She wrote Rick a note and posted an update on Facebook. She tried to call Steve, the guy she was crushing on in the city, but he didn’t answer. It seemed like a bad omen. But she left a message, convinced herself he’d be waiting when she got there.
She remembered Marshall Crosby had promised her a ride anytime she needed it. She saw the way he looked at her, with a kind of desperate hunger. She knew he’d come and drive her where she needed to go. So she wrote him a message and didn’t wait for a reply. She didn’t want him to come to her house-she needed to be gone before her mother got back. And she needed to walk, to think. So she picked a random point between their houses and figured it would take her a while to walk there.
Then she left her room without a second glance. She remembered thinking that she had to get away from these people, this ugly life, before it killed her. And then she’d walked out into the cold night, alone.
“I did an awful thing, Charlene.”
They hadn’t really talked about that night. When Charlene had asked about Graham, Melody told her that they’d fought again in the car. He’d kicked her out and she’d walked home. He’d said he was going to go hunting and to think about the future of their relationship. He’d gone off and not yet come back, couldn’t be reached on his phone-and good riddance.
But Charlene knew, as daughters do, that this was a lie. Graham was in no condition to get up and fight again after they got him into the cab of his truck. And he was certainly in no shape to kick Melody out and start to drive. But Charlene didn’t call her on it. Besides, she wanted it to be true. She really did.
“What happened to him, Mom?”
Melody blinked at Charlene, as though she wasn’t quite sure what her daughter meant.
Then, “I’m not talking about Graham.”
Charlene felt confused. “Then what? What did you do?”
Melody put the car in reverse and backed out of the Coopers’ drive. Charlene looked up at Rick’s window and saw that it was dark. She wasn’t ready to see him yet, but she found she missed him more than she would have imagined. Maybe love, real love, wasn’t what she thought it was at all. Maybe it wasn’t a brushfire, a shift of tectonic plates. Maybe it was a held hand, a strong shoulder, a soft voice in your ear. Maybe it didn’t change the world; maybe it just made two lives a little better, a little softer, not so horribly lonely.
“I don’t want there to be any more secrets, Charlene. Can I tell you something that I’ve never told anyone?” Her mother wasn’t looking at her but at the road ahead of them.
Charlene was tired, feeling like the load she was carrying was too heavy already. But her mother looked so sad, so alone.
“Of course you can, Mom.”
She reached out for her mother’s hand. And, as she drove them home, Melody told Charlene all about another girl she’d failed, a lifetime ago.
Years earlier, Maggie had watched a documentary about psychics who solved crimes. It was a cable show, low-budget, lots of melodramatic music and bad camera angles. But Maggie watched it because it featured the solving of the Sarah Meyer case, with shots of The Hollows and interviews with people she knew.
It was the psychic, a woman named Eloise Montgomery, who’d led the police to Tommy Delano, who’d claimed to have a vision of Sarah’s murder. She had a connection to Sarah’s family, occasionally cleaned for them and other families in town.
Eloise claimed to have had visions on the night Sarah disappeared, only to learn the next morning that Sarah was missing. It took a few days for her to convince the police to listen to her, and it was only desperation that caused them to do so.
Once she said that the killer’s name began with the letter
No one was sure why or how he knew suspicion had turned to him. They found his room full of clippings about Sarah, photographs of her and other girls at the school, her underpants in the trunk of his car. He’d disappeared on foot into the hills behind his house. It was a strange thing to do, when he had a car at his disposal.
And they did. His confession came some hours later.
Eloise Montgomery still made her living as a psychic detective, traveling the world to help police with cold cases and cases that couldn’t be solved. For some reason, her gift was limited to women and young girls-the missing, the murdered, the abducted. Her website made this clear: Please don’t contact me about any other type of case. My talents are very specific. A few years later, after another high-profile case, Eloise had teamed with the retired detective who’d worked Sarah Meyer’s case at the Hollow’s PD, Ray Muldune. Maggie recognized him vaguely from his photograph.
“Is this Eloise Montgomery?” Maggie asked.
“It is.” She had the tone of someone who was used to waiting patiently while people figured out what they wanted to say.
“This may sound strange,” she said. “But I have some questions about an old case.”
“What can I do for you?” Maybe that was her shtick, to sound as though she’d been waiting for your call, to sound as though she already knew what you wanted.
“It’s about Sarah Meyer. About her murder.”
“Ah,” Eloise said. “Yes.”
Eloise sounded as though she could go on. But she didn’t, and Maggie felt tongue-tied all of a sudden, didn’t know how to continue the conversation. She wasn’t going to tell this stranger what she’d found in her mother’s attic. Why had she done this? Why had she made this ridiculous call?
“You have new information about the case,” the other woman said. “You’re concerned about people close to you.”
Her voice was soft, almost coaxing. But Maggie still couldn’t get any words out. Her heart was a bird in a cage, flapping, panicked. She had the irrational urge to slam the phone down.
“I’m free now,” Eloise said into the silence. “Do you know where I live?”
Maggie was staring at Eloise Montgomery’s address on the website.
“I do.”
“Can you come?”
“I can be there in an hour.”
“Okay,” she said. “See you then.”
And Eloise ended the call. Maggie stood, gathered her things, and left her office before she could change her mind. The urge to go to this woman, to hear what she had to say about the case, was magnetic, a draw powerful enough to lead Maggie away from her family in an acute crisis. The part of her that was always tending, managing, fixing, controlling was quiet for once.
• • •
On the drive, she had time to rationalize the things Eloise had said. Probably most of the people who called out of the blue about old cases thought they had new information. A large majority of those people were likely motivated by concern for someone they loved. Maggie had heard that this was the technique of many so-called