“Liv? What’s going on?”

  I backed away from the bar, though I was sure this guy could hear. There was nowhere to go for privacy. “Is Elyse with you?” I asked.

  “What? No, why would you think…” Trevor’s voice was both tense and gravelly, like we’d woken him and he was still trying to get his bearings.

  “I can’t find her, and she didn’t show up for work. And her car is at her place, but she’s not there. I just want to make sure she’s okay.” Like I knew Rick would do for me. I wasn’t sure who else would notice if something was wrong in Elyse’s life.

  A pause. “I’m not sure what you expect me to say. She’s not here.”

  “You weren’t seeing her? You weren’t with her? Any time in the last few days?”

  “No, I wasn’t seeing her. I haven’t seen her. Look, I barely know her, really.”

  Which was a protest too far. He knew her, and he liked her hanging around, and we all knew it. “Listen, she just up and quit, out of the blue, totally out of character…”

  “She quit? Well, none of my business.” His words were coming out clipped, irritated.

  “When did you last see her?”

  A sharp exhale. “I guess Friday night. With you. Listen, if that’s all…”

  “Just, can I give you my number? So you can let me know if she calls you?”

  He sniffed. “She wouldn’t. I mean, she doesn’t even have my number. Sorry, but I gotta go.”

  The call disconnected, and I stared at the man behind the bar. He hadn’t moved during the entire conversation.

  Hadn’t Trevor written his number on her hand just a few nights earlier? Or did he think I hadn’t noticed?

  The man walked around the bar, hand extended for his phone. “I recognize you,” he said, and my shoulders tensed on instinct. “You come in with that girl sometimes, the one with the dark hair?”

  “Elyse,” I said. “That’s Elyse.” How had I never noticed this man? Maybe that was why he seemed vaguely familiar. I wondered if this was the owner or the manager, maybe even the source of the establishment’s name.

  He nodded once, ran his hand back through his thinning hair, laced with a healthy dose of gray. “Can’t say I’m surprised she quit. The amount of time she’s here, I’m surprised she hasn’t been fired by now.”

  I didn’t respond, started walking for the door. This was no time for his judgmental tone. The nights we came out, we were blowing off steam. It was how people functioned.

  There were other logical possibilities, I knew, about where Elyse might be. She could’ve still been in her building, in another apartment down the hall. Or maybe when I’d arrived, she’d been at the glass-walled gym, which I hadn’t even thought to check.

  And that was why her door had been left unlocked.

  I was jumping to conclusions, seeing this place like Rick might now, with a different history, with its hidden dangers lurking under the surface. Operating like a detective, digging into the life of someone who probably just wanted to be left alone, threatening to turn her life into chaos for no reason.

  A body in the yard could do that to you.

  “Hey,” the man called, snapping his fingers. “I know where I’ve heard your name.”

  I’d just reached the glass doors, but I stopped walking, turned slowly. Held my breath.

  “Olivia Meyer. Right. That guy ever find you?”

  I blinked twice. I knew someone had asked for me on Friday night, and I’d assumed it was Jonah. I wasn’t sure how this man knew about that. “Which guy?”

  “Don’t know. He came in a few times last week. Each time, he’d ask for you by name. I didn’t know who you were until just now.”

  I scrolled through the old photos on my phone until I pulled up one of me and Jonah. It took a while to find; all the photos I had of us had been taken alone, in the confines of our own privacy. Jonah hated any pictures at all but occasionally indulged me. How secretive we thought we had been.

  I turned the photo the man’s way now. In it, Jonah was sitting on the sofa in my old apartment, watching television; I’d slouched across him to get the shot of us both. Jonah looked like he was smiling, but really, he’d been saying, What are you doing?

  “Is this him?” I asked.

  The man leaned forward, narrowing his eyes. “No, not that one, dear.” His face stretched into a smile for the first time, and it was unnerving.

  My stomach lurched. “Do you remember what he looked like? What he said?”

