28. Nicole

I splay the newspaper clippings out on the living room floor, so I can see them in their entirety. They're tinted yellow and some of the words have partially faded away, erased and forgotten, just like Christie Roberts. Many are updates, or lack thereof, from the sheriff's office, because they never had a single lead. Several clippings are classified ads her parents took out. They pleaded for the public to come forward. Most of those ads are to sell large-ticket items, like used cars or furniture. The Roberts wanted the most precious thing they ever had back.

"This doesn't mean Mom and Dad had anything to do with Christie's disappearance," Michael says, gesturing to the clippings. He paces the living room, rubbing his forehead as though he's fighting off a migraine.

"Why else would Mom keep these?" I glance up at my younger brother but he's not looking back, so I direct my attention to my sister. "What do you think, Beth?"

She's seated beside me, biting her thumbnail down to a nub, staring at the cut-up newspapers from decades before. She looks dazed, and I'm not sure she's even reading them.

"Christie ran away, or at least that's what everyone thought," she explains. "I don't know, maybe Mom was paranoid and believed Dad had something to do with it."

"Beth's probably right," Michael says.

"Or maybe Mom knew something no one else did." I tilt my head.

"Or she was paranoid, like Beth said. I mean she helped Dad get rid of Emma's body. She couldn't have been the same after that." Michael raises a brow.

"She wasn't," Beth says.

"How would you know?" I ask.

She lets out a sigh. "I watched another tape, one from November 1999. It was different from the others."

Michael's brows shove together. "How was it different?"

"Just the way she filmed it. It was like she was analyzing us, not capturing a family memory."

"Like she was paranoid," he says, and I can't tell if it's a question or not.

I get what Beth's saying. I noticed it too in Mom's journals. Her point of view changed after Emma's disappearance. She was removed, writing about a family rather than about her family, like a scientist watching lab rats try to navigate through a maze.

"Or like she knew more than anyone else," I argue.

"So, you think because Mom kept these newspaper clippings"—Michael gestures to the floor—"and because she filmed us differently, that means Dad had something to do with Christie's disappearance?"

"I'm not saying he did. I'm just saying Mom changed after Emma went missing, and the tapes she filmed after the fact are proof of that," Beth says.

"And Mom also kept everything on Emma Harper, and we know they had something to do with her death," I argue.

"You both really want to destroy Mom and Dad's memory, don't you?"

Beth folds her arms in front of her chest. "No, Michael. We just want to know what happened."

The truth won't change anything, but that doesn't mean it should never be exposed.

"And we agreed if we found something, we'd tell someone," I say.

When neither of us speak, Michael takes a closer look at the newspaper clippings detailing Christie Roberts's disappearance, carefully scanning over each one.

"The police said Christie was a runaway. It says so right here." He points to one of the articles.

"It says they thought she was."

"Well, they must have had a solid reason to think that," Michael says.

"Yeah, probably because of her parents. I would have run away, too, if I were her." Beth shrugs.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

Beth stares off, as though she's bringing up memories that had been stored away in the deepest corners of her brain. "Christie's parents were strange. They were overbearing, kept her sheltered, didn't let her go to school or anything. She was my age but always seemed much younger. I remember it being difficult to just talk to her. She took more than a beat to respond to anything, and she'd stare at you with those enormous brown eyes. It was unnerving because you couldn't tell what she was thinking."

I raise a brow. "But weren't you friends with her?"

"No, not really." Beth shakes her head. "Christie wanted to be my friend. I think she wanted any friend. She'd show up at our house and ask to hang out, or sometimes follow me when I was on a run. Mom told me to be nice to her, so I always was, but I didn't go out of my way to be her friend." She looks down guiltily at her lap and fiddles with her fingers.

I close my eyes for a moment, conjuring up an image of Christie back in 1999. She comes into view, faint on the back of my eyelids, grainy but alive. Her crooked half smile, like she couldn't decide which emotion to settle on. Her dark hair shiny from grease, not from some incredible product.

My eyes open, and I look to Beth, the figment of Christie disappearing back into the void. "I remember always seeing her walk laps around the Grove, over and over, rain or shine, taking pictures with that old camera looped around her neck."

Beth nods. "Yeah, she'd show me pictures she'd snapped when I was out for a run. I didn't even know she was taking photos of me, which was weird."

"That is weird," I say.

"I don't really remember her," Michael says. "Still, based on what you two can recall, it makes sense she was deemed a runaway. She was a hamster on a wheel going nowhere." He glances at Beth and then me. "But two girls disappearing within five months of one another, in a town of less than two hundred, is highly suspicious. Mom probably thought the same thing."

My eyes scan over the newspaper clippings again. So many of them mention the word runaway. Maybe Michael's right. It makes sense, after what Mom had done, she would become paranoid, looking for patterns that didn't exist. Just because our parents disposed of Emma's body doesn't mean they had anything to do with Christie's disappearance. And we still don't really know what happened to Emma before that camcorder started recording the night of June 15, 1999. Maybe Dad just stumbled upon Emma's body. Still, that doesn't explain why he wouldn't call the police. I pick up Emma Harper's case file from the couch cushion and plop it into my lap, flipping it open to where I left off.

"They had a suspect in custody for Emma's disappearance. He was charged with her murder," I say, reading from the report.

"Who?" Michael asks.

"Charles Gallagher," Beth says before I can find the answer myself.

He scrunches up his face. "Who?"

"That creep that lived at the end of our street," she explains.

"Oh yeah. I forgot about him. How was he even a suspect in the first place?" Michael asks.

"Lots of innocent people are suspects. That's just how the system works."

