The Leaving (33 page)

She slid down onto the couch under the weight of exhaustion. “She saw my texts. She knows we know.”

Lucas

He’d fallen asleep against his will and now struggled to rouse himself in the bedroom compartment. Then heard movement in the RV’s main room and grabbed an empty bottle by the neck. Moving quietly toward the hallway, he then burst into the other room with a loud “Who’s there?”

Avery.

The relief he felt at seeing her caught him off guard. He dropped the bottle. He wanted to rush to her, take her in his arms, inhale the chlorine and honeysuckle of her hair. He wanted to pretend he’d never told her he couldn’t be with her.

“You’re out?” She shook her head. “Obviously.” She stood. “I don’t understand. I should go.”

“Avery, wait.” He grabbed her by the arm and stood in front of her. “I didn’t kill John Norton. And I know what crazy theories are being thrown around, but I didn’t kill
anyone
.”

“But you can’t
prove
it.” She sounded equal parts sad and mad. Was there a word for that?

“Can’t prove that I’m a good person?” He looked around like the proof might be there, in his father’s writing on the walls. “No, but who
can? Can you? I was wrong, Avery. You
do
know me.” He stepped closer, stood right up against her the way she had with him on the lanai, when it had been all he could do to pull his body away from hers, like she’d been magnetized.

“I don’t.” She backed away, clearly not feeling the same pull.

“You do.” Moving closer still, but then backing away, giving her space. “And I’m going to go through everything in here again and I’m not going to stop until I get to the truth
and
find Max.”

“You sound like your father,” she said, not in a kind way.

“Good!”

“Everyone thought he was crazy.”

“Maybe I am, too. It doesn’t matter.” This was wasting time. “You can help me or you can leave.”

He’d brought his father’s laptop out here and now sat down at the desk to get to work, going through every file in a folder marked “Videos.” He heard her leave and had to stop himself from going after her. But then the door clicked open again and the floor creaked under her as she sat beside him. He took her hand, squeezed, then released.

They sifted through pages and pages of notes while playing videos of anniversary vigils and more. Most of the notes had been transferred to the whiteboards, and many of the news reports were repetitive, nothing actually new in the news. No connection to the shooting that they could directly see.

They went backward chronologically, working their way through the clips, one after the other, occasionally pausing to study a face—“Cham bers was so young,” Lucas said; “My mother loses it during this one,” Avery said—then moving on.

Finally, they were back to the night of the day it had happened, the first national report. Watching it, Lucas felt panic, like he was back there, reliving the whole thing as a kid but not as one of the missing kids. What
must it have felt like for Ryan? And for Avery. Not having any idea what was going on. Being shoved away from TVs and pushed out of rooms while her parents spent hours on the phone and crying.

And his father? What had gone through his head before he’d picked up a chisel and stone and committed himself to someday uncovering the truth?

“Chambers and the memory specialist are working this theory that what happened to us has to do with the shooting. Like trying to erase the memory of that.”

“That’s why they were asking if Max was there?”

“Yes.”

The next clip played. A woman holding a girl toddler. The toddler holding a stuffed dog. She wore pajamas; she looked cold.

“That’s me,” Avery said.

And the whole scene came into focus alongside Lucas’s feelings for Avery.

“I could only ever bring myself to watch this one once,” she said. “Years ago.”

“I’m sorry.” Lucas paused it. “We can stop.”

“No.” She leaned closer, to study her own image. “It’s okay.”

He slid his arm around the back of her chair.

“It’s so weird.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe that was ever . . .
me
. That I was ever that small. And just, like, clinging to my mother like that. And Woof-Woof—the dog—it’s just so . . . different, I guess. It all went away that night.”

“We
really
don’t have to watch.” He started to navigate away.

“Play it.” She nodded, and leaned back into her chair, into his arm. He felt the connection like a lifeline.

A reporter shouts out, “Has the school made an official statement? Has the bus been traced?”

Another man steps up to the mike. “We’re doing everything we can to help with the investigation. We have every expectation that the children will be returned safely.”

“Everyone looks so naive,” Lucas said. “They had no idea what was actually happening.”

Avery’s whole body stiffened, cold like a corpse, and he couldn’t think of what he’d said wrong. “Avery, are you—”

“‘It was only supposed to be for a few hours,’” she said, like reciting a line, in a trance.

“What?” He paused the video.

Again: “‘It was only supposed to be for a few hours.’”

“What does that mean?” He felt irritation at not understanding.

“He’s still alive.” Her eyes lit like fireflies.

“But—” How could she have figured that out just now? How could she know? “Max? How do you—?”

“Not Max.” She pointed at the screen, tapped twice. “The principal.”

AVERY

Only the whole world coming together and cracking open.

“He’s been calling the tip line.” Avery got up and paced. “Saying all these cryptic things. Except that maybe they’re not that cryptic once you know who he is?”

“We need to call Chambers,” Lucas said. “He needs to review the calls.”

She reached for her phone, then remembered. “I don’t have his number in here.”

They buried the body in his backyard.

Was
that
what he’d said?

“I left mine in Ryan’s car,” Lucas said. “I got out in a hurry. Come on.”

Avery followed Lucas and they peered into the backseat of the car with cupped hands at their eyes, but it wasn’t there. As they walked up toward the house, Chambers’s car appeared, rolling loudly over gravel.

How on earth—?

How could he have—?

“What are you doing here?” Lucas asked Chambers when he got out of his car.

