“What do you mean by totally off the grid?”

“I mean her car is gone and the phone is off. Trevor hadn’t seen her. She’d been back to her apartment, and she knew I was looking for her, and she took off anyway.”

“I’m sure she’ll be back, Liv. Maybe she went home for the weekend.”

It always caught me off guard when Bennett talked like this, about going home. He’d lived here four years, and yet there was a childhood house several hours away that he referred to as home.

Still, I couldn’t remember Elyse ever talking about home the way Bennett did.

“You’re sure?” I asked. “She quit, Bennett. Does that sound like someone who’s planning to stick around?”

“She wouldn’t just . . . She’s your friend . . .” He let the thought trail.

“Right, you’re right,” I said before ending the call. But I knew how fast someone could make an impulsive decision and change their entire life.

My mother had quit her job in Widow Hills after I was found. Thought we could live off generosity and the book contract alone—and we did for a time. She didn’t want to go back to work when we needed her to. Had developed a deep distrust of the medical establishment after the surgeries and the rehab and the medicine. She said no one was interested in fixing me, just wanted to pry deeper and find more things in need of fixing, bleeding us dry.

It was why, I think, I felt a pull to health care from the other side. I wanted to fix things from the top down, establishing an order to the chaos.

IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON BY the time I turned onto my street. I needed to do that now—apply an order to the chaos. Establish a routine, a simplicity to my life. I would go home and clean, do the laundry—erase all remnants of the earlier evenings. I’d spot the blue paint of the box cutter and return it to the kitchen drawer. I’d install the hook-and-eye latch over the doorjamb, which would’ve saved me so much of the trouble from the start: leaving someone else to find the body. I’d have an early dinner and set my alarm and get back to the weekly routine, in a show of normalcy.

There was a single unmarked car parked along the short stretch of road between Rick’s driveway and my own. I’d thought the police were finished up, but I could see two figures emerging from the car—Detective Rigby and a much taller man. Detective Rigby was in a suit, but this man did not appear to be a member of law enforcement. He wore jeans, a brown bomber jacket, aviator sunglasses covering his eyes.

Detective Rigby raised her hand as I pulled into my drive, and the man’s head turned slowly, watching me go. I nodded back but kept glancing in my rearview mirror. They were both still standing there, at the edge of the property, near the car.

The detective was gesturing as she spoke, but the man barely moved in acknowledgment. My stomach twisted, imagining who it might be. The press, digging up property records, asking questions. And here she was, giving him a personal tour, when she’d promised to give me a heads-up first.

They disappeared from view as I pulled in front of my house, but I couldn’t shake it from my mind. I had to know what they were doing here.

My steps along the drive made enough noise that, once I got close enough to hear the detective’s voice, their conversation stopped abruptly.

“Everything okay?” I asked, shading my eyes as they came into sight.

The detective’s gaze trailed after me, but her expression gave nothing away. With the sunglasses, I couldn’t tell whether the man was looking my way at all.

“Olivia, this is Nathan Coleman,” Detective Rigby said, and my stomach dropped. Still in the process of tracking down his next of kin, she’d told me. “He requested to see where we found his father.”

“Oh,” I said. It hadn’t occurred to me that it would be his son. That he would be someone my age. Here, on my property.

Something in his jaw twitched, and he stepped forward, extended his hand.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my hand sliding into his rough grip. “I’m sorry for your loss.” He reminded me of someone I knew, but that kept happening. Everyone here seemed like a figment of someone else. I couldn’t see his eyes, but there was something in his build that was similar to his father’s. His grip, capable of holding me up.

“This is Olivia,” Detective Rigby said. “She’s the one who found your father.” His handshake paused. I imagined the inverse: Your father found her.

But she said none of those things; her face gave away nothing. Nathan Coleman didn’t know.

“Well, then,” he said, a faint drawl under his clipped words, “I’m sorry, too.”

We both turned at a sound from the other direction. A door swinging shut at Rick’s house. “That’s Mr. Aimes. He’s lived here for years,” Detective Rigby said. We could just see him on the porch with a broom, looking this way.

Nathan Coleman turned his head from Rick back to me, like he was trying to determine which one of us his father had been here for.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” I said, the apologies multiplying. I needed to extricate myself from the situation. There was no good place for this conversation to go. Information was a thing that could chase you, and it was now right on the cusp of catching me—tainting everything to come.

The girl from Widow Hills, remember? Of course they would. Thinking they could find the answers there. Reaching back, this time, for anything they might’ve missed.

I wanted my own answers first.

CENTRAL CAROLINA UNIVERSITY—OFFICE OF ADMISSIONS

APPLICATION FILE—Olivia Meyer

CONTENTS: Guidance Counselor Letter Re: Permanent Record

FEBRUARY 5, 2012

To Whom It May Concern,

Per your request for further information, I’m writing today about a senior of ours who had applied to your institution, by the name of Olivia Meyer. The incident in question about which you are inquiring occurred while she was enrolled in a previous school, so we can’t speak directly to the nature of the infraction. Though my hope is to provide some potential context.

Olivia recently turned eighteen and legally changed her name. Before that, her legal name was Arden Olivia Maynor.

Attached please find an article from the year 2000 (you may well remember the Widow Hills case yourself). There was a flurry of new press last year surrounding the ten-year anniversary (second article attached, from 2010). It’s my understanding that her family had to leave town over some form of harassment. They came to us at the start of this school year.

I’m writing in confidence, as she has never spoken of these things directly. This information was provided by her mother. Her mother mentioned an incident at the previous school, related to PTSD from her childhood ordeal, and asked us to keep watch for any troubling behavior. All I can say is, since attending our school, Olivia has been nothing but a model student.

When I first received her transcript last year, I knew right away who she was. I remembered that case. I remembered watching. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a miracle she’s here at all—a few minor infractions notwithstanding.

Regards,

Thomas Woods

Norfolk County Schools, Ohio

Director of Counseling

cc: Norfolk County Office, copy for file