Chapter 37

Alice

I just can't believe that Maya had anything to do with my family going missing. First of all, Maya? No way. I know her better than that. Second of all, why would she have taken Ella's backpack to the cops if she were involved? It doesn't make sense.

These thoughts spin through my mind all night and the next day, until Jinx calls to tell me that Maya's been released. It turns out the reason she was fired from the sports store was because she stole a gun. A gun! She left it in her bedroom, I guess, and my mom stole the gun from her.

And that's the gun that killed Theo Moriarty.

"Maya saw your mom put all her shit in her car. She realized she'd taken the gun, too," Jinx tells me when I answer my phone. "She'd seen her with Theo Moriarty once and thought they were in on it together, so she started texting her, trying to scare her so she wouldn't go to the cops about where she got it."

It's stupid and irrational, which I'd never think of Maya as being. But I also know that fear can make people do dumb things.

I don't know how I feel. Betrayed. Angry. Sad. I'm not sure I can ever forgive her.

I take my last Ativan and lie on my bed, staring at my ceiling until it kicks in, carrying me away on a medicated cloud. It doesn't matter. I can get more pills. And more after that. I can take all the pills I want. Maybe I should. I don't have to be here, don't have to be the one who survived.

I hear Grandma's voice from down the hall. She's talking to Mel. They're making plans. Plans to make me leave or plans to make me stay. Whatever.

Alfie hops onto the bed. I pull him onto my chest. He purrs happily, his body vibrating against mine.

There's a smell coming off him, strong and distinct. I pull him closer and sniff his neck, his back. Alfie meows and tries to wiggle away. It's lilacs and vanilla. The smell of my mother's body lotion.

Tears fill my eyes, the longing so fierce it's like a kick to the throat.

I stare at Alfie and he stares back, his big green eyes blinking slowly.

I know my cat is not my mom. I'm not crazy. But I can't explain why he smells of her now.

There's nothing else to do but lie back, Alfie on my chest, and inhale the scent of my mother. Maybe sometimes there is no answer. All you can do is enjoy a brief glimpse of happiness.

Alfie bats at the necklace pooled in the hollow of my throat. I laugh. The sound echoes back at me from a great distance. I move the chain, the locket with its musical note dancing. He bats at it again.

I hold the necklace in my hand. Something is rolling around in my head, like soap on a Slip 'N Slide. The musical note. It never struck me as strange before because I played the violin, but for the first time I wonder ...

I never loved the violin and my mom wasn't a musician. So why did she choose a musical note?

My door clicks and Grandma enters. She closes the door and sits on the edge of my bed, her weight dipping the mattress.

I love my grandma. She's so calm, so easy to be with, relaxed and undemanding. She never speaks up. Never contradicts. Others just kind of steamroll right over her.

"I spoke to Mel," she begins, her voice tentative. "She thinks maybe Florida would be a good move for you."

Of course Mel made the decision.

"Sweetie, I had no idea how bad it's been for you." Her eyes land on my forearm, glossy and damp. Her fingers move from her prim navy skirt to my arm, butterfly soft, against the scar tissue, like she's spelling it out. F R E A K.

I sit up, Alfie sliding off me, and wrap my arms around her. "It's not your fault, Grandma."

She shakes her head, gray-blonde bob swinging. "I should've fought harder for you to come live with me."

"What do you mean?"

"I wanted you to. I hope you know that. I thought with everything that had happened, and then Mel in the hospital with her own health problems, that you should live with me. But Mel said it was better to keep your routine, the same school, same friends." She blinks hard, eyes red. "You'd lost so much, and I thought she was right, you needed some consistency in your life. But maybe we were wrong. Maybe you needed to start over."

I stare at her. For just a moment, I wish she wasn't easy. That she'd had an opinion, a backbone. Because another word for easy is pushover .

Mel said I should stay, and so I did. Then Mel said I should go, so I will. Everybody else makes the decisions, for Grandma and for me. She never speaks up. She's spent her life swallowing her voice, shuttering her truths.

Just like I've done, I realize.

"Please say you'll come to Florida with me," Grandma says. "We can make a life for you there. Away from Black Lake."

I thought if I could find something, their bodies, or proof they were dead, or just something that explained what happened, that the hallucinations and the ghosts would go away. But that's never going to happen. No matter how far I run, what state I live in, I'll always just be me. Alice. A freak. The girl who was left behind.

