Heather(86)

Ben? But no, your husband is not the type to snoop. Your sons? You doubt they have the guile to take something of yours and not ask you about it. Blair? Would she even recognize what it is? When, though? When was the last time you even dared to open this bag, dared to acknowledge its existence? A year, at least. Who knows how long these pieces of your past have been taken or lost?

All those pictures of Sabrina you snuck while you were practicing for yearbook committee. The picture of the Coyote and his friends. You have held on to these things for so many years, the promise of evidence, the promise of seeing Sabrina’s face again. And it was that possibility that kept you from developing it. You were waiting for a time when it would not hurt so much to see her, not how you used to, but as an adult, from a place of safety. You would not be able to bear the anger in her face. The hurt. She, like you, had been a girl who had seen and been through more than most at her age, and yet had so much to learn.

You hadn’t promised a photo to the detective, and you felt relief in that, as you handed over the notebook and lighter. You would have sounded insane. More insane. And you hadn’t told her the truth about the last time you saw the bracelet. Broken. That in your jewelry box you keep a single amber bead. It would have brought you close, too close. To the moment everything changed.

The detective had said she was not here for punishment, not here to investigate you. That she wanted to help. Even if that is true you feel it, the woods, the ever-present mineral cool, creeping into your body. The woods, the long shadows of the trees, coming for you again.





CALLIE


She heads from Annabelle’s to Jane’s, needs to go straight there in order to arrive on time to help while Damien leads an evening snowshoeing group for a few hours. She keeps the music off out of habit, though here she would get enough service to play anything on her phone or scan through more than three stations on the radio. In the silence she hears the clicking of the knitting needles, the unlikely perfect shapes emerging in the laps of those milky-eyed women. The bodies that remembered what their past selves had done.

She looks over to her passenger seat. Before she left, Annabelle had handed her a notebook. On the front, a jagged imperative. SABRINA’S. KEEP OUT!!!

“Where did you get this?” Callie had asked her.

“I took it before I left.”

Callie hadn’t known what to say. Annabelle shifting before her eyes. Callie had been ready to peg her as a victim, driven desperate and senseless by pain and shock. But then there’s this version of Annabelle too: the Annabelle who had her wits about her enough to take this notebook, to hoard it away as evidence. The Annabelle who understood consequences. Who held on to reason.

“Is there something in here in particular I should see?” Callie had asked, avoiding all the other, thornier questions crowding her mind. How did you do it? How did you get away, and how did you disappear?

“The star drawing shows up twice. It’s the necklace he gave her.”

“Do you know why she and Billy Fauver fought about it? He said she yelled at him, that she claimed he ruined her life over a necklace.”

Annabelle had blinked. “Sorry. That name. I—”

“He’s still in the Pines. Runs an autobody shop.” Relief surges through her. Fauver is not the Coyote. Not her father. One small mercy.

“No, I don’t know why he would have said that. Sabrina said the Coyote gave it to her, but she was always taking things from him, too.”

“Like what?”

“The lighter, money … little things. She was a magpie like that.”

It makes Callie sad, the idea of this teenage girl so eager for someone’s scraps. Taking whatever she could get, maybe even with the idea of provoking him. It reminds her of something Jane told her about raising toddlers when Opal was acting up one day. That they think any attention is good attention, that they don’t always care about the difference between annoyance and affection so long as they’ve got a hold on you. And there had been other girls, according to Annabelle. “Maybe the necklace was meant for someone else?”

“Probably,” Annabelle said. “I don’t think they had that kind of … that kind of thing.” Callie watched her bring a hand to her chest, where a tangle of gold necklaces, each one bearing the first initial of one of her children, lay against her skin.

Callie slid the notebook under her arm, the lighter in her pocket. It seemed like nothing, but she wasn’t going to say that then. She simply promised she’d make copies and mail the original back as soon as she could.



* * *



She gets to Jane’s and the house is a mess. Bowls of congealed macaroni and cheese on the kitchen island, flies buzzing over spots of spilled juice. A splatter of what might be yogurt on the floor near the dishwasher, days’ worth of dishes in an unsteady pile in the sink. She files this away as more evidence: that Damien isn’t able to pull his weight, that he’s getting out of control. She’s got the little green bag in her pocket, is waiting for the right time to show Jane that she knows, test out her theory that Luke’s in on the drug game and that’s why Jane hates him. Callie practices her script, knows that she has to come from a place of concern without Jane feeling like she’s being condescending.

He needs help. He can’t take care of you like this. You and Opal deserve him at his best. He needs to go away somewhere, needs to get better. His parents can help you. I’ll move in. Whatever you need.