She showed those pictures to the press six months later, sold others for publication. The long scar, exposed and on display. I wondered what they’d paid for them; I wondered what I was worth.

I hated being watched. By the five-year anniversary, old enough to make my own decisions, I wanted nothing more to do with it. By the ten-year anniversary, I suspected that I was, and continued to be, a commodity for her.

Looking back after so much time, Arden Maynor felt like a role I’d played once. A character I’d read about—her backstory in a book. Describe her in three words: brave; capable; survivor. Play the role until you believe it. Until you become it.

But I was no longer that girl. I’d shaken her off, piece by piece.

In high school, I’d found my own skill: running. One that required mental strength more than physical skill, though no one seemed to believe me when I said that. I wasn’t built like a runner. My legs were shorter than the average runner’s, but I could cut through the air, and if I went out fast, no one could catch me. It defied logic, because I couldn’t catch someone else. Never seemed to gain on them. But I knew something no one else did. I’d learned long ago that endurance was a feat of the mind and not the body, so I gave over to that someone else. A brief disconnect. The switch flipped. Another voice in my head, and all it ever said was Hold on—as if my life depended on it.

But for years after, my mother wore that bracelet. It didn’t matter that I was no longer that girl. She held on to that image with a fierceness I’d never understood.

I’d stopped noticing it only after the ten-year anniversary, when things started disappearing from the house: things she sold, things she lost. By the time I left home, I thought it had long been traded for something else.

And now it was here. Here, out of the box, in my living room. Had I been wearing it—had I lost it—before the body of Sean Coleman was discovered outside my house?

Finally, I was alone. No Bennett, no Elyse, no Detective Rigby, no Rick stopping by. Just this house and its secrets—waiting for me to uncover them.

TRANSCRIPT OF LIVE INTERVIEW WITH EMMA LYONS AND SEAN COLEMAN

OCTOBER 22, 2000

EMMA LYONS: Mr. Coleman, will you walk us through how you found her? How it happened?

SEAN COLEMAN: It was luck, I found her. That’s all. I was walking home from the search, a shortcut back to where I’d parked my truck. The streets in Widow Hills have been lined with cars for days, you know? So I was just walking back. And that’s when I saw.

EL: What did you see?

SC: I saw her hand, and I knew. I knew it was her.

EMMA: What did you do?

SEAN: I called for help. I grabbed her wrist and I called for help but no one heard me. So I took my belt and secured it around her waist, to hold her closer. And I called for help over and over until someone came. I didn’t want to leave her there. It felt like forever before someone finally heard me and showed up.

EMMA: Did you say anything to her?

SEAN: Yeah, I just kept repeating myself. I told her: I’ve got you. I’ve got you. It’s okay now, Arden. Open your eyes.

CHAPTER 13

Sunday, 6:30 a.m.

THE PROBLEM WITH SLEEPING all day, I learned, was that I would be up all night. The events of the last few days and nights had recalibrated my circadian rhythm, and it was doing something to my head.

The first thing I’d done after Bennett left yesterday was check my mother’s things. I’d gone to the closet to find the box that I’d left on a shelf in the upper corner, bringing the stepstool from the kitchen to reach. But the box was on the floor—in a back corner, on the bare wooden floor.

Everything else was as I’d left it inside: the sweater, the canvas tote bag, the phone. Even the plastic bag that had contained the bracelet.

No box cutter, though.

The bracelet sat on my bedside table, and I brushed it into the drawer below—a compulsion to keep it close and hidden at the same time.

The rest of the house seemed both strange and familiar. Signs of Bennett’s organizing or Elyse’s curiosity. Things that had been used or moved, but not by me. The further I searched, the more I wondered: Had someone been through my desk drawers? My bedroom closet? For what purpose? But on second glance, I couldn’t be sure. Couldn’t tell whether everything was exactly the same as I’d left it, after all. If I was remembering some other time.

It could get like this at the hospital, too, with the same daily routines, the same visitors in the gift shop and faces in the cafeteria. Until a month had passed and a new group had cycled through, but I couldn’t tell when the shift had happened.

I’d thought about taking one of the remaining few pills in that vial from Dr. Britton to reset my internal clock, but I didn’t like the thought of being in such a deep state when I was alone over here. Not now. Not when someone had been watching and I hadn’t realized it. Not when Rick had a past I hadn’t understood. Not when someone had ended up dead.

As the sun was rising, things appeared to be getting back to normal outside. The police had finished processing the scene, and the cars had left sometime in the night. All that remained from the scene of the crime was a flutter of yellow tape in the distance.

My kitchen still smelled like yesterday’s dinner, and I took the trash bag to the outside bin, tucked against the side of the house, facing away from Rick’s place. It was the first time I’d stepped outside that I hadn’t felt like I was being watched.

Outside, I tipped the large bin to the side so I could swing the bag over the edge, but something clattered at the bottom first. I stood on my toes, peering in—and saw the remnants of a glass light bulb.

Bennett? I was pretty sure he’d brought it in yesterday wrapped inside a bag, dropped it in the kitchen trash.

The only place missing a bulb was upstairs, in the attic space.

A chill ran up my spine, across my neck, down my arms. That opened window, that sliver of glass between my toes—

I dumped the trash and headed back inside, down the hall, behind the door that looked like a coat closet. I was glad for the daylight when I climbed the stairs. The attic space felt too warm, too enclosed, but the light slanted through the beveled glass windows, casting shadows across the exposed hardwood.

Standing in the spot beneath the empty bulb socket, I bent down, looking closer at the hardwood. The sunlight caught on a tiny piece of glass between the floorboards. My eyes scanned the surrounding area: another piece to the right, catching the light—both so small they had become wedged between the wood beams.

Behind me, closer to the steps: a droplet of blood that I hadn’t noticed in the dark.

I looked up at the empty socket, realizing what must’ve happened. Somehow, before Rick found me outside that first night, I’d been up here. I’d broken a light bulb. I’d stepped in it. I’d cleaned it up.

The disorientation felt nauseating. Or maybe it was being in this room—the inability to take a deep breath, to imagine the open air, a way out.

I backed to the stairwell, unable to imagine what had drawn me up here in the first place.

Had I opened the window that night?

At least now I knew why I’d been outside that evening. I’d cleaned up the broken glass, brought it outside, dumped it in the bin. Maybe I’d tried to get back inside before realizing I’d locked myself out.