All the Missing Girls Read online

  One decade, twenty miles away, and I can see my house. The front door. The overgrown path and the weeds pushing through the gravel of the driveway. I hear that screen door creak open, and Tyler’s voice: Nic? And it sounds a little deeper than my memory, a little closer.

  Almost home now.

  Down the exit, left at the stoplight, the pavement cracked and gray.

  A sign freshly staked into the ground at the corner, the bottom streaked with dried mud—the county fair, back in town—and something flutters in my chest.

  There’s the CVS with the group of teenage boys loitering at the side of the lot, like Charlie Higgins used to do. There’s the strip of stores, different letters stenciled in the windows from when I was a kid, except for Kelly’s Pub, which was as close to a landmark as we had. There’s the elementary school and, across the street, the police station, with Corinne’s case file stored in some back closet, gathering dust. I imagined all the evidence boxed away and tucked in a corner, because there was no place else to put her. Lost in the shuffle, forgotten with time.

  The electrical cables strung above us on the roadside, the church that most everyone went to, whether you were Protestant or not. And beside it, the cemetery. Corinne used to make us hold our breath as we drove past. Hands on the ceiling over the railroad tracks, a kiss when the church bells chimed twelve, and no breathing around the dead. She made us do it even after my mother died. Like death was a superstition, something we could outwit by throwing salt over our shoulders, crossing our fingers behind our backs.

  I took my phone out at the stoplight and called Everett. I got his voicemail, like I knew I would. “Made it,” I said. “I’m here.”

  * * *

  THE HOUSE WAS EVERYTHING I imagined those last nine hours. The path from the driveway to the front porch now overtaken by the yard, Daniel’s car pulled all the way to the side of the carport beside the garage to leave space for mine, the weeds scratching my bare ankles as I walked from smooth stepping-stone to smooth stepping-stone, my legs stretching by memory. The ivory siding, darker in places, bleached from the sun in others, so I had to squint to look directly at it. I stood halfway between my car and the house, forming a list in my head: Borrow a pressure washer, find a kid with a riding mower, get a few pots of colored flowers for the porch . . .

  I was still squinting, my hand shielding my eyes, as Daniel rounded the corner of the house.

  “Thought I heard your car,” he said. His hair was longer than I remembered, at his chin—same length mine was before I left here for good. He used to keep it buzzed short, because the one time he let it grow out, people said he looked like me.

  It seemed lighter all grown out—more blond than not blond—whereas mine had turned darker over the years. He was still pale like me, and his bare shoulders were already turning bright red. But he’d gotten thinner, the hard lines of his face more pronounced. We could barely pass for siblings now.

  His chest was streaked with dirt, and his hands were coated in soil. He wiped his palms against the sides of his jeans as he walked toward me.

  “And before three-thirty,” I said, which was ridiculous. Of the two of us, he was always the responsible one. He was the one who’d dropped out of school to help with our mom. He was the one who’d said we needed to get our dad some help. He was the one now keeping an eye on the money. My being relatively on time was not going to impress him.

  He laughed and wiped the backs of his hands against the sides of his jeans again. “Nice to see you, too, Nic.”

  “Sorry,” I said, throwing myself into a hug, which was too much. I always did this. Tried to compensate by going to the other extreme. He was stiff in my embrace, and I knew I was getting dirt all over my clothes. “How’s the job, how’s Laura, how are you?”

  “Busy. As irritable as she is pregnant. Glad you’re here.”

  I smiled, then ducked back in the car for my purse. I wasn’t good with niceties from him. Never knew what to do with them, what he meant by them. He was, as my father was fond of saying, hard to read. His expression just naturally looked disapproving, so I always felt on the defensive, that I had something to prove.

  “Oh,” I said, opening the back door to my car, shifting boxes around. “I have something for her. For you both. For the baby.” Where the hell was it? It was in one of those gift bags with a rattle on the front, with glitter inside that shifted every time it moved. “It’s here somewhere,” I mumbled. And the tissue paper had tiny diapers with pins, which I didn’t really understand, but it seemed like a Laura thing.

