Chapter Five

EARLY-MORNING RADIO SHOW LAUGHTER SPILLSfrom the speakers of Chelsey's car. She is bleary-eyed, and the sun is nearly rising. Her body aches. She should be heading home to grab a shower, eat, freshen up. Instead, she's driving the long winding road to Paradise Glen in Coldwell. To her parents' empty house. To what she cannot share with Noah.

She rolls to a stop at a pair of wrought-iron gates, lowers her car visor, and presses the button on a remote. The gates open with a groan and creak. She keeps the speed slow, passing an arched pathway with rickety stairs that leads down to a private beach and residences with gabled roofs, weathered gray shingled siding, and central chimneys. The Cape Cod–style houses are perched on a bluff and centered around a park with a miniature lighthouse.

Chelsey and Lydia whittled their childhood away in that park, running the spiral stairs to the lookout of the lighthouse to watch for pirates. Goonies was a popular movie back then. She and Lydia reenacted their favorite scenes. Always playing the same characters—Chelsey as Mikey, the eventual hero, and Lydia as Andy, the good-girl love interest. When they'd grow tired of that, they'd entice the neighborhood kids out of their homes to play hide-and-seek. They'd chase each other through the streets, devour dinner, and beg their parents to let them sleep in the same bed at night. We promise we won't stay up late. We'll go right to sleep. Back then, love was a thing that curled in Chelsey's lap to keep her warm. Back then, her heart had sighed in happiness. It had all been so… idyllic. More than anything, Chelsey wishes there was a way to know when you were experiencing the happiest moments of your life.

Chelsey winds a curve and parks in the driveway. She pays to keep the lights on but doesn't bother with the yard maintenance anymore. At the front door, she takes a deep breath and unlocks it. A waft of stale air hits her first. Then other notes as she flips on lights in the foyer, family room, and kitchen: antiseptic, rose potpourri, the ghost of her mother's perfume—Poison by Dior. Unsettling yet soothing at the same time.

Her cell phone rings, hitting all the lonely spaces in the vacant house. "Hey," she answers Doug, stopping in the dining room at a Lucite table with matching chairs and a shell vase on top. The house could be historically registered as a pristine example of mid-nineties architecture and interior design—blond hardwood floors, brass finishes, chunky pastel furniture. "How's the search going? Have you found anything yet?"

"Nope, not a fucking thing. Dogs lost Ellie's scent two miles west. It's like she appeared out of nowhere. No prints to follow. Nothing. And it's raining now. The weather is shit. I don't know…"

"Keep looking," she insists, standing at a bay window. The beach is painted in reds and oranges, and wind whips the bare sand. If she cranes her head just right, she can make out the rooftops of Ellie's neighborhood, like toy houses, from this viewpoint. You could buy eight homes in Ellie's neighborhood for the price of the property Chelsey is standing on.

"It would be easier if we knew what we were looking for."

"You know that's not how this works." She rubs an eye with one hand, annoyed with Doug. Even though she's felt this way before, too. Wishing the work was simpler. Wishing for a break sometimes, yearning for a slice of shade from the sun.

"Did she give you anything to go on?"

"Nothing yet. I'm going to visit her in a few hours." Chelsey plans to let Ellie settle in at home and get some sleep. She doesn't want to press Ellie too hard, doesn't want to break more of what has already been broken. "Call me if you find anything."

"Don't hold your breath," Doug says. They hang up, and Chelsey calls Noah.

"Hey," she says when he sleepily answers. "I'm checking in. I'm back in Coldwell."

"You at the precinct?"

She pauses and stares at the beach below again. One of her neighbors has appeared down on the shore with a metal detector, scanning the sand. She thinks of things lost. Of things never found. "No. I'm at the house." It used to be Chelsey's family home. Then it was her parents'. Then it was her dad's. And now, it's just "the house." A lonely, lost place, stuck somewhere between here and gone. It all makes her slightly numb. Her father got it in the divorce. Her mother hadn't wanted it. She had wanted to move to Arizona to make a fresh start.

"Oh yeah?" he says with interest. "You must be close to finishing boxing everything up."

In the garage is a stack of flattened boxes. Nothing is in them. Nothing has been packed. This is what Noah does not know. He believes the house is nearly done. But each time Chelsey went to touch a box or remove an item from a shelf, she was suddenly paralyzed, her chest cold with fear. Hands shaking. Body plunged into some deep dark abyss. She understood it. She was afraid of letting go. Of dispersing the last home Lydia knew. Her father would call her too sentimental. She felt weak—conquered like a deer standing at the end of a rifle. How could she tell Noah all this? She was ashamed. Inadequate.

"It's a big house." She moves to the kitchen and touches a pill organizer on the counter—one of those seven days a week, a.m./p.m. things. It's empty now, but seven months ago, there were so many tablets she couldn't snap the lids closed. Her dad had been taking thirty-one different medications toward the end. He'd refused to have a nurse in the house. Wouldn't let anyone but Chelsey or Noah help. There isn't any dignity in dying, he'd told Chelsey. Let me keep what I have. Don't subject me to a stranger. She could not refuse him.

"We could hire someone, or you could let me help you," Noah says. Chelsey swallows. I need to do it on my own, she's told him. Now, she's quiet. At her silence, Noah says. "Babe?" His voice is low.