  “Not really. Maybe a little older than this one,” he said, pointing to my phone. “When you work at a place like this, you get to know pretty quickly what someone is after, though. Just like your friend Elyse.”

  His eyes were twinkling, and I knew he was enjoying this. That he got his kicks out of knowing more than everyone else, seeing everything.

  If it wasn’t Jonah, and it was an older man, I could place my bet. Most likely, Sean Coleman had come to the bar Friday evening, looking for me. He’d been in the bar hours before me. Asking for me by name. And I’d missed him, or he’d missed me. And then he ended up outside my house. I didn’t think the police had gotten this far—to the bar. They’d worked fast, interviewing the people at the G&M, where I’d seen him last.

  “He was in here more than once, the guy asking for me?” I asked, ignoring his tone. How long had Sean Coleman been here, looking for me? Following me?

  “He definitely had a vested interest,” he said, not answering my question directly.

  “What day?” I asked.

  “Does it matter? I don’t remember the day, but I can guess what he wanted.” He took a few steps closer. “You seem like a nice girl, and I have a daughter about your age, so I’ll tell you the same thing I told her. Men that much older—”

  “I’m all set with advice, thanks. Unless you’ve seen Elyse.” I raised an eyebrow, gripped the handle of the glass door. I could be outside in two seconds, to my car in ten. The keys were in my purse; I could grab them on the way.

  He rocked back on his heels, not coming any closer. “In that case…” He trailed off, gesturing toward the door.

  * * *

  I SWUNG BY ELYSE’S apartment building once more before heading home. I’d convinced myself that the disorder inside was just typical Elyse, home late, home drunk, dropping her bag, pulling out her clothes, falling into bed.

  Had I not seen a room like this before? Hadn’t I lived with that myself? Which was why the memory prickled: I was projecting.

  My mother worked nontraditional hours, too, as a health care aide, before she completely imploded. She was contracted by several different clients for home care, with a rotating schedule. If she was asleep in the middle of the day, I’d worry, shaking her awake, only to learn she’d just gotten back and didn’t have to return until the next day. It was impossible to know whether she was keeping up with her job until she was home for good.

  Chaos always nagged at me, worried me, like a precursor to some danger that only I could see coming.

  When I returned, Elyse’s car was no longer in the lot. I again waited for someone to open the front door, walked down that same hallway, knocked on her apartment door, which now had the sticky note removed.

  Of course Elyse had been back. She was fine, and I was overreacting—the panic and disorientation over one thing coloring everything else.

  When she didn’t answer my knocking, I checked the knob, and this time it was locked. I knocked again, but there was no response. I called her as I walked outside, but her phone by now was off. The call went straight to voicemail.

  She’d quit, and now she was avoiding me.

  * * *

  I CALLED BENNETT ON the drive back home. “Elyse went totally off the grid,” I said. I was surprised he even picked up; he was usually a stickler for the rules of leaving his phone in his locker while he was working.

  “What do you mean by totally off the grid?”

  “I mean her car is gone and the phone is off. Trevor hadn’t seen her. She’d been back to her apartment, and she knew I was looking for her, and she took off anyway.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be back, Liv. Maybe she went home for the weekend.”

  It always caught me off guard when Bennett talked like this, about going home. He’d lived here four years, and yet there was a childhood house several hours away that he referred to as home.

  Still, I couldn’t remember Elyse ever talking about home the way Bennett did.

  “You’re sure?” I asked. “She quit, Bennett. Does that sound like someone who’s planning to stick around?”

  “She wouldn’t just… She’s your friend…” He let the thought trail.

  “Right, you’re right,” I said before ending the call. But I knew how fast someone could make an impulsive decision and change their entire life.

  My mother had quit her job in Widow Hills after I was found. Thought we could live off generosity and the book contract alone—and we did for a time. She didn’t want to go back to work when we needed her to. Had developed a deep distrust of the medical establishment after the surgeries and the rehab and the medicine. She said no one was interested in fixing me, just wanted to pry deeper and find more things in need of fixing, bleeding us dry.

