“Exactly. But I was all like that for kind of the opposite reason. I wasn’t imagining all of the wonderful things about my relationship with Greg, exactly. It wasn’t as if I was sitting around coming up with terrible things about him, but I wasn’t longing for him. I was upset that nobody knew where he was, and he wasn’t in contact with any of us. And I was angry for not being more honest with him in the first place,” I say.
“Didn’t anybody realize something terrible must have happened to him?” Xavier asks.
“People thought about it, of course. But the thing is, he didn’t just vaporize. It wasn’t as if he was going about his normal life and there was a specific endpoint that people could pinpoint. We didn’t have bills that lapsed or rent that didn’t get paid. His bills continued to get paid through automatic withdrawals from his bank account. And everything that we looked into pointed to the fact that he prepared to leave.”
“He slipped through your fingers,” Xavier comments.
It’s the simplest, most concise way to describe it.
“Yeah,” I nod. “And it infuriated me. And broke me. I ended up getting taken out of the field and spending six months pushing papers and answering phone calls. Then I was sent here. People were dying and disappearing, and the Bureau was called in to assist the local police in tracking down the person responsible. Creagan chose me because I hadn’t gone undercover in a while and was assuming I could pass as a woman trying to start over in a new life. At least, that was how it was presented to me. He gave me another name, and I came here with a story that I was considering moving to Feathered Nest to start again.”
“What was your name?” he asks.
“He kept my first name, but gave me the last name Monroe,” I say.
Saying it feels as if I’ve found a tear in time. The words coming out of my mouth are my own, but the voice is from four years ago. I’m hearing myself say the name Creagan gave me and knowing how ridiculous it sounds. Now I understand why he kept my first name, but I didn’t know then.
“Like Lakyn,” Xavier says.
My stomach twists. I look back at the book in my hands. I want to fall into the words.
“You wouldn’t make a very big splash.”
My eyes snap over to him. “What?”
“You said you wanted to fall into the words. You wouldn’t make a very big splash. Not with that book, anyway.”
“I said that out loud?” I ask, startled it managed to slip out without my even realizing it.
There’s something about talking to Xavier that blurs the line between thought and speaking. Just as he looks as if he’s absorbing what he reads, he soaks things up from the people around him.
He nods. “But you aren’t going to get very deep in that.”
I hold the book up. “It’s classic literature.”
“Nothing more than a painting with letters for pigment. Lovely, for sure. Impressive, perhaps. But no deeper than a brush stroke on canvas. If you really want to swim around in something, try this.”
He hands me the book he was reading. I scoff at the title.
“It’s a comedy,” I say.
“It’s easy to make people cry. Basic human emotion can be tampered with without too much effort. It’s not so simple to make people laugh. Sadness, grief, anger, emptiness, loneliness. They’re all solitary experiences. They crush from the inside out. But humor is reciprocal. It’s an interaction, even if it’s just with the page or a recording. You must be willing to have your emotions manipulated and vulnerable enough to not be cynical or bitter, or too protective. And someone must be willing to reach out and offer that twist on reality, a personal perspective or thoughts, knowing there’s no control over how it will be internalized. You fall into those words, you can keep sinking as long as you want to.”
I stare at him for a few seconds, trying to wrap my mind around him. It’s not the first time. It won’t be the last.
“I didn’t want to think about that,” I finally tell him. “I don’t like thinking about what happened here, but I can’t not think about it. There are still too many questions, and no matter how many times I tell myself I won’t come back, I end up here. The first night I was here, I was right here in this living room. I was going over notes for the case and getting myself ready for the investigation. Creagan had told me someone was supposed to meet me here, but there wasn’t anybody. That’s why it didn’t seem so strange when I heard someone knocking on the door.”
Xavier nods.
“I thought it was the property caretaker. But when I opened the door, a man fell dead on the porch in front of me. At the time, I didn’t know who he was or why he was there. When I was checking him, I found a piece of paper with my name written on it in his hand. “
“Your real name?” Xavier asks.
“Yes. After that, everything happened so fast. No one knew who he was or where he came from. There was no car. No one heard a shot. That was what started my journey to find out who he was and how he knew me. It helped me finally answer the questions I had about my mother’s death, but also her life. Then I was lured back here and found out I was actually born right outside of Feathered Nest, and my parents had strong connections to the town. Creagan knew that all along. It was why he sent me to track the killer.”
“The one whose mother