Beth's right about that. Charles Gallagher was an easy target. He was the town creep. I feel like every small town has one. A person no one else understands. He had poor social skills and no friends. He drank frequently, smoked like a chimney, and wore ill-fitting clothes. He never said much either. He lived in the brick house right across from the park. His mom lived with him, or maybe he lived with her. No one really knew. His property was an eyesore, his home surrounded by old junk cars parked in the driveway and in his yard. People complained, but he said it was his house, and he could do whatever he wanted with it. There were rumors about him before Emma went missing. Some people said he had been in prison. If you asked what he served time for, everyone had a different answer. They also said he was prone to violent outbursts due to a head injury he sustained while serving in the military. I never knew if any of the rumors were true or not, but I avoided him all the same. Most everyone did.

I scan several pages of the case file before recapping my findings to Beth and Michael. "There was an anonymous tip that led the police to zero in on him," I explain. "Someone saw him talking to Emma at the park on the day she went missing. Then several others came forward to say they witnessed this interaction too. The police discovered shoe prints in his yard that matched a pair of sneakers she owned. Apparently, that was enough evidence to obtain a search warrant. The police found a Barbie playground ball, a pink jump rope, and a Powerpuff Girls zip-up hoodie in his home. They belonged to Emma."

"If I didn't know the truth, I'd say that's all pretty damning," Michael says.

"Not really." Beth shakes her head. "It's all circumstantial. Shoe prints? He lived across from the park. Kids trekked through his yard all the time. And everything found in his house could have been items that were left at the park."

"That's exactly what he said, initially," I say.

"Wait, what do you mean by initially?" Michael asks.

"Charles changed his story after being interrogated for sixteen hours straight without an attorney present. He ended up confessing to the kidnapping and murder of Emma. Said he disposed of her body in a dumpster behind a store in Janesville."

"Why don't I remember any of this?" Michael massages his temples with his pointer and middle fingers.

"Because Mom and Dad kept it hidden from us. Plus, it was 1999 and small-town news wasn't readily available like it is now. The only reason I knew anything was because Lucas told me everything he knew, but his parents kept a lot from him too," Beth says.

I flip to another page in the case file. "How could Mom and Dad sit back and watch this man's life be destroyed?"

"It was either his or theirs," Michael says.

Beth shoots a glare at him. "Yeah, but he was innocent."

"He confessed," he says.

"It's called a false confession. People do it under great duress," Beth argues.

"Or maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe his conscience finally got the best of him, and he let out everything in an act of catharsis." Michael's clearly playing devil's advocate. "We don't know what happened to Emma before that videotape, or after."

"Yeah, but Mom and Dad found her. That means she wasn't thrown away in a dumpster behind a store in Janesville and carted off to some landfill like Charles said. If you find a body, you call the police. It's pretty fucking simple," I huff.

"Sometimes the simplest things are the most complicated," Beth says, and I'm not sure what she means by that, but it doesn't feel like she's talking about Emma or our parents.

Michael raises a brow. "But why did he have Emma's belongings in his house?"

I scan the report in front of me. "He had toys and outerwear that belonged to a number of children in the neighborhood. Things they left behind while playing at the park. The police failed to disclose that in their report."

"And when was he arrested?" Michael asks.

I flip back to the beginning of the arrest report. "November 1, 1999."

"But those shoe prints in his yard wouldn't have still been there," Michael says.

"According to the case file, those shoe prints were discovered in the days after Emma went missing. Charles was asked about it and denied even seeing her that day and said it wasn't uncommon for kids to walk through his yard. The police concluded he wasn't a likely suspect, that is until an anonymous tip came in over four months later from someone claiming they saw Charles interact with Emma the day she vanished. After that, the police zeroed in on him," I explain.

"Let me get this straight, Charles was arrested for Emma's disappearance on November 1, and Christie went missing October 26." He looks to me not for confirmation on the date, but to confirm I'm listening to him. "So, he was out when she disappeared?"

I slowly nod.

"The timing is suspicious," Michael says.

"Not really." Beth shakes her head. "We know he didn't have anything to do with Emma."

"We don't know that," he says with a shrug.

Michael's face is concrete and stoic like he's trying to be a shield for our parents' memory, one that separates the now from the past. Beth has a look of determination mixed with indifference as though she wants to know the truth but also knows she can't handle it.

"And what about the break-in?" Beth asks.

I give Michael a strained look, hoping he'll keep his promise and won't tell her that it was a drug dealer I owed money to who broke into this house. If she knew, I'm not sure what she would do.

"What about it?" Michael says, almost flippantly. I know then he's going to keep his word.

"It couldn't have been random," she says.

"It could have been. Word had already gotten around that Mom had passed. Maybe someone saw it as an opportunity to burglarize the place. You can't really steal from the dead." He tilts his head, holding eye contact.

Beth twists up her lips and studies his face like she's deciding whether or not his explanation makes sense. I'm about to chime in, but Michael beats me to it.

"And what ever happened to Charles?" he asks, officially changing the subject.

I breathe a sigh of relief and flip through several more pages in the report. I remember something about the case falling apart, but I can't recall.

Before I find the answer in the file, Beth speaks first. "The case against him was dropped."

"How is that possible?" Michael squints.

"Yeah," I add. "Especially given his confession and the police finding Emma's belongings in his house and her shoe prints tracked through his yard."

Michael's eyes swing to the tape set on the VCR. "Plus, no one but us has ever seen that tape."

"Unless someone else saw it," Beth says.

I glance at the faded newspaper clippings that detail Christie Roberts's disappearance. The edges are straight and even. Mom cut each one out with precision like she planned on saving them for a lifetime. Or maybe she saved them for us.