12. Beth

A burst of air escapes my mouth as I try to catch my breath, reeling from what I just witnessed. I don't think I breathed at all while the tape played. It's real, I keep telling myself, although my mind is rejecting that notion, instead registering the video as fiction, as though I'd just watched a movie. But I know it's real. Because I know the girl in the video. The little dead girl. The one that's been missing for more than half of my life.

Her name is Emma Harper. Well, I guess it was Emma Harper. She was twelve when she disappeared. She was our next-door neighbor, the younger sister of my high school sweetheart, Lucas. Everyone looked for her when she went missing the summer of 1999. We searched high and low for days, weeks, months. Even then, her family didn't give up. In those early days, when she'd first gone, we combed the local nature trail, an abandoned railroad track without the tracks that runs six miles between the Grove and Clinton. We searched nearby towns: Darien, Delavan, Sharon, Elkhorn, all of them. Flyers with her sixth-grade class picture were plastered on trees, telephone poles, and front windows of local businesses. But Emma was never found. And no one knew what happened to her... I can barely finish the thought. No one knew what happened to Emma Harper, except my parents.

On the day she went missing, there was a carnival at the park in the center of town. They called it Groovin' in the Grove. My mom was the event's lead organizer. She wanted Allen's Grove to shine because that was how she saw our town, like coal before it's compressed and heated enough to form a diamond. There were games, vendors, food fried and double fried, farm animals, even a few janky carnival rides. The Dukes of Hazzard-themed bar called Boar's Nest that sits kitty-corner to the park, across Highway X, had live local bands and drinks flowing all day for the adults. It was the biggest event this little town had ever seen.

Groovin' in the Grove was a fundraiser for the park, so they could purchase playground equipment, picnic tables, and a shade shelter as well as provide ongoing maintenance. People from surrounding towns showed up, at least five hundred, tripling the size of our town's population. And sometime that day, June 15, 1999, Emma went missing. The police figured some creep slipped through the crowd, and with all the noise and excitement, they were able to kidnap a child in plain sight. No one noticed. It wasn't the first time it's happened, and it certainly wasn't the last. But it was the first time it had happened here, and it left a stain on the community that could never be removed.

The Grove was a place where children could ride their bikes past dark, play ghost in the graveyard in the woods, hike the nature trail, swim the crayfish-and-leech-infested creek, and even trespass on farmland without the worry of farmers shooting at them. Parents expected their children to return home in one piece. Because children didn't go missing in a place like Allen's Grove... until one did.

I remember everything changed after that day, not only for the town but for our family. I'd always believed Emma's disappearance hit too close to home, just across the street, or that my mother blamed herself for planning the whole event. I never in a million years would have thought my parents had anything to do with it. After all, they searched for her, alongside Nicole, Michael, and me. Shoulder to shoulder, we all walked the nature trail, the fields, and the wood. We hung missing person posters and made phone calls. We did everything we could. I remember their reassurances: "Don't worry, we'll find her." The very thought of what they'd said sends a shiver down my spine. Mom even donated part of the fundraising money from the event to Emma's family. The park got its swing set, monkey bars, slide, shade shelter, picnic tables, basketball court, and several flower beds. But the Harper family never got Emma back, and they never found out what happened to her.

There they are again... those words... right at the forefront of my mind.

Your father. He didn't disappear. Don't trust.

Disappear... That sticks out even more now. Maybe my mom wasn't offering hope that our father would return. Maybe it was a warning. Did Dad do something to Emma? Had he lied to Mom about it being an accident? Is that why she left me with those cryptic final words?

My eyes flick to Nicole. She's frozen, hand on the remote, shoulders tense, eyes wide. I saw her like this once, the first time she overdosed. But she's not dying, I remind myself. Still, this is life-altering. How she sees the world is perishing. Michael is frozen too. Nothing on him moves, not even a blink or a twitch of an eyebrow. But there's a sheen to his eyes, like he's holding his emotions in, trying to keep them caged.

"That... that can't be real. It must be some prank Mom and Dad were playing," Nicole says. "Right?" Her eyes are still wide, but now they're staring right at me.

"Did either of you know about this?" Michael asks. He studies our faces, like he's waiting for one of us to reveal a tell.

I shake my head, unable to utter a single word.

"You think it's real?" Nicole asks.

"Of course, it's real. That's Emma Harper on that tape, and that's the day she disappeared." Michael gestures to the TV.