"Okay," I say.

"Okay?"

"Okay. I want to leave. Tomorrow. Or whenever. Just get me out of here."

Grandma touches my cheek. "I think it's for the best."

"I know."

"Why don't you get some rest? I'll arrange everything with Mel."

I nod. I don't want to make her sad anymore.

Grandma leaves and I close my eyes. The chemical wave carries me along. I'm floating, riding on feathers that drift on a warm wind. I think I sleep. My phone beeps a text. It's from Maya. She wants to explain. I turn it on silent and go back to sleep.

When I wake, it's late. Dark. Snow drifts past my window. There's a beeping, somewhere so faint, so muffled, I barely hear it at first. It stops, then starts again.

I've heard that sound before.

I throw my legs over the side of the bed and press my ear to the door. Something is coming at me, a thread pulling at the edges of my mind.

I hear something behind me and turn. It's my dad sitting on my bed. Crimson blood seeps down the side of his head. He stares at me, his eyes dark holes in his head.

Am I dreaming? Hallucinating?

Fear squeezes my chest, my heart roaring. But this time I don't run. I need to know what he's trying to tell me.

His voice comes from very far away, like I have cotton balls stuffed in my ears. "Why haven't you found us, Alice?"

"I don't know how to." Tears scald my cheeks.

The room does that weird wobble, like the lens of a camera closing, then opening, and suddenly I'm not here, in my room in Mel's house. I'm at home, in the backyard shed under the old apple tree that my dad turned into a darkroom.

Dad was developing a roll of photos we'd taken on a hike the day before, showing me how to cut the film off the cassette and load it onto a reel. How to carefully place it in the film tank and add in the developer mix. How to rinse and soak and hang it.

I see us standing shoulder to shoulder, the occasional thud of ripe apples hitting the roof, watching the lines on the pictures emerge as if by magic, a shadow picture hidden in the black and gray.

"The beauty of photography," Dad says, "is that you can capture anything you feel is important. And with the right timing, the right color, and the right creativity, it's powerful enough to not only take you back in time, but to also bring back those same feelings."

He clips a picture onto the washing line and looks at it. "But the problem is, we only ever see part of the story. Every picture is both a truth and a lie because it doesn't give any context. We see what we want to see."

The scene in front of me wavers, a mirage shimmering.

"Don't go," I plead. "Don't leave. Tell me where they are."

But it's too late. Dad is gone, and I'm back in my room at Mel's house.

I force myself to get up, my limbs gummy and thick. I slide my closet door open and pull my camera from my backpack. I flick through the pictures: candids of Finn with Santa and his elf, my parents dancing with Will and Shelby and Grandma. Mom and Mel in the kitchen, their heads bent close.

What screams at me loudest are the missing pictures. Jack with the curly-haired elf. Mom with Theo. The pictures of Mom's body covered in black bruises.

Pictures are a witness to something, but like my dad said, they aren't the whole story. They're just a snapshot, one where you don't know the bigger picture.

Maybe that's all we ever know of the people we love, a tiny sliver of who they really are.

I move again through the photo gallery, slower this time. Something snags in my gaze. I go back, squint at the screen. Mel has a plate of cookies in one hand. Mom's head is tilted, her gaze serious, landing somewhere over Mel's shoulder. There's something off about her expression, but I can't put my finger on it.

Next up are two shots of my dad dancing with Shelby. In the first, their grins split their faces, Dad showing her a hilarious version of the tango. But in the second, Dad's gazing over Shelby's shoulder. His smile has dropped, his expression, I don't know ... resolved. Like he's made a decision about something.

I close my eyes, try to re-create the room that night. To see what he was looking at. Something flickers deep in my mind. What is it? My eyes pop open.

He was looking at my mom.

I press the back arrow and pull up the picture of Mom and Mel at the dessert table. Mom's left arm is in a sling. She was at the left side of the room, gazing just out of shot, to her right. Forward: Dad was at the center of the room, looking ...

At her.

They were looking at each other.

Something had passed between them, the way they used to have those unspoken conversations that would drive me crazy.

A thought forms. The thing I've refused to acknowledge.

Maybe all this time I've been wrong. Maybe Dad really did kill Mom and Ella.