Eight

Hi Matt

As soon as I sent the text, my heart literally began skipping beats as I waited to hear back. His reply came quickly.

Hey Oli.

Are you busy? I wrote.

No reply for a whole minute. Then he wrote:

w Chris and Fitch at the blind.

OK never mind, I wrote.

What’s up?

Suddenly the whole idea of telling him seemed impossible. I both wanted to tell him everything and also hide it from him—because how could a normal boy deal with anything this bizarre and dreadful? How could I, for that matter?

It’s OK. Hope you see some good birds , I wrote.

Won’t be much longer. Call you in about 30 mins.

Sure , I wrote.

He sent a smiling emoji.

I double-checked that the ringer was on and put my phone in my pocket. My heart kept doing that weird skittering thing, and I knew it would keep doing that for the entire half hour, till he called—although, considering he was birding with his friends, it might be longer. It was easy to lose track of time when you were bird banding. I knew how into it we all got.

The nature club had stopped meeting after Eloise died. The group, as we’d known it, had drifted apart. We were all still friends, but we didn’t get together the way we used to.

And I had mostly stayed off social media since Eloise died. Tried to avoid the internet entirely, even. I couldn’t stand what people were saying on there—some blaming our family for not paying enough attention to Eloise, others showering me with phony, even saccharine, sympathy.

“Who were you texting?” Iris asked.

“A friend,” I said. “Matt Grinnell. He has a car so he could drive us around. Iris, we have to do something. You have to remember. It’s the only way we’ll find Hayley, and solve the mystery. We have to go searching for your memory.”

“Go searching for my memory,” Iris repeated. “That sounds so weird.”

It is , I thought. It’s all weird . I wondered what we were getting into. Should I even bring Matt into it? I wondered. We were looking for a killer, after all. I decided I would tell him everything, give him the option to say yes or no.

I suggested to Iris that we head downstairs to wait, and Iris followed me cautiously. Out the kitchen window, I saw Noreen playing with Zoey—that sweet young golden retriever that she had been training—in the side yard. Noreen kept hinting that Zoey would make a great companion for my grandmother—an emotional support animal.

“Who is that?” Iris asked, sounding nervous.

“My grandmother’s caregiver,” I said. “But as you can see, she’s mostly into caring for her puppy. She won’t even notice us here.”

Iris was quiet, keeping watch on Noreen. She sat down at the kitchen table while I paced around. I couldn’t wait to get started. We had to be detectives dedicated to our sisters, searching for life-and-death answers.

After Eloise went missing, the police had come here looking for clues. They had taken certain things for evidence—my sister’s journal, some photos, and the scarf she had worn birding that morning. But they had left a lot behind.

Her jean jacket was hanging on the back of the door. A pair of rubber boots, tufted with dry mud from tromping through the marsh, stood neatly in the corner. The linen towel she had used to dry dishes—that was her job—was hanging on a rack above the sink. Laundry was one of my chores, but I hadn’t had the heart to wash the towel since October. It reminded me of her. I had warned Noreen not to touch it.

I double-checked my backpack to make sure I’d packed the Ziploc bags yesterday. I took a couple of empty ones from the cabinet, just in case we needed to gather more evidence.

“I’ll be right back,” I said to Iris.

“Where are you going?” she asked, sounding alarmed.

“Just in the other room, to see my grandmother.”

She nodded and went back to watching Noreen and Zoey.

Gram was still dozing in her chair in the living room, her memoir notebook open on her lap. She cared so much about finishing it, and I would do anything to help her. Gram liked to write in longhand, and almost never used her computer or phone.

She always kept a notepad in the rolltop desk. We used it for grocery lists and other reminders. I reached for the notepad now, found a pen, and in big dramatic letters printed IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO ME?.?.?.

Then I wrote Gram a short note about how I’d found Iris and believed that she had been left for dead by the same person who had killed Eloise. I explained that we were going in search of her sister, Hayley.

I signed it With love, Oli.

I heard my grandmother stir, and I walked over to sit beside her.

“What is that you’re writing?” my grandmother asked.

“It’s just for us,” I said. “Don’t show Noreen.”

“Who?” she asked.

“Your aide.”

My grandmother chuckled. “The lady with the cute puppy.”

“She leaves you alone too much,” I said. “I’ll find someone better to be with you when I get back.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, a look of worry crossing her face.

“North, remember?”

“Yes, darling. With the other birds.” She paused and peered at me with her bright blue eyes. “Are you a bird?”

“I’m a girl. Who sometimes wishes she was a bird,” I whispered.

The voice of a cheerful chef spilled from the television, droning on about how to prepare panna cotta with balsamic strawberries. I hugged Gram and left the room, walked into the kitchen, and opened the freezer.

We kept a box of frozen peas there that was really our own private safe full of cash—about a hundred dollars. We all contributed—Eloise and I from summer jobs and babysitting, Gram from her Social Security. We called it our “rainy day money,” for impromptu things like trips to Paradise Ice Cream, movies on the beach, or books from the Book Barn, and we figured the freezer was the perfect place to hide it from burglars. What robber would look in a box of frozen peas?

Not even Noreen knew about it. I would have felt guilty for taking the money, but with Eloise gone and Gram unable to go out, I figured no one would miss it right now. I jammed the cash into my jeans pocket, then sat down at the table. Iris was still looking out the window.

Eloise’s and my bird photographs hung on the wall. My sister was so much better at photography than I was. I stared at one she had taken at the blind, of a red-breasted nuthatch caught in the net.

My phone buzzed, and I saw Matt’s name on the screen.

“Hi, Matt,” I said. My voice cracked between hi and Matt .

“Oli, what’s wrong?” he asked.

I wanted to start as lightheartedly as I could, just asking for a ride, thinking that Iris and I would tell him, as we drove around, the whole story.

But hearing his voice broke something inside me. Tears came but didn’t fall, and I tried to swallow down a sob.

“I need help,” I said.

“Tell me where you are,” he said. “And I’ll be right there.”

So I did, and he was.