Chapter Twenty-Two Kaitlyn
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kaitlyn
As soon as she steps into the police station, Kaitlyn wonders if she’s doing the right thing.
Just being here makes her feel complicit, like someone is going to come up behind her and put her in cuffs simply for knowing too much.
But really, the problem is that she doesn’t know enough.
She’s here because she’s ready to start learning the truth.
Grief, Kaitlyn always believed, was something felt by everyone and best felt together.
What she didn’t realize: just how differently shared grief could manifest itself.
Following their parents’ death, Kaitlyn pushed away everyone except Amanda, while it seemed Kaitlyn was the sole person Amanda didn’t want to see.
Even more painful than the pictures—an endless parade of them on Instagram, showing parties and trips with people Kaitlyn had never seen in her life—was the silence.
Amanda didn’t need her; that much was made clear. She began to wonder if anyone did.
For a while, Kaitlyn simply went through the motions of daily life, feeling like she was playing a losing game (and a boring one at that).
Sleep, eat, work, repeat. Lying on her couch, scrolling through pictures of her sister on yet another jaunt to Nashville or New York City, she’d wonder whether all the rituals required of a functional adult—all the scrubbing and shaving and brushing and buffing and folding and flossing—were worth the trouble.
She would only have to do them all again the next day.
How much easier it would be to just sleep and let the filth consume her.
Things improved eventually. Even while Amanda continued to keep her at arm’s length, Kaitlyn found solace in the shooting range and ShrinkGPT.
And strangely, these past few months spent investigating the mystery of her sister made her feel more alive than she had in a long, long time—even before her parents’ passing.
It was kind of nice, finally feeling needed.
While Kaitlyn stands in the lobby of the police station, hesitating, a behemoth of an officer brushes past her, so close she can smell his woody aftershave.
Detective Burrows, his badge reads, and instantly, the name triggers a memory: He was one of the two officers Kaitlyn spoke to back in June, when she first reported Amanda as missing.
Chances are he wouldn’t recognize her, but still, Kaitlyn ducks her head until he pushes through the doors.
It would be difficult to explain why the person she claimed was in danger is now the person she’s here to investigate.
At the front desk, a woman attempts to give her a smile that ends up looking more like a grimace. “You need something?”
“I do,” Kaitlyn says, summoning confidence.
In moments like these, when a self-esteem boost is needed, Kaitlyn used to ask herself, What would Amanda do?
Now—after learning about her sister’s recent behavior from Townsend—she’s a little afraid to ask that question.
“I’d like to request a copy of an accident report. ”
The receptionist snaps her gum. “Names of involved drivers and passengers?”
“Martin and Josephine Reade,” she says, and though it isn’t necessary, she can’t help but explain: “My parents.”
The woman glances up at her through the thick glass separating them.
Kaitlyn thinks she’s going to apologize for her loss, as so many others already have, but instead, she turns her attention back to her computer screen.
It’s impossible to say whether Kaitlyn feels relief for escaping this empty, obligatory exchange or a little disappointed.
Maybe it would have been nice, having the enormity of what she’s about to do be acknowledged.
Nearly two and a half years have passed, and still Kaitlyn has never tried to find out exactly what caused her parents’ death.
A car accident was enough for her; she didn’t need to hear the gory details.
But ever since Townsend planted the stupid idea in her head that Amanda was somehow involved, Kaitlyn can’t help thinking there’s more to the story than she realized.
Six dollars and an hour later, she sits on her couch, reading through the report but not quite absorbing the words.
Erratic steering result of suspected wheel misalignment; indications of prior frame damage.
As far as Kaitlyn knew, her parents had never gotten into so much as a minor fender bender before the accident that claimed their lives; they were steady, careful, hands-at-ten-and-two drivers.
How had their car’s frame become damaged?
And did that frame damage later cause them to go careening off the road?
A memory comes back to Kaitlyn then, so sharp and urgent that she wonders if it’s an invention of her own mind: a chilly night in late February, not long before their parents’ death.
A three a.m. phone call from Amanda. She’s sobbing, howling, saying she didn’t mean to hit the curb; she didn’t think she was that drunk, and she thought she could make it home without an issue.
Kaitlyn, still fuzzy with sleep, telling her sister to go to bed, check out the damage in the morning, tell their parents the truth, don’t do it again.
She wonders: Was it possible Amanda’s careless driving that night damaged the frame and caused the wheel to become misaligned? Was it possible Amanda never told their parents the truth, so they proceeded to get into their car, totally unaware they could lose control at any moment?
When Townsend first accused Amanda of killing their mom and dad, Kaitlyn’s mind immediately leaped to clichés. Agatha Christie–like motivations. Maybe Amanda knew the bulk of the estate would be left to her. Maybe she killed them on purpose to get the money.
But if anything, this revelation is more sinister, because it’s at once so mundane and so much more real.
It’s classic Amanda, Kaitlyn thinks coldly.
Killing their parents in the laziest way possible.
All she had to do was tell their parents the truth about damaging their car, and she could have saved them. This tragedy could have been avoided.
Instead, her selfish sister cared more about covering her ass than facing the consequences of her actions.
Bitterness lurches inside her like some untamed beast, clawing to escape.
Sure, Amanda has never been afraid of telling a lie, but Kaitlyn never imagined her sister would be capable of a deceit like this.
And now, Amanda is somewhere out there, firing off unhinged missives to her ex without a single thought to the mess she’s left in her wake.
She doesn’t know what she hopes to accomplish, exactly, but for some reason, Kaitlyn finds herself driving to Amanda’s empty apartment, which she hasn’t visited since June.