  It was why, I think, I felt a pull to health care from the other side. I wanted to fix things from the top down, establishing an order to the chaos.

  * * *

  IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON BY the time I turned onto my street. I needed to do that now—apply an order to the chaos. Establish a routine, a simplicity to my life. I would go home and clean, do the laundry—erase all remnants of the earlier evenings. I’d spot the blue paint of the box cutter and return it to the kitchen drawer. I’d install the hook-and-eye latch over the doorjamb, which would’ve saved me so much of the trouble from the start: leaving someone else to find the body. I’d have an early dinner and set my alarm and get back to the weekly routine, in a show of normalcy.

  There was a single unmarked car parked along the short stretch of road between Rick’s driveway and my own. I’d thought the police were finished up, but I could see two figures emerging from the car—Detective Rigby and a much taller man. Detective Rigby was in a suit, but this man did not appear to be a member of law enforcement. He wore jeans, a brown bomber jacket, aviator sunglasses covering his eyes.

  Detective Rigby raised her hand as I pulled into my drive, and the man’s head turned slowly, watching me go. I nodded back but kept glancing in my rearview mirror. They were both still standing there, at the edge of the property, near the car.

  The detective was gesturing as she spoke, but the man barely moved in acknowledgment. My stomach twisted, imagining who it might be. The press, digging up property records, asking questions. And here she was, giving him a personal tour, when she’d promised to give me a heads-up first.

  They disappeared from view as I pulled in front of my house, but I couldn’t shake it from my mind. I had to know what they were doing here.

  My steps along the drive made enough noise that, once I got close enough to hear the detective’s voice, their conversation stopped abruptly.

  “Everything okay?” I asked, shading my eyes as they came into sight.

  The detective’s gaze trailed after me, but her expression gave nothing away. With the sunglasses, I couldn’t tell whether the man was looking my way at all.

  “Olivia, this is Nathan Coleman,” Detective Rigby said, and my stomach dropped. Still in the process of tracking down his next of kin, she’d told me. “He requested to see where we found his father.”

  “Oh,” I said. It hadn’t occurred to me that it would be his son. That he would be someone my age. Here, on my property.

  Something in his jaw twitched, and he stepped forward, extended his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my hand sliding into his rough grip. “I’m sorry for your loss.” He reminded me of someone I knew, but that kept happening. Everyone here seemed like a figment of someone else. I couldn’t see his eyes, but there was something in his build that was similar to his father’s. His grip, capable of holding me up.

  “This is Olivia,” Detective Rigby said. “She’s the one who found your father.” His handshake paused. I imagined the inverse: Your father found her.

  But she said none of those things; her face gave away nothing. Nathan Coleman didn’t know.

  “Well, then,” he said, a faint drawl under his clipped words, “I’m sorry, too.”

  We both turned at a sound from the other direction. A door swinging shut at Rick’s house. “That’s Mr. Aimes. He’s lived here for years,” Detective Rigby said. We could just see him on the porch with a broom, looking this way.

  Nathan Coleman turned his head from Rick back to me, like he was trying to determine which one of us his father had been here for.

  “I’m sorry, I have to go,” I said, the apologies multiplying. I needed to extricate myself from the situation. There was no good place for this conversation to go. Information was a thing that could chase you, and it was now right on the cusp of catching me—tainting everything to come.

  The girl from Widow Hills, remember? Of course they would. Thinking they could find the answers there. Reaching back, this time, for anything they might’ve missed.

  I wanted my own answers first.