  “Nic,” he said, his long fingers curled on top of the open car door, “it can wait. Her shower’s next weekend. I mean, if you’re not busy. If you want to go.” He cleared his throat. Uncurled his fingers from the door. “She’d want you to go.”

  “Okay,” I said, standing upright. “Sure. Of course.” I shut the door and started walking toward the house, Daniel falling into stride beside me. “How bad is it?” I asked.

  I hadn’t seen the house since last summer, when we moved our dad to Grand Pines. Back then there was a chance that it was a temporary move. That’s what we’d told him. Just for now, Dad. Just till you’re better. Just for a little bit. It was clear now that he wasn’t going to get better, that it wasn’t going to be for just a little bit. His mind was a mess. His finances were messier, a disaster that defied all logic. But at least he had the house. We had the house.

  “I called to have the utilities turned back on yesterday, but something’s wrong with the AC.”

  I felt my long hair sticking to the back of my neck, my sundress clinging to my skin, the sweat on my bare legs, and I hadn’t even been here five minutes. My knees buckled as I stepped onto the splintered wooden porch. “Where’s the breeze?” I asked.

  “It’s been like this all month,” he said. “I brought over some fans. There’s nothing structural other than the AC. Needs paint, lightbulbs, a good cleaning, and we need to decide what to do with everything inside, obviously. It would save a lot of money if we can sell it ourselves,” he added with a pointed look in my direction. This was where I came in. In addition to my dealing with Dad’s paperwork, Daniel wanted me to sell the house. He had a job, a baby on the way, a whole life here.

  I had two months off. An apartment I was subletting for the extra cash. A ring on my hand and a fiancé who worked sixty-hour weeks. And now a name—Corinne Prescott—bouncing around in my skull like a ghost.

  He pulled the screen door open, and the familiar creak cut straight to my gut. It always did. Welcome back, Nic.

  * * *

  DANIEL HELPED UNLOAD MY car, carrying my luggage to the ­second-floor hall, stacking my personal items on the kitchen table. He swiped his arm across the counter, and particles of dust hung in the air, suspended in a beam of sunlight cutting through the window. He coughed, his arm across his face. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t get to the inside yet. But I got the supplies.” He gestured toward a cardboard box on the counter.

  “That’s why I’m here,” I said.

  I figured if I planned to live here for the duration, I should start in my room, so I had a place to sleep. I passed my suitcase at the top of the stairs and carried the box of cleaning supplies, balanced on my hip, toward my old room. The floorboards squeaked in the hall, a step before my door, like always. The light from the windows cut through the curtains, and everything in the room looked half there in the muted glow. I flipped the switch, but nothing happened, so I left the box in the middle of the floor and pulled back the curtains, watching as Daniel headed back from the detached garage with a box fan under his arm.

  The yellow comforter covered with pale daisies was still rumpled at the bottom of my bed, as if I had never left. The indentations in the sheets—a hip, a knee, the side of a face—as if someone had just woken. I heard Daniel at the front door and I pulled the comforter up quickly, smoothing out the bumps and
ridges.

  I opened both windows—the one with the lock that worked and the one with the lock that broke sometime in middle school, which we never got fixed. The screen was gone, which was no great loss; it had been torn and warped from years of abuse. From me pushing out the bottom, crawling onto the sloped roof, dropping into the mulch that hurt only if you misjudged the distance, night after night. The type of thing that made perfect sense when I was seventeen but now seemed ridiculous. I couldn’t climb back in, so I’d sneak in the back door and creep up the stairs, avoiding the creak in the hallway. I probably could’ve sneaked out the same way, saved myself the jump, saved my screen the damage.

  As I turned back around, the room now bathed in light, I noticed all the little things that Daniel had already done: A few of the pictures were off the walls, the yellow paint discolored where they’d hung; the old shoe boxes that had been up high in the closet, stacked neatly against the wall in the back corner; and the woven throw rug that had been my mother’s when she was a child, out in the middle of the floor, pulled from under the legs of my bed.