Stepping through the threshold, she notices that the stench of bleach—so strong it stung her nostrils the first time she broke in over a month ago—has since dissipated; the unshakable feeling that something bad occurred in this place has not.
A thin layer of dust coats the side table by her sister’s front door, and Kaitlyn runs her finger through it, leaving a long streak.
If you’re not here, she thinks, then where the fuck are you, Amanda?
The last time she was here, Kaitlyn found that gold class ring, which ultimately led her to Townsend. Tracking him down may have been a bust, but perhaps there is something else in this apartment that can offer Kaitlyn clarity about where Amanda is hiding—or who she even is.
Just like the first time she ransacked this place, she starts with the drawers, working her way from the tiny kitchen over to the bed, which is sectioned off from the rest of the studio with a bookcase.
Lifting up the bedsheets, she sees nothing out of place, and peeking under the bed, she finds only dust bunnies.
No notes, no fingerprints, no stray hairs, no blood stains.
Not a single clue to indicate where Amanda went and whether she went there willingly.
The only new item Kaitlyn finds is a flyer advertising a protest of the polarizing I-35 expansion.
Strange—she never once thought of her sister as an activist. Perhaps this is yet another facet of Amanda’s personality that Kaitlyn never witnessed for herself.
She is just about to leave when she notices a nail hammered into an otherwise empty wall in the kitchen, one she could have sworn used to hold a piece of art.
It takes her a moment before she remembers: A topless black-and-white modeling shot of her sister used to hang there, and now it’s gone.
Though it feels odd to take a picture of something that isn’t there, Kaitlyn pulls out her phone and snaps a photo of the bare wall.
That’s when a text message bubbles up on her screen.
Hi Kaitlyn. It’s Will Dupont, the text says. Hope you’re doing okay. Just wanted to let you know that I saw our buddy Townsend Fuller yesterday, and it made me think of you.
Her curiosity is piqued. Where did you see Townsend?
His response comes almost instantly. He came into the Rutland office and met with one of our partners. I was going to say hi, but he looked stressed AF, so I left him alone.
A tingle of suspicion creeps up Kaitlyn’s spine at the thought of Townsend speaking to a lawyer.
Could he have done something to Amanda after all?
But that couldn’t be. Townsend had shown Kaitlyn all those threatening messages from her sister.
If anything, he’s probably seeking legal action against Amanda, a thought that makes Kaitlyn feel too ashamed to keep the conversation going.
Strangely enough, this is the second time someone has brought up Townsend to her this week.
After much cajoling, Kaitlyn had finally agreed to a second date with the data science professor last Saturday night, if only for the distraction.
Once the drinks started flowing, her guard fell away, and she even handed the professor her phone to scroll through pictures of her windowsill herb garden.
But her date swiped one image too far, coming across a screenshot she’d taken a month earlier of Townsend at his alumni holiday party.
“Wait, I know this guy,” she told Kaitlyn, tapping her finger on the screen.
“You do?”
“Yeah. Small world. He hired me to do a project for him.”
“What kind of project?” Kaitlyn asked, but Eileen wouldn’t elaborate; apparently she’d signed an NDA.
Figures, Kaitlyn thought. Even if Townsend wasn’t guilty of hurting her sister, he was surely guilty of something.
The lobby was miraculously empty when Kaitlyn first entered Amanda’s building, and though she hoped to have the same luck when exiting, she instead finds the landlord waiting for her at the bottom of the steps, idly sweeping the floor.
“I thought I heard someone up there.” The man squints, as though trying to place her. “You new here?”
He doesn’t recognize her from the last time she was here.
This doesn’t surprise her; Kaitlyn is used to being forgotten.
She considers lying, but she just doesn’t have her sister’s gift for it.
“My sister lives in 3C. Amanda Reade.” She hesitates, and then—before this man can lecture her—adds, “I know she’s so behind on rent but—”
“Nah. She’s good.” The landlord shakes his head, his wispy gray ponytail flapping behind him.
“What do you mean?” Her sister is attractive, yes, but is she really hot enough to get herself excused from several months’ worth of rent?
“The woman has been coming by to pay it.”
This Kaitlyn didn’t expect. “The woman?”
“She comes by once a month to drop off cash. Said she works with Amanda.”
Her pulse quickens. Someone is paying Amanda’s rent? She can’t think of any reason why someone would be so generous . . . unless . . . “Who is this woman?”
“I don’t know. Just some lady.”
“Can you describe her?” Kaitlyn pushes.
The landlord sighs, clearly bored with this line of questioning. “Youngish. Dark hair. Good looking. I’m getting paid, so I don’t really care who she is.”
“Okay.” It doesn’t seem like she’s going to get anything else from this man, so Kaitlyn reaches into her bag with sweaty palms and pulls out a crumpled receipt and a pen.
Just moments before, she was ready to write her sister off as the worst kind of fuckup, but now, she once again—perhaps foolishly—feels a flicker of uncertainty.
Maybe Amanda is not off on a bender after all. Maybe Kaitlyn has been on this wild-goose chase for good reason.
“I’m going to write down my number,” she tells him. “Do you think you could call me the next time she comes by? Maybe even get a picture?”
Heaving another sigh, the man accepts the slip of paper. “Sure. If I remember.”
That isn’t good enough. This is finally a lead; Kaitlyn can sense it. “Please. It’s important.”
Her desperation must be palpable, because the landlord says, slightly more convincingly, “Okay. Yes. I will.”
“Thank you.”
Kaitlyn takes a deep breath, feeling—for the first time in days—like she might actually be close to some answers.