CHAPTER 25

Friday, 9:30 a.m.

I WAS THE GIRL WHO left. Who did not look back.

I did not knock on the door to my old home, asking to look around. I did not peer into the windows to check for a basement door. After I left the station the previous evening, I got right in my car and started driving. And I did not stop until I was well outside Widow Hills.

I would not return.

I was born with a healthy dose of self-preservation. I let it be, just like Emma Lyons told me to do.

I left it all behind, stopping at the same motel I’d stayed at the night before, then hitting the road again at the first sign of light.

MY SHOULDER WAS KILLING me. The adrenaline yesterday must’ve covered the pain from where Nathan had grabbed me—and pulled. Stretching my arm beyond its capabilities. I took a generic painkiller but had to drive carefully, keeping my left arm down low on the steering wheel.

I called Bennett on speaker while I drove, knowing he would be up and at work by now.

He answered right away, and I could hear the overhead announcements of the hospital in the background. “Hey,” he said, “I went by your place last night. I’ve been worried.”

“So, that’s what I’m calling about. I’m on my way home, but I was in Widow Hills.”

He paused for a beat. “You what?”

“I wanted to tell you that I’m okay.” Something I should’ve known to do days ago. “I mean, I was almost hurt. I’m a little bit hurt. Slightly sore. It’s a long story, but I’m almost home now.”

He listened as I told him about finding the pile of material in Nathan’s things, about going to the reporter in Kentucky, about Nathan following me. But he cut me off abruptly.

“Who’s Nathan?” he asked. And I realized there were still so many things I had kept for myself.

“Sean Coleman’s son. He’d been obsessed with me for years,” I said.

“Jesus, Liv.”

“Well, I’m okay now.”

For a moment, I could hear only him breathing. “Heard you called my sister.”

“Yeah, thanks for that. I think I’m good, though. Nathan’s in custody.”

“Do they think he killed his father?”

“I don’t know. I’m meeting with the detective later today. But yeah, seems that way.”

I promised to call him when I made it back. I kept moving, yearning for home. For the detective to close the investigation, and something more I’d realized on the drive: I’d longed for the permanence of the place, and this house, and these people. Something I wanted to return to.

———

MY STOMACH DROPPED WHEN I saw the shape of a car as I pulled into my driveway. Imagining the journalists or reporters who might be waiting around, hoping to catch a glimpse. The girl from Widow Hills, person of interest in a murder investigation. How long until their interest petered out again?

But as I drew closer, I recognized the car—and the person sitting on my porch steps, waiting for me.

Bennett stood when I exited the car. “Had to see it for myself,” he said, “that you were really still in one piece.”

“More or less,” I said, hooking my overnight bag over my right shoulder. I looked behind me at the empty road. “Anyone else been by recently?”

“Just your neighbor, looking for you. Think he saw me sitting out here.” He looked toward Rick’s house, through the trees. “I filled him in. At least with the gist of it.”

When I passed Bennett, I noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the tension in his shoulders. I unlocked the door and let him in, then immediately dropped my bag. His smile was subdued, and I worried it was me, that I’d missed another nuance of our relationship.

“Are we okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, sorry, Elyse’s family came to the hospital this morning, I didn’t get the chance to tell you earlier. Pretty somber day. I’m just trying to shake it.”

“Oh, I wish I could’ve been there.” I wanted to tell them that Elyse was my friend; that she brightened my life in the short time I’d known her; that I missed her; that I was sorry.

“She had a history of abuse, but they thought she’d kicked it. Her family had gotten her help after her previous job, and they swore she was clean . . . but, I guess . . .” A shudder, all the things we had missed under the surface of one another.

“What had she been taking?”

“From the hospital? Opioids, benzodiazepines. What you might guess. They said she’d had a problem with opioids in the past, after a car accident in her late teens.” Like my mother, then. God, how had I not seen it? Elyse had even told me about her accident, her experience in the hospital that had led her to this career in the first place. She had given me enough to piece together the truth, and I’d missed it. “Best guess, she was selling the rest.” I’d thought I knew her better than that. But we all had our secrets.

Bennett stretched, working out a kink in his neck. He moaned. “I got someone to cover for me now, but I have to work the evening shift.”

“You okay to work?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m gonna have to be. We had to ask the ER to lend us some help from their department to cover Elyse’s position, and apparently, her replacement just quit, too. She was friends with Elyse.” He sighed. “It’s hitting the whole hospital hard.”

“Yeah.” I could feel it coming on here, too: the grief, mixed with the guilt.

He looked around the house. “Will you be okay here?”

Nathan was being held in Kentucky, and Rick was home, presumably watching. “Yes,” I said.

“I’m so glad it’s over,” he said, voice lower. “That you’re okay.”

My stomach sank. “It’s not over. It’s going to be chaos.” In a way, it was just getting started. Nathan might be gone, but people were still watching. The girl from Widow Hills was a victim, a witness—if there wasn’t a deal, I might have to testify. I’d have to ask the detective about that, but one thing was certain: It was not over yet.

He frowned. “I meant the part where someone was . . . watching you. Jesus Christ, I can’t believe I left you alone here.”

I looked at him. “None of us knew,” I said. None of us guessed at the reach of that story—across time and distance. Across a generation. Stories like this, they didn’t end. They only grew.

He smiled when he left. A promise to see me this weekend, to catch up, like everything was normal now. I let him believe it. His hope was contagious.

RICK DIDN’T COME OVER after Bennett left, though I knew he’d been looking for me.

I crossed the boundary between our yards, sidestepping that black hole of gravity where Sean Coleman had waited and died. I could hear movement inside Rick’s house, something dragging against the wood floor, and I knocked. “Rick? It’s me. It’s Liv.”

“One minute,” he said, before opening the front door.

He looked the same as always, but behind him, there was a duffel bag on the wood floor. His hands hovered just over my shoulders before dropping. “Been waiting on you to get back. Your friend, there, he told me what happened. Nina, too. But I wanted to hear it from you, that you’re okay.”