  CENTRAL CAROLINA UNIVERSITY—OFFICE OF ADMISSIONS

  APPLICATION FILE—Olivia Meyer

  CONTENTS: Guidance Counselor Letter Re: Permanent Record

  FEBRUARY 5, 2012

  To Whom It May Concern,

  Per your request for further information, I’m writing today about a senior of ours who had applied to your institution, by the name of Olivia Meyer. The incident in question about which you are inquiring occurred while she was enrolled in a previous school, so we can’t speak directly to the nature of the infraction. Though my hope is to provide some potential context.

  Olivia recently turned eighteen and legally changed her name. Before that, her legal name was Arden Olivia Maynor.

  Attached please find an article from the year 2000 (you may well remember the Widow Hills case yourself). There was a flurry of new press last year surrounding the ten-year anniversary (second article attached, from 2010). It’s my understanding that her family had to leave town over some form of harassment. They came to us at the start of this school year.

  I’m writing in confidence, as she has never spoken of these things directly. This information was provided by her mother. Her mother mentioned an incident at the previous school, related to PTSD from her childhood ordeal, and asked us to keep watch for any troubling behavior. All I can say is, since attending our school, Olivia has been nothing but a model student.

  When I first received her transcript last year, I knew right away who she was. I remembered that case. I remembered watching. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a miracle she’s here at all—a few minor infractions notwithstanding.

  Regards,

  Thomas Woods

  Norfolk County Schools, Ohio

  Director of Counseling

  cc: Norfolk County Office, copy for file

  CHAPTER 15

  Sunday, 8:15 p.m.

  THE DAY’S ADRENALINE WAS wearing off, and I stood in the kitchen toying with the prescription bottle of pills made out in my name, weighing which was the bigger concern: what I might do while sleeping; or being unable to wake in a true emergency.

  There was a killer out there. Someone who had been within sight of my house. Who had been so close, while I was sleeping.

  Bennett had said I’d slept like the dead. When I’d woken, hours after taking the pill, I hadn’t moved an inch. But if the smoke detector went off, if someone broke in… would I be able to regain consciousness? Would I be able to run or fight?

  I slid the vial beside the microwave and got to work installing the hook-and-eye latch.

  I found a power screwdriver in my office, in one of my plastic bins of batteries, nails, and random tools. I checked each bin, just in case—no box cutter. I carried the stepstool from the kitchen and installed the hook-and-eye latch on my bedroom door, fully out of reach. To unhook it in the night, I’d need to pull the ladder from the closet, climb the steps, reach my hand up. So many extra steps, like I was trying to outsmart my subconscious.

  There was always the window in case of emergency—if I couldn’t get the door open in time. No screen to slow me down. A drop onto patchy grass and packed dirt, a farther fall than from the living room window in the front, due to the sloping ground and the crawl space. But not far enough to hurt me.

  The sound of the screwdriver must’ve blocked out the signs of the car approaching, or the footsteps on my porch, because I’d just dragged the ladder back into the closet when the doorbell rang. My heart was in my throat as I walked quietly into the living room, trying not to make a sound—though of course my car was out front; it was obvious I was home.

  I peered around the living room curtain, caught sight of a car I didn’t recognize.

  I couldn’t see an unfamiliar car or hear a phone ring anymore without remembering how it used to be. The press tried the friendly approach first, hoping for a quote or a photo, but got increasingly invasive. At the least: The person inside did not answer the door—with an accompanying picture of my property.

  I remained perfectly still, tallying the layers of protection and options. Phone in my back pocket, with Detective Rigby’s number programmed; screwdriver in my hand; back door; windows.

  The person on the porch took a step back, now in view of the living room window. I could see only his profile, but it was the man from earlier. Nathan Coleman.

  I opened the door just as he turned away, hands deep in the pockets of his jeans.

  “Hi, sorry,” I called to his back. Apparently, I was only capable of apologizing to him.

  He shifted slowly, and in the twilight, he looked like a different person. Now that his glasses were off, I could see the hollows around his eyes, like his father’s. The lack of sleep, or the grief. What he’d been hiding earlier. It changed the angles of his face, made him seem open, more vulnerable.