"I'm going to try to get some work done here." She deliberately keeps it vague. She leans a hip on the dishwasher. One of the newer items in the house. Her father insisted it be manufactured in America. It was part of his way of thinking. They don't make things the way they used to, all of these exports from China. It always weighed on her. And she wondered what he thought of his Japanese daughter. But she kept silent.

"All right." He pauses. "Love you."

"You too," she says. After, Chelsey wanders the house. Lydia's door is open a crack. The contents precisely as she left them. A peeling poster of Into the Wild above her desk. Fairy lights strung around her canopy bed. A Tiffany heart bracelet on her nightstand along with a toy VW Beetle, the car she wanted when she turned sixteen. Chelsey can still feel Lydia here. In this small corner of the universe, tucked into the folds of the pink gingham curtains, the group of Beatrix Potter bunnies with frayed ears and a chunky white iPod, Lydia endures. Here Lydia is still fifteen. Here Lydia is still alive.

She moves to her father's office at the end of the hall. The walls are covered in plaid wallpaper and photographs of him, iron-jawed and lionized, with local law enforcement celebrities. As the chief of police for Pacific County, he'd rubbed elbows with sheriffs, mayors, even the governor of Washington. There are also animal heads. White-tailed deer. Moose. Elk. Big-horned sheep. The furniture is substantial. A large mahogany desk. Two leather armchairs. A gun safe with an etching of the American flag carved into the metal.

Chelsey's father had been a bulldog of a man. Not large but imposing, compact, and clean-cut, with red hair giving way to gray. He did not smile often. And when he did, it was reluctant, almost painful, like granite cracking.

Now his desk is littered with Chelsey's open case files. She prefers it here over the precinct. Chelsey's department is filled with men who speak too much about themselves and ask too little about others. Plus, there are other things. The uniforms wear personal T-shirts under their blues. Sometimes sports teams, other times slogans, and, most recently, their favorite: IT'S OKAY TO BE WHITE. They'd had those special made, snickering to each other like frat brothers. Chelsey is used to it by now. She has always been an outcast. A castaway.

She sits in her father's worn leather chair and fires up the computer. The Coldwell PD insignia appears on the screen. She logs in to her email. Only one piece of new mail. Fire season in Coldwell is a few months away. Would Chelsey like to volunteer as a firefighter? She moves to the shared drive. A new report is logged—the evidence collected from Ellie at the hospital.

She clicks it open and scans the doctor's notes. Signs of long-term abuse. Severely underweight. No fingerprints recovered from any of the clothing aside from Ellie's. Not a surprise. A few dog hairs. Had Ellie been kept somewhere with animals? The blood on her sweatshirt is old. From a previous injury? Chelsey shudders as she clicks through the photographs—jarring images of Ellie's body, her legs bent and open to show bruises, a metal ruler against her thin skin. She studies them like a road map, hoping they will lead to whoever did this.

Chelsey's phone chimes with a text from Sergeant Abbott: STATUS UPDATE.

She writes back with pertinent information. Doug is at the trail working that angle. She's reviewing the evidence and will take a run at Ellie later this morning.

Chelsey clicks out of the file and into her contacts to find Dr. Fischer's number, the counselor Ellie was referred to. They've worked together before on cases—abductions, kidnappings, abuse. She leans back in the chair and rubs her eyes as the phone rings on speaker. It is common for her to touch base with counselors. Chelsey's job is to catch whoever did this and build a profile. Who was Ellie before? Who is she now? How has she been fundamentally changed? The sentence will fit the damage done.

"Detective Calhoun." Cerise Fischer's voice is smooth and alert, despite the early hour.

"Dr. Fischer," Chelsey says. "I'm surprised you answered. I was planning to leave a message."

"I received an interesting referral late last night, which kept me up. I assume you're calling about Elizabeth Black?"

Chelsey finds a heavy silver pen on her father's desk and grips it. He'd thrown it at her mother once. He'd been working a big case. Up early in the morning, then until all hours of the night. She wasn't sure what her mom wanted. But she did recall the sound of the pen as it hit the closing door. How her mother had ushered Chelsey and Lydia away, saying, Let's give Daddy some space. Chelsey had spent many childhood years tiptoeing past her father's office. When he finally allowed her in, after Lydia died, she'd felt chosen. Anointed. Chelsey swats the memory away. "I am. She hasn't spoken very much."

Dr. Fischer sighs. "You know I haven't seen her yet, and even if I had, I can't divulge anything."

"I'm not asking that." Chelsey pauses. "At the hospital, she seemed confused. Disoriented. She didn't know what city she was in or how long she'd been gone."

"That is quite possible," Dr. Fischer says quickly. "You know the impact of trauma on memory and recall. Hypothetically speaking, Ellie most likely has disassociated…"

Chelsey leans back as Dr. Fischer goes on about how Ellie's mind has been rearranged. How the accounts of what happened may be impaired. How she may have trouble sequencing the details. How her memories will be like flashes in the dark. "In cases like these, the mind becomes a labyrinth. It's a method of survival, I believe," Cerise says. "Then, as patients begin to heal, their brains are more like a surrealist painting."

Chelsey thinks of melting walls, stairs leading to nowhere, untouched realms, time curling in on itself, warped grief. What is real? What is not? Blood pumps in Chelsey's ears. She renews her vow to find this person, this man. Chelsey can picture him. A figure sliding along the fences of Ellie's mind. Biding his time. Ready to strike.