She shakes her head no, buries her face into her hands. I hear a sniffle before she starts wailing into her palms, the tears dripping to the ground from between her fingers.
“It’s so awful,” she says, shaking her head over and over again. “Did you see the news?”
I exhale, relax slightly. She’s talking about Aubrey’s body. For a second, I’m irritated. I don’t want to talk about this right now. I want to move on; I want to forget. I keep walking, pushing toward my closed office door.
“I did,” I say, inserting my keys into the lock. “You’re right, it’s awful. But at least her parents have some closure now.”
She lifts her head from her hands and stares at me, her face confused.
“Her body,” I clarify. “At least they found it. That’s not always the case.”
Melissa knows about my father, my history. She knows about the Breaux Bridge girls and how those parents weren’t lucky enough to get their bodies back. If murder was judged on a sliding scale, presumed dead would be the furthest to the end. There’s nothing worse than a lack of answers, a lack of closure. A lack of certainty despite all the evidence pointing squarely in the face of the horrible reality you know in your heart to be true—but without a body, can’t possibly prove. There’s always that shred of doubt, that sliver of hope. But false hope is worse than no hope at all.
Melissa sniffs again. “What—what are you talking about?”
“Aubrey Gravino,” I say, my tone harsher than I intend it to be. “They found her body on Saturday in Cypress Cemetery.”
“I’m not talking about Aubrey,” she says slowly.
I turn toward her, my face the one twisted now. My key is still stuck in the lock, but I haven’t turned it yet. Instead, my arm hangs limp in the air. She walks to the coffee table and grabs a black remote, pointing it to the television mounted on the wall. I usually keep the TV off during office hours, but now she turns it on, the black screen coming alive to reveal another bright red headline:
BREAKING: SECOND BATON ROUGE GIRL GOES MISSING
Above the marquee of scrolling information is the face of another teen girl. I take in her features—sandy blonde hair obscuring her blue eyes and white lashes; muted freckles cascading across her pale, porcelain skin. I’m mesmerized by her perfectly clear complexion—her skin looks like a doll’s, untouchable—when the air exits my lungs and my arm falls to my side.
I recognize her now. I know this girl.
“I’m talking about Lacey,” she says, a tear gliding down her cheek as she stares into the eyes of the girl who sat in this very lobby three days ago. “Lacey Deckler is missing.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Robin McGill was my father’s second girl, his sequel. She was quiet, reserved, pale, and rail thin, with hair the color of a fiery sunset, something of a walking matchstick. She was not like Lena in any conceivable manner, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t save her. Because three weeks after Lena went missing, Robin did, too.
The fear that followed Robin’s disappearance had doubled in size from the fear that followed Lena’s. When a single girl goes missing, you can blame it on a lot of things. Maybe she was playing by the bog and slipped underwater, her body pulled down by the jaws of a creature lurking somewhere beneath the surface. A tragic accident—but not murder. Maybe it was a crime of passion; maybe she pissed off one too many boys. Or maybe she got pregnant and ran, a theory that had floated through town as thick and foul as marsh fog up until the day Robin’s face started appearing on the TV screen—and everybody knew Robin didn’t get pregnant and run. Robin was smart; she was bookish. Robin kept to herself and never wore a dress shorter than mid-calf. Until Robin’s disappearance, I had actually believed those theories. A runaway teen didn’t seem that unlikely, especially for Lena. Besides, it had happened before. It had happened with Tara. In a town like Breaux Bridge, murder seemed far more outlandish.
But when two girls go missing within the course of a month, it’s not a coincidence. It’s not an accident. It’s not circumstance. It’s calculated and cunning and far more terrifying than anything we had ever experienced before. Anything we thought possible.
Lacey Deckler’s disappearance is not a coincidence. I know it in my bones. I know it the way I knew it twenty years ago when I saw Robin’s face on the news; right now, standing in my office with my eyes glued to the television screen as Lacey’s freckled face stares back, I might as well be twelve again, getting off the school bus from summer camp as dusk approaches, running down that old dusty road. I see my father, crouching for me on the porch; I’m running toward him when I should have been running away. Fear grips me like a squeezing hand against my throat.