it would go. It was no use. Even Stevie Nicks couldn’t distract me from the urgent warning in my chest. Go go go.
Eventually, the salt air gave way to the scent of pine, and that place behind my ribs, inside the internal door, still thrummed and thrashed and yelled for me to hurry. It had been yelling a lot, after years of silence.
I pressed harder on the gas, my old Malibu whining with effort as I rolled through small cities, then it was highways and backroads through one tiny town after another. At some point, hours later, the sun dipped low, and the burning pink and orange sky melted into a bruising purple.
Moss Grove really was out of the way but just as nice as it appeared online. Definitely not the kind of place you stumbled into accidentally. The cops from the diner were right. That girl’s body—Andrea, her name was Andrea—could not have been dumped here randomly.
I slowed, gaping at the gorgeous houses in the dimming light. I’d always known my sister and I lived different lives, but seeing it in person made it real in a way a photo never could.
What am I doing here? It hit me how I looked in my stained work tee and denim shorts. I didn’t smell much better, like sausage grease with a whiff of Barb’s cigarette. Charging off without a plan was a mistake. I looked crazy. Hell. Driving hours on a panicked whim? Maybe I was crazy.
Yes, I needed to see my sister. Needed to make sure she was okay. Needed the help of her big brain to figure out what was going on. But I likely had one shot to get through to her.
I should go home. Make a plan.
I’d have whipped a U-turn, but there was no shoulder along the winding road, so I kept going, telling myself I’d pull into the next gas station and fill up my car and my coffee cup before heading back to Persimmon Key.
But then I crossed over a small bridge.
It was the sandy banks that hugged each side of the water that changed my mind. Was this where they found her?
So close to where my baby bird lived, where she started a new life?
As if on cue, the app dinged, announcing my next turn, and then my destination would be ahead on the right. Less than ten minutes away.
The body. Her town. The signal. Our secret. A warning.
Blake.
The hole in my muffler coughed as I accelerated. Frances needed me. We needed each other.
And there was nothing I wouldn’t do to keep us safe.