  I heard the creak in the floorboard, Daniel in my doorway, box fan under his arm. “Thanks,” I said.

  He shrugged. “No problem.” He angled it in the corner and flipped the switch. Heaven. “Thanks for coming, Nic.”

  “Thanks for starting my room,” I said, shifting on my feet. I didn’t get how other siblings had such an easy relationship. How they could ease back into childhood in a heartbeat, dropping all formalities. Daniel and I were about to spend the day tiptoeing around our empty house and thanking each other to death.

  “Huh?” he said as he turned the power up on the fan, so the low hum became a steady white noise, muffling the sounds from the outside.

  “My room.” I gestured toward the walls. “Thanks for taking the pictures down.”

  “I didn’t,” he said, pausing in front of the fan and closing his eyes for a second. “Must’ve been Dad.”

  Maybe. I couldn’t remember. I was here a year ago, the night after we’d moved him out, but the details . . . the details were lost. Were the shoe boxes down? Were the pictures off the wall? I felt like I would’ve remembered that. That whole night was a blur.

  Daniel didn’t know I had come back here instead of driving straight home, like I told him I had to—I have work, I have to go. I came back here, wandering from room to room, dry-eyed and shaken, like a kid lost in the middle of the county fair, searching the crowd for a familiar face. Curling up on the sheets in the empty house until I heard the engine out front and the doorbell I didn’t answer. The creak of the screen, the key in the door, his boots on the steps. Until Tyler was leaning against my bedroom wall. I almost missed you, he’d said. You okay?

  “When was the last time you were here?” I asked Daniel.

  He scratched his head, stepping closer to the fan. “I don’t know. I drive by, pop my head in from time to time, or if I need to get something for Dad. What is it?”

  “Nothing,” I said. But it wasn’t nothing. Now I was imagining the shadow of someone else in the room. Rifling through my boxes. Moving my rug. Looking. Searching. It was the feeling that my things were not where they should be. It was the uneven imprints of dust, revealed in the sunlight. Or maybe it was just my perspective. I grew, and the house got smaller. At my place, I slept in a queen-size bed that took up about half my apartment, and Everett had a king. This full-size bed looked like it was meant for a child.

  I wondered, if I curled up on the mattress, whether I would feel the indentation from someone else. Maybe just the ghost of me. I yanked the sheets off the bed and brushed past Daniel. The crease between his eyes deepened as he watched me.

  By the time I got back upstairs after putting in the load of wash, the room felt a little more like mine. Like Daniel and me, the room and I took some time to grow accustomed to each other again. I took off the ring and placed it in the chipped ceramic bowl on my nightstand before tackling the bathroom and the dresser drawers. After, I sat on the floor in front of the fan and leaned back on my elbows.

  Hour two and I was already procrastinating. I had to go see Dad. I had to bring the paperwork and listen to him talk in circles. I had to ask him what he meant in that letter and hope that he remembered. I had to pretend it didn’t sting when he forgot my name.

  Didn’t matter how many times it had happened before. It gutted me every time.

  * * *

  I GATHERED UP THE guardianship paperwork to bring to Dad’s doctor—to start the process. So that, in life’s biggest irony, we would become guardians to our father and his assets. As I prepared to leave, I heard faint, muffled noises from outside—closing of doors, revving of a motor. I figured Daniel must’ve called someone about the yard. But then the screen door creaked, cutting through the noise of the fan.

  “Nic?” I knew that voice like twelve years of history filed down into a single memory, a single syllable.

  I leaned toward my window. Saw Tyler’s truck idling on the side of the road. Some girl in the passenger seat. Daniel’s sun-scorched back facing me as he leaned against the open window of the truck, talking to her.

  Shit.

  I spun around just in time to see Tyler standing in front of my open bedroom door.

