Chapter 25

Alice

It's Saturday night, and I'm alone in my room.

I'm staring at my phone, Maya's number on the screen. I want to ask her if she took my keys, but I know I won't. I haven't used them in, like, a year; I probably just misplaced them.

Anyway, Maya's busy. Her mom grounded her for stealing clients' keys from her office. There will be no parties for the foreseeable future. She's pissed. And now Maya has to have family time , like that's such a bad thing. Dash is home from college for the weekend, and Dom is sober, according to Maya's earlier text. She has no idea how lucky she is. Thinking of them all together fills me with longing.

I lie on my bed listening to Lizzy McAlpine. Alfie is curled up in a ball on my fuzzy slippers. His tail twitches, like I'm the one who's done something wrong.

The house is quiet. Jack has left on his annual hunting trip. Finn's in bed. I don't know where Mel is.

My phone buzzes, an unidentified number. Journalists, TV shows, podcasts, they've been calling me, waiting for me at school every day since news of the body broke. Mel tells me not to talk to them.

They'll spin everything you say, she warned me. Just one wrong word and it could ruin everything. Your reputation. Mine. Jack's business.

The sound has disturbed Alfie. He stands and stretches. I scoop him into my arms, press my face into his silky fur. He gives me a disgusted look and squirms, then saunters away as soon as I release him.

She's right. At least, that's what I thought. But now I've started thinking about that podcast, and maybe I should've called Runy's sister. Maybe I'd have more luck finding out the truth.

My phone buzzes again. This time I snatch it up. Static blasts into my ear.

"Hello?"

The static continues.

I'm about to hang up when I think I hear it. My name.

Alice.

I press the phone to my ear, heart slamming against my ribs. There's something there, far away. Music, maybe. A series of beeps. And then a click as the connection drops.

It was nothing. A wrong number or a pocket dial. I throw the phone on my bed and flop onto my back, anger burning hot and bright in my stomach.

Getting through this week after the body was found has been pretty brutal. I'm exhausted, jumpy.

I feel like I did after my family disappeared. Like my blood is flowing too close to my skin. Like my nerve endings are sparking like live wires inside my body.

I think about calling Jinx, asking her to come over, to bring some weed. We could get high and I could numb these feelings. Except I don't want that anymore. I want to know what happened to my family. I want to think about them, I want to remember.

I open my closet and lift out the box where I've hidden the things I found in my mom's desk.

First, the envelope with T HEO M ORIARTY typed across the front. Inside is a paycheck from my uncle's company, O'Brien Group Development. There are numbers scrawled at the bottom of the paper in my mom's familiar slanted scribble. A password, maybe, or a bank account number?

I set the paycheck aside and grab a notebook from my desk, start writing a list of clues. I'm writing so fast, my arm moving in swift, jerky motions, that my elbow hits my purse, balanced on my bedside table. It tips, spilling everything onto the floor, my phone, my cherry ChapStick, the pills I stole from Mel. The necklace my mother got me pools on the carpet. I lift it, the chain cool to my touch. I wedge my fingernail inside the locket's tiny latch and flip it open.

My family stares up at me from above the musical note, all smiles, no idea what the future would bring. I never should've taken it off.

I pinch the clasp and fasten the chain around my neck.

You have everything you need right here, Mom had said.

I return to my list. Why does Mom have Theo Moriarty's paycheck? I write this down, my pen a black scrawl on bright white.

Next: the pictures. I slide the one of Ella and me, Isla flashing the heart symbol in the background, into my backpack so I don't lose it and flick through the others. Bile fills my throat. Even seeing them a second time, the shock is still raw.

Because these pictures are of my mother.

She's standing in her bra and underwear, bruises like black stones marking a dark path over her fair skin. The pictures are from different angles, capturing bruises that trail down her rib cage, around her waist, up to her neck. She holds one arm cradled against her chest, her eyes hollow, red rimmed.

"Poor Mom," I whisper.

"Where'd she get those bruises?" Isla says from somewhere behind me.

A flicker in my mind. My dad? No. I immediately push that thought away.

"Aren't you tired of feeling like this?" Isla asks.

I ignore her and slide out the laptop nestled at the bottom of the box. It was my mother's, returned to me after the police found nothing interesting on it. I open the lid, but of course the battery's dead. I dig in the box and find the battery, plug it in, and power it up.

The laptop is password protected, but Mom never hid it from us. I type in sunshinefamily and the laptop opens. I spend a few minutes going through her files and folders, scanning her photos and most recent documents. But there's nothing that stands out. I slam the lid shut. If the cops didn't find anything, why would I think I will?

I glance again at the pictures of my bruised mom, Theo Moriarty's paycheck. I should give them to Detective Lambert, but last time the detectives were so sure my dad did it. Detective Liu had made his mind up before he'd even finished talking to me. When he finally asked me if my mom was having an affair, I knew it was over.

I pace the room. My brain feels dull. I can't land on anything of value. Alfie hops up on the bed and stretches out on my pillow. For a second, I think about curling up next to him, sliding under the cozy covers, and going to sleep. It would be so much easier to just give up. On life. On the future. It would be so simple.

Death would be easy. It's living that's hard.

