“Any chance there was foul play?”
“Nothing that was noted, but I’m not ruling it out. We just want you to be alert, aware, and to call us for anything.”
I pushed the photo of Charley away, no longer wanting to look. “He said he won’t come for me; that if I got away the third time, my story would have ended, the heroine—I—would’ve won.”
“He may change his mind and want to add another twist.”
“Or maybe he’ll leave me alone.”
“He’s still out there. You and Clara might not actually be his first crimes. We’ve been looking at cases where the victim resurfaced, alive, after a matter of days.”
“How many cases fit that profile?” Garret asked.
“At least four.”
“And have those families been contacted?”
“They have.” She nodded. “It’s going to take some time. I’m just glad we now know what we’re dealing with here. I’m sorry it’s been such a long process.”
Garret gave my forearm a squeeze as though reading my mind. Her apology didn’t make up for the six previous months of being shunned by everyone I knew, the eight weeks I’d spent on the mental health floor of the hospital, or the time that was wasted not searching for clues.
“We’ll have cars circling your house to keep an eye on things,” she said. “There will also be an unmarked car parked on your street overnight.”
Overnight? For how many nights? Did it even matter? Could I really count on them?
“Just promise me one thing,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “You’ll leave the investigative work to us, okay?”
Part of me wanted to ask where she thought we’d be if I’d never gone to look for Peyton. Would investigators have ever connected the two crimes? Would they have identified Charley and realized they had a serial abductor on their hands?
“And you can call me for anything.” She gave me yet another card.
I still have a stack of them by my bed. Maybe one day I’ll use them in my art. For now, they’re just another reminder to listen to my gut, regardless of what others say: rule number five.
And speaking of my parents’ rules … I’m grateful for them. They’ve given me a sense of safety and helped me to keep my parents close. But they haven’t always worked, which, I think, brings me to one of the biggest lessons of all: There are no guarantees. No absolutes or foolproof plans. But, as RainyDayFever would say, at least there’s ice cream and doughnuts.
NOW
60
I’ve asked Garret to take me to the site of my childhood house on Bailey Road. It’s no longer a heap of concrete and dust. Fresh grass has been planted where I used to do somersaults. A new house sits on the lot, painted bright blue with white accents.
We sit out front in Garret’s truck for several minutes, as I take it all in: the basketball hoop in the driveway, the wreath of oyster shells hanging on the front door, and the field hockey sticks propped up against a fence.
“People live here,” I say, stating the obvious. I’d heard the land had been sold, but I still half expected to find remnants of the fire.
I gaze across the street. The stained-glass sun is still there, in Mrs. Wilder’s front window. What would the scene look like now, through one of its rays?
“A lot different?” Garret asks as if responding to my thoughts.
“Different good. The house looks happy.”
“It does,” he says, pointing out sets of children’s handprints cast into a patch of cement on the walkway.
“Life goes on,” I say. Wanting to share something else from my old life, I pull the doorknob from my bag. “This is from my bedroom, from back when I lived here. I salvaged it from the debris.”
“That’s actually kind of cool.”
“On the night the house burned, my father wanted me to open my bedroom door. I’m not sure why—to save himself or to save me. But I never did, because I burned myself in the process.” I hold out my hand to show him where the knob lines up with my palm.
Garret runs his thumb over the phantom scar. “So, the knob represents survival, I’m assuming.”
I blink hard, taken aback by the word. “Why would you think that?”
“What else would I think? This knob survived the fire, and so did you.”
“But my parents didn’t. The knob has always represented what I did wrong—what I should’ve done differently.”
“What could you have done differently?”
“Forced the door open, for starters.”
“The door might’ve saved your life. Did you ever consider that?”
One of the firefighters had said the same, especially when I described the smoke coming through the grain. But I hadn’t wanted to listen, because his words didn’t change what’d already happened, what I already felt I’d done.
“There’s something else,” I tell him, hearing the wobble of my voice. “Before the fire started, I’d gone downstairs to feed a log into the wood-burning stove. I thought I’d closed the stove door. But obviously I hadn’t.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Why else would the fire have started?”
“A stray ember, a dirty stove, an antiquated system … Maybe something got clogged in the flue. Maybe someone had poked at the fire after you’d gone back to bed. The point is you won’t ever know the answer. But you have to be able to move forward without letting the question haunt you.”
I look away, sucking back tears. His words feel years late.
“I told you about my grandfather,” he continues, “about how he was a vet, taking on cases no one else would touch. He wasn’t able to save every animal, but he did his best with what he knew.”
“Did I do mine?” I peek up into his face.
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
I look back at the house, no longer able to recognize a single shred of what used to be. “For years, I’ve wondered what I could do to make it up to my