  “Figured it’d be rude not to come in and say hi.”

  I smiled without meaning to, because it was Tyler. A knee-jerk reaction.

  “Kind of like not knocking?” I said, which made him laugh—but at me. I was going transparent, and I hated it.

  He didn’t say How’ve you been or What have you been up to or ask if I missed him, joking but not. He didn’t mention the boxes or the luggage or my hair, which was longer than last year and curled into submission. But I saw him taking it all in. I was doing the same.

  Face just a bit fuller, brown hair just a bit wilder, blue eyes just a bit brighter. When we were younger, he had these dark circles under his eyes that never went away, even if he’d spent the entire day sleeping. They kind of added to his appeal, but now that they were gone, he looked just as good. More youthful. Happier.

  “Dan didn’t tell me you’d be getting here today,” he said, now fully inside my room.

  Daniel liked us both fine apart, just not together. When I was sixteen, he told me I’d get a reputation if I started hanging around a guy like Tyler—I’m still not sure whether the slight was against me or against Tyler—and he never seemed to get over the fact that he was wrong.

  “He didn’t tell me you were coming today, either,” I said, crossing my arms.

  “In his defense, I was supposed to drop the mower off on my lunch break five hours ago.” He shrugged. “But I had to be in the area anyway. Two birds, right?”

  I peered over my shoulder to check out the girl, but also for the opportunity to look anywhere other than at him. While it took Daniel and me days to slide back into some form of comfort with each other, Tyler and I took no time at all. Didn’t matter how long it had been or what we last said to each other. He stands in my room and it’s spring break two years ago. He takes a step forward and it’s the summer after college graduation. He says my name and I’m seventeen.

  “Date?” I asked, seeing a blond ponytail, a skinny arm hanging out the window.

  He grinned. “Something like that.”

  I looked over my shoulder again. “Better get back out there,” I said. “Daniel’s probably warning her off.” Daniel’s upper body disappeared farther into the truck, and I jumped at the sound of the horn. “By the way,” I said, “that wasn’t your date.”

  When I turned back around, Tyler was even closer. “If I didn’t know any better,” he said, “I’d guess he didn’t want me around his little sister.”

  I kept myself from smiling at the running joke, because this was the dangerous part. Didn’t matter that there was a girl in his car or that he was heading out on a date this very s
econd. Because every time I came back, this was what happened. Didn’t matter that I’d leave again or that he wouldn’t. That we never talked about the past or the future. That he’d give up something else for me and I’d pretend not to notice.

  “I’m engaged,” I said. I said it fast, forcing out the words.

  “Yeah, that part he told me.” He eyed my hand, my bare finger.

  I ran my thumb against the skin. “It’s on the nightstand,” I said. “Didn’t want to get it dirty.” Which seemed ridiculous and pretentious and everything Tyler would hate about a girl and a ring.

  It made him laugh. “Well, let’s see it, then.” Like a dare.

  “Tyler . . .”

  “Nic . . .”

  I tipped the ceramic bowl over into my palm and tossed him the ring as if it weren’t worth more than him and me combined. His eyes went wide for a minute as he turned it over in his hand. “No shit, Nic. Good for you. Who’s the lucky guy?”

  “His name’s Everett.”

  He started to laugh again, and I bit my lip to keep from smiling. I’d thought the same thing when we met—my neighbor’s Ivy Leaguing college roommate, partner in Daddy’s law firm. I’d thought, Of course that’s his name. Of course. But Everett had surprised me. He kept on surprising me.

  “His name is Everett and he got you this ring,” Tyler continued. “Of course he did. When’s the date?”

  “No date yet,” I said. “Just . . . eventually.”

  He nodded and tossed it back the same way I’d thrown it to him. Like flipping a coin or tossing one into a fountain. Heads or tails. Make a wish. Penny for your thoughts.

  “How long are you staying?” he asked as I dropped the ring back in the bowl.

  “Not sure. As long as it takes. I’m off for the summer.”