“Your brother called me,” Chambers said. “Said it was urgent.”

“We were just going to call you,” Avery said. “We’ve been watching old news reports and—”

Ryan opened the front door of the house.

Scarlett appeared beside him.

“What’s going on? What are you doing here?” Lucas asked Scarlett.

“You have to find Miranda,” Ryan said to Chambers.

“She was with us,” Scarlett said. “She’s been here watching us.”

“And she took off,” Ryan said.

“The principal is still alive,” Avery said, and even though she felt like she was screaming, no one seemed to hear.

“Everybody inside,” Chambers said. “Now.”

In the living room he said, “One thing at a time. What’s this about Miranda?”

Scarlett showed everyone Sarah’s sketch, and Chambers turned to Ryan. “Anything at all that seemed off about her? Anything at all she may have said that might be a lead? She ever say anything about her family?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Ryan said. “She said her childhood was boring. That her parents were control freaks. She said they want ed her to get a real job. That kind of stuff, the stuff everyone says. I never met them.”

“Any suspicious phone calls?” Chambers asked. “Habits?”

Ryan looked bewildered. “No,” with a sad emphasis that made Avery want to throttle him.

“I need her address,” Chambers said. “Her friends’ names.”

“I don’t actually know any of her friends.”

“What is
wrong
with you?” Avery screamed. “How could you not have
seen
?” She rushed at him, pushed him on the chest.

“Avery, please,” Chambers said, touching her arm. “I’ve got this.”

She clenched her teeth so hard that her jawbones shifted.

Chambers let go of her arm and turned back to Ryan. “What did she do for work? Did she go to school?”

Avery couldn’t stand to listen—some Etsy/eBay nonsense. If they’d figured this out sooner, maybe they could have found and rescued them all months ago. They could have known the truth about Max and been done with it.

“So I’ll look into it,” Chambers was saying. “And we’ll have a team come here to dust for prints.” Then he turned to Scarlett. “You said there was another sketch?”

Scarlett nodded—“A house”—and held her phone out to Chambers again. “Maybe it’s near Anchor Beach.”

“I need you to send me both of those,” Chambers said.

“Can I talk now?” Avery said, not hiding her impatience well and not caring.

“Yes,” Chambers said. “Of course.”

“The person calling the tip line that everyone wrote off as crazy is actually the principal. I recognized his voice.” She was running out of air, slowed down. “He said they were blackmailing him, burying a body in his yard. And how it was only supposed to be for a few hours that they were gone. How the place where you found that body wasn’t the right place. He sounds terrified. He said they’re watching him.”

Miranda had been watching, too? How did she even fit in?

Chambers said he needed the transcripts or recordings immediately and offered to drive her home. When they got up to leave, she caught Lucas’s eye and he walked them out, followed her to the squad car.

“Good work,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said. “You, too.”

Chambers had already started the car, was calling ahead to her house.

She watched out the window as they passed the psychic’s storefront, a candle flickering beneath the neon sign:

Know Your Future.

As if.

Dad was waiting at the door.

S
c
a
r
l
et
t

“Do I look like him?” Scarlett asked her mother. “My father?”

Chambers had dropped off her clothes and photographs earlier that day, while she’d been at Anchor Beach. Now she sat at the dining room table in pajamas—her hair wet from a long bath—studying her younger self. She held a photo out to her mother and said, “I really don’t think I look like you, so . . .”

“He’s not the answer you need,” Tammy said, taking the photo.

“Answer?” Scarlett said.

“I know you feel like you don’t belong here . . . with me.” Her voice shaky.

“It’s not that . . .” Scarlett ran out of steam.

“No, it’s okay.” Her mother waved a hand. “When you were little I was like, where did this kid come from? ’Cause you were so smart—smarter than me, and I didn’t know what to do with that.” She put the photo down. “So I’ll give you his name and address, even, and sure, you have his eyes and something around the chin that’s similar, but I’m tellin’ ya. He ain’t what you’re looking for.” Looking up, finally, she said, “It’s late. I’m turning in.” She got up and came over and kissed Scarlett on the forehead.

The warm, damp spot on her head became so distracting.

The whole day such a jumble.

Miranda’s betrayal.

The principal’s role in the whole thing.

The revelation that she’d witnessed the shooting.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the shooting?” Scarlett said. “That I was there.”

Tammy shrugged one shoulder. “Didn’t seem like a happy thing to remind you of if you didn’t remember it yourself. And the truth is, I don’t really remember it, either.”

“You must.” This time it was Scarlett who Comet came to visit. Scarlett reached out to pet her, for the first time.

“I remember I got blood on me, and you asked me if I was going to die, and I said, no, of course not, but you said, ‘But everybody dies, right?’ And you started to cry and said, ‘Promise me you won’t die.’” She ran a hand over Scarlett’s hair. “That’s when I realized we were stuck with each other, you and me. Maybe that was the first time I got terrified—that you needed me so bad—and then, you know the rest, the drinking got real bad after that. I remember it the way you remember a dream, and that’s fine for me.”

Scarlett nodded and Tammy smiled and padded down the hall. “He brought that weird jacket, by the way. It’s in the closet.”

Scarlett got up and went to the closet and gently pulled it off a hanger. She turned it around in her hands, inhaled it—some familiar perfume—and then was about to put it on when her eye caught on some stitching on the inner lining.

Rectangles, like the ones she’d sewn absentmindedly a few times now.

Only here they had little circles of stitches on top of them.

So not rectangles.