But I know I won't sleep. And there's been enough sitting around. I need to rejoin the living, I need to reclaim what happened That Night.

Somebody real killed my family. A flesh-and-blood person hid their bodies. And I'm going to find out who.

I peer out my curtain at the white street below, snow flurries swirling in the black night. My blood is buzzing, or maybe it's my bedroom light. I hear it, like a mosquito in my ear, and then I hear a crash from downstairs, glass shattering.

I yank my door open and run out into the hall. I peer over the banister, but the entryway is empty. I slip downstairs on bare feet. There's a sound. The living room. I inch forward, heart punching at my ribs, and peek around the corner.

Mel is sitting on the couch in semidarkness. She isn't moving. Isn't doing anything, actually. Not reading or watching TV. She's just sitting there staring into space, her shiny Louboutins, the ones I've always coveted, propped on the coffee table next to a wineglass. Liquid drips down the shattered widescreen television, glass from a fractured wine bottle across the floor.

I step into the room slowly. "Are you okay, Mel?"

She turns to me. Her eyes are bloodshot and puffy. When she finally speaks, I can tell she's been drinking. She's not supposed to with her pacemaker, but I've smelled it on her more often lately.

"No," she says. "No, I'm not. But thanks for checking."

"Is Finn okay?"

"Finn's fine."

My eyes dart around the room. "Should I call Jack?"

She gives a hard, angry laugh. "No. I definitely don't want you to call him."

"I'm sure he'd come back from his hunting trip ..."

"You think he's gone on a hunting trip?" She laughs again, a hard sound. "You're more naive than I thought."

I swallow hard, remembering Jack the night of the Christmas party.

The music had gotten loud, everybody laughing and chatting. The adults were drunk, merry. They'd started dancing. I'd gotten my camera out, the Canon from my father, and was snapping pictures, candid, unposed shots.

Candid shots show moments in time. They're so different from posed shots, which are carefully planned and crafted. I feel like they aren't real that way. So many things are unreliable in life, they disappear, shift, change, like the sea reshapes the sand. I like finding those pure moments, the way a person's expression can be so interesting when they don't know someone is watching. It makes it more honest.

I slipped through the room, snapping pictures of Finn with the Santa Claus Mel had hired and his cute, curly-haired elf; my parents, who were doing a silly boogie in front of the Christmas tree with Grandma and Will and Shelby, Mel's business partner. And then later, next to a table piled with desserts, Mom and Mel talking, heads bent close. Mom's face was tilted toward the camera, Mel had a plate of cookies in one hand, the other on Mom's arm. Click, click.

I wandered through the downstairs rooms and found Ella, who'd snuck off to the bathroom to put on her new Bobbi Brown makeup. I snapped pictures of her until she screeched at me to stop.

I was returning to the living room when I heard female laughter coming from down the hall. I followed the sound to the den, and there was Jack whispering something in the curly-haired elf's ear, one hand low on her back. I backed away, embarrassed to have caught them.

I loved my silly, narcissistic uncle, but sometimes Jack could be a dick.

"I was just chatting with Nancy." Mel's voice jolts me back to the present. "She said you're thinking about talking to a podcaster." Mel's mouth twists, like I've just served her poop.

I flash back to telling Nancy about The Darkest Night . Not that I was going to do it, just that it was something interesting to think about.

"Be careful what you say." Isla's voice floats somewhere over my shoulder. A warning.

"No, of course not," I lie. "My friend's sister is a podcaster, that's all."

"Jack would be very disappointed if you did. So would I."

Mel stands, stepping into a little puddle of moonlight. For the first time, I notice she has blood down her white silk blouse, the pearl buttons glowing in the creamy light. I can see a pool of blood forming on the white carpet under her injured hand.

Mel takes a step toward me.

My heart starts hammering. I feel that weird disorientation again, the one I felt when I hallucinated her in Finn's room.

"Mel?"

Mel looks down, notices her hand is bleeding. Her whole face crumbles, and she sinks onto the couch, like she's lost her bones. She folds over and starts crying.

"I'm sorry," she sobs. "I didn't mean to scare you."

I sit on the couch next to her. "It's okay. I wasn't scared."

Another lie. But it isn't her fault. It's my stupid brain, seeing things that don't exist, seeing ghosts, people who haunt me, even now.

She sniffs and wipes her eyes. "I've tried so hard to move on, but the police opening this new investigation ... it's just bringing back memories, you know? And it hurts. That's why I didn't want you talking to that podcaster. Digging up the past never helps anything. I need to focus on Finn. On the life I have now. I have to move on. We both do. But it's so hard ."

Sometimes my pain is so big and raw, I can't see anything else. I guess I've been ignoring the fact that my mom was Mel's best friend. That Mel is hurting, too. Sadness—no, not sadness, anguish —comes off my aunt like an oversprayed perfume.

We sit there in silence. Not touching. Not speaking. Just quietly grieving together. It feels ... nice. Kinda soft and woolly. It's impossible to explain to others how much it hurts. But Mel gets it.

For the first time in a long time, our loss is a fragile string connecting us.

"I miss them," she whispers.

I slide my hand into hers.

I do, too.