A missing poster lingered in my peripheral vision at the stoplight, her eyes wide and searching. A shudder ran through me, the tremor in my hands coming back.

I was looking for something, too.

I wondered if maybe she’d found it.

* * *

TYLER WASN’T AT THE railway station. He was about a hundred yards past it, where they were extending the track, a wide frame and cement base already in place. Across the street, even surrounded by men all dressed the same—worn jeans, tan work boots, and a T-shirt, the same uniform he’d adopted eleven years ago—I could pick him out right away. Whereas the rest of the crew had on yellow hard hats, he wore a black baseball cap with ECC in block letters across the front.

A skinny man looked over Tyler’s shoulder, gestured with his chin. “I think you got some company.”

Tyler turned in slow motion. His face remained passive as he took me in, which was the most un-Tyler-like thing of all. Normally, I’d show up and he’d turn and smile. Hey, Nic, like I’d been gone only a day. Not six months, a year, more.

But now his face didn’t change. “Hi,” he said. The twitch of his thumb, the only indication that I was anything other than a stranger. His eyes shifted quickly to the side, to where the skinny man was watching us. “Can I help you with something?”

“I need to speak to you. It’s urgent.” I mentally berated myself. Urgent, like Everett would say in a business meeting.

“Sure.” He gestured to a small trailer, and I worried I’d have to talk in front of his father, but when I got inside, I realized the office was his. Single desk, his truck keys sprawled on top of some papers. A few straight-back chairs throughout. Plans and permits tacked to the corkboard walls. When he’d worked for his dad during school and then after, I’d always thought it was temporary. That he’d want something more, like I did. But he didn’t go to college when he graduated, and I should’ve known it then. Not just assumed he was working for his dad because he was waiting for me.

Ten years later and he was running the company. Ten years later, two fewer degrees than I had, and he was twice as accomplished.

He followed me in, closed the door, and leaned back against it. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.” He glanced out the window. “This really isn’t the best time.”

“I’m sorry. But something happened.” I tried to get a good look at his face, but the brim of his hat was pulled down low, and I couldn’t see his eyes. Just his mouth, a set line.

“What happened?” he asked, his back still pressed up against the door. The distance between us felt tangible, forced and awkward.

“Last night. After midnight. Someone was in Annaleise’s place.” A muscle at the side of his jaw twitched. I wanted to rip the hat off his head. I needed to see his eyes.

“And you know this because?”

“Because I saw them.”

“Nic, you’ve got to stay out of the fucking woods. You’ve got to let this go.”

“Tyler . . .”

“What?” he asked.

“I have to ask you.” I paused, wishing he wouldn’t make me.

He readjusted the brim of his hat, turned to stare out the window. “What, exactly, do you need to ask me?”

How many ways could I say it? I stepped closer, but his face remained in shadow. “Was it you?”

He looked back to me, like the whole conversation had caught him off guard. “Was what me? What the hell are you talking about?”

I lowered my voice even though we were alone. “Were you in her place last night? After midnight?” I asked.

Tyler turned and fixed his eyes on mine—What are you saying, Nic?—until I had to look away.

“Do you have a key?” I asked.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

“You never told me,” I said. “You never told me whether you were serious or just screwing her.”

He took his hat off, ran his hand through his hair, pulled it back down. He shifted his lower jaw around. “Just screwing, Nic. Happy?”

“No, I’m not happy.” My voice wavered, and I took a slow breath to steady myself. “Someone was in there.”

“Probably the police. Since they were just here.”

Fuck. Fucking Jackson being fucking right.

“What did they want? What did you say?”

He looked out the window again. “They want to find Annaleise. And they want to poke holes in my alibi. They want to catch me in a lie.”

I paused, thinking. “What is your alibi, Tyler?”

He grimaced. “That’s the problem. I don’t have a fucking alibi. My alibi is just that I wasn’t there. Except I obviously was a few hours earlier. So my alibi is that I wasn’t there when she went missing. That we didn’t have a fight that got out of hand.”

“That’s what they think?”

He shrugged. “That’s the story they seem to want. That I called her. We fought. For some reason they haven’t quite worked out yet, we agreed to meet up in the woods. She accused me of being with you. I . . . did something.” He reached out in front of him, fingers curling in as if closing around her slender neck.

“It’s up to them to prove that,” I said.

“Is it? Is it really? If everyone already believes it and then you show up at my work in the middle of the day?”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, heat rising to my face. “I’m sorry I came. I just needed to know.”

He nodded. “No, I’m sorry. I’m pissed. I’m pissed at them. Not at you. It was probably the police in her place, Nic.”

“No, not the police. There weren’t any cars. Someone on foot.” Someone who didn’t want to be seen. Someone who had a key. Someone who knew the woods by heart.

“Her family, then.”

“Through the woods, Tyler. Someone walked through the woods.”

Then he stared again, walked toward the door, readjusted the brim of his hat so it was perfectly centered. Nodded once. “It wasn’t me.” He looked me over once more. “Go home,” he said. “Get out of here before they come knocking on your door, too.”

I followed him out the trailer door into the sunlight, the work site too bright, like an overexposed photo.

* * *

MEALS STARTED BLENDING TOGETHER, along with the hours, losing structure, just as the days had been. Sleep was hard to come by, and I overcompensated with too much caffeine all day. It was after nine P.M. by the time I remembered to eat. There were too many possibilities. All those names and events tied together in that hypothetical box, weaving around, untangling in my mind. And more—the stories that never made it inside the box. The things we never asked each other slowly unraveling.