Even though it's a blank screen, I can still see the image of her lying in the mud, covered in blood. Her lifeless eyes staring into the lens of the camera, while insects crawl over her porcelain skin. How could Mom take this secret to her grave? How could she bring Emma's family casseroles, invite them over for dinners, go on daily walks with Susan to search for her daughter, all the while knowing she was dead?

Nicole stands abruptly. "I don't believe it," she says, pacing the living room. Her footsteps are as heavy as the past.

"You saw it with your own eyes," I finally say, trying to convince myself more so than her.

Michael shakes his head and gets up from his seat, disappearing into the kitchen.

"Mom would never..." Nicole's voice cracks and her bottom lip trembles. "And Dad..." She doesn't finish that sentence, but I know what she was going to say. Dad would never hurt anyone. But he did. He hurt all of us when he picked up and left.

Michael returns a moment later with three plastic cups stacked on top of one another and the bottle of scotch. He pours more for me and him and less for Nicole, and then passes them out. We each take a gulp before speaking.

"Is that... I mean, do you think that's why Dad left?" Nicole's question isn't directed at either of us.

"Maybe he couldn't deal with the guilt anymore," Michael says.

I furrow my brow. "But this happened back in 1999, and he left in 2015. That doesn't make any sense."

Michael's eyes meet mine. "Guilt can eat you slowly or swallow you whole."

He's right about that.

Nicole swigs more than a mouthful of scotch. Some of the liquid slithers out of her lips and dribbles down her chin. She doesn't wipe it away. Either she doesn't notice or doesn't care. "In the video, Dad said it was an accident," she says, pointing at the television.

I lean forward in my chair, clutching the cup with both hands. "If it were an accident, why wouldn't he just call the police?"

"Maybe he thought he'd be held liable because it happened on his property, and he and Mom would lose everything?" Michael offers.

"Or maybe it wasn't an accident, and he just told Mom it was." As soon as the words leave my mouth, I want to suck them back in. I had the thought but saying it out loud feels wrong. Just because Dad walked out on us doesn't make him a murderer. But perhaps I didn't know him after all.

A montage of memories plays out in front of my eyes, a private viewing just for myself. Dad teaching me how to ride a bike. Dad sitting in the bleachers at my track meets. His face painted with my high school colors, blue and yellow, like he was cheering on his Green Bay Packers rather than me run 'round and 'round the track. Dad helping me reel in a bass from the creek. Dad crying with me when I blew my knee out senior year due to overtraining and malnourishment. Dad telling me just because my future wasn't going to include a full-ride scholarship anymore, that didn't mean it wasn't going to be bright. Dad walking me down the aisle. Dad holding his granddaughter. And then Dad... standing over the body of Emma Harper.

I shake the memories away and focus on my surroundings, trying to ground myself in the present rather than be overtaken by the past. My parents' belongings are scattered all over the floor. I wonder if any of them hold clues about what really happened the night of June 15, 1999. And then there are my siblings, who are more like strangers to me than family. Michael sits on the couch, massaging his forehead. Nicole fidgets with her fingers and continues to pace.

She stops suddenly and snaps her head in my direction. "Where's Emma's body now?"

I hadn't thought of that. What could they have possibly done with it? We all look at one another, eyes darting back and forth.

"Wherever it is, it must be long gone, since no one ever found her," Michael says. "Maybe they buried it, or weighted it and sent it down the creek, or maybe they cut it up and threw her away one piece at a time."

"What the fuck is wrong with you, Michael?" I practically spit.

He throws a hand up defensively. "What? Nicole's the one that asked the question."

"Yeah, but you're so crass. Do you really think Mom and Dad would dismember a child's body?" I narrow my eyes.

"I don't know, Beth. Clearly, they did something with it," he huffs.

We all exhale like we're releasing everything we thought we knew.

"What do we do now?" Nicole asks.

I don't answer because I really don't know. On one hand, I think the Harper family deserves to know what happened to Emma. But on the other, will it do them any good? Lucas moved away after high school, and his father died in a hunting accident shortly thereafter. Emma's mother, Susan, still lives in the house across the street. Her health has been declining for years. I guess it's hard to stay healthy when you have a broken heart. Mom was close with Susan, and I think knowing what Mom kept from her all these years would kill her. So maybe the truth would do more harm than good at this point.

A knock at the front door startles us, three knocks to be exact. They're quick and loud, the urgency reverberating through the door. My shoulders practically collide with my ears. Nicole freezes in place, staring wildly at the kitchen. Michael swallows hard, his Adam's apple rocking up and down, like a snake that's consumed too large of prey.

Mom and Dad may have buried a body, but they didn't bury the past... and now, it's clearly caught up with us.