One year gone a novel, p.12
One Year Gone: A Novel, page 12
“Somebody,” I said, my tone this time slow and enunciated, “was in the house.”
Joe ignored me. He crossed over to the recyclables bin, lifted the lid again.
“How much wine do you go through a night?”
“Joe.”
“There are seven in here, Jess. Seven empty bottles.”
“Joe, listen to me.”
Dropping the lid, he turned back to me, his face tight. “How much did you drink tonight?”
When I didn’t answer, Joe shifted his posture. Just a bit. Straightening his back, tilting his chin up.
“I know this is stressful, Jess—I’m stressed myself—but you need better coping skills than drinking yourself numb.”
“Fuck you.”
His face still tight, he took a step forward, and I said, “There!”
He paused, frozen in place.
“Didn’t you hear that?” I said. “That slight sigh from the floorboards? That’s exactly what I heard tonight.”
My words were frenzied, almost a blabber. I’d come off the counter and approached Joe, feeling a new wind, that doubt I’d momentarily had suddenly blown away. I practically pushed Joe aside so I could stand where he’d stepped, and I pressed my weight down on the spot a couple of times before I produced the same sighing noise.
“There!” I shouted, nearly delirious now. “That’s what I heard! Call James and Kenny back. Let them hear it too.”
Joe just stood there, staring back at me. His face impassive, his eyes flat.
“I’m not drunk,” I whispered. “And I’m not crazy.”
Joe didn’t bother disputing this. Not even a passing attempt. He simply pulled his phone from his pocket to check the screen, issued a yawn.
“I should head home.”
“Joe.”
“If you’d like, I’ll walk the house with you before I go. I know James already did, but let’s at least make sure every window and door is locked.”
“You don’t have to believe me, Joe. That’s fine. But the truth is somebody was in the house. Somebody took that last bottle of wine. Those are facts.”
Joe stared back at me, silent. It was clear he didn’t know how to respond.
I wanted to say it again—I’m not crazy—but I felt voicing it twice might somehow incriminate me. A sane person might tell others they weren’t crazy only once, but more than once?
Jesus Christ, maybe I was losing it.
Joe said, “I miss her, too, Jess. I hope she comes home soon. But until then, both of us need to keep our shit together.”
I said nothing and watched Joe as he started toward the front door, and then something occurred to me.
“Any word from Tony?”
Joe’s broad shoulders dropped. He slowly turned back around.
“No,” he said softly. “At least, no news. They checked the ATM camera at the bank but had no luck. They’ve asked around town, but nobody has come forward with seeing where Wyn may have gone that night.”
“What about the state police?”
“They’ve been on the lookout, too, but I think Tony was right—Wyn’s a seventeen-year-old girl who’s clearly a runaway. She isn’t a priority. It’s not like they’re canvassing the state. Hell, at this point, she’s probably not even in the state anymore. She could be on the other side of the country.”
I felt tears starting to sting my eyes, and I wiped them away, quickly, not wanting Joe to see me cry.
“I don’t know why she wouldn’t tell me about the baby.”
Now it was Joe’s turn to stay silent. He stared back at me for a long moment, and then finally cleared his throat.
“Maybe she was embarrassed. Or scared. Or . . . hell, any number of things. I meant to tell you, by the way: I’ve shared the news of Wyn on social media. Emma has too. It’s gotten a lot of shares, has really gotten out there, but so far nobody has come back with any solid leads.”
“What about Stuart?”
Again, that slight tightening in Joe’s face.
“What about him?” he said.
“Is there anything he can do? Stuart’s known Bronwyn most of her life. There’s a chance the baby’s even—”
Joe cut me off.
“After what you tried to pull at the Colvins’ yesterday, do you honestly expect Stuart to go out of his way to help us?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You essentially accused his son of raping our daughter.”
“No I didn’t. I mean, okay, I may have overreacted a bit, but—”
“Jess, you have to understand something about Stuart. His whole worldview is filtered through a political lens. His son getting a girl knocked up out of wedlock? Nowadays that’s barely a scandal. But his son sexually assaulting a girl and getting her pregnant? Even if it’s not true, the mere allegation could ruin his career.”
I closed my eyes, released a breath.
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’ll apologize to Stuart and Emma and Aaron in the morning if that will help things.”
“Honestly, Jess, at this point it’s probably best you keep your distance for right now. But to answer your previous question, Stuart’s already shared news of Wyn’s running away on his personal social media. So has Rachel. So has everyone we know. I wish there was something more that can be done, but I hate to say right now we’re in a holding pattern. We have to wait for Wyn to reach out to us. Or to come home. Or something.”
“I’m not giving up.”
“Christ,” Joe said. “Do you think I’m giving up?”
“I’m not sure what you’re doing.”
“I’m praying. Every day. I’m making phone calls. Every day. I’ve even created a business account on Facebook to boost my posts about Wyn so that even more people will see it, and I made a website so that people can leave tips. What the hell have you been doing besides drinking yourself silly?”
When we were together, Joe and I almost never fought. We bickered, we sniped at one another, but we never got into loud arguments. A friend had once observed that maybe that was why things hadn’t worked out between us. A stable, healthy relationship consisted of those times when the couple has a rage-filled argument. Screaming and shouting with maybe a TV remote or phone thrown at the wall. It wasn’t healthy to suppress all that anger and frustration; it needed to come out, and if it didn’t, the relationship suffered.
I wasn’t sure if that was true—if Joe and I would have lasted had we had more full-out arguments—but it was beside the point. When I got angry, I never started screaming and yelling. I became quiet. Too quiet. A volcano pushing all its hot magma and lava and whatever else deep down to its core.
I said, as calmly as I could, “I want you to leave.”
Joe had clearly realized his mistake. It was written across his face, the sudden guilt.
“Jess—”
“Right now.”
Joe knew better than to argue. He left without a word, pulling the door closed behind him.
The next day I went into work.
It didn’t go well.
I couldn’t concentrate, and it didn’t help that most of the staff had heard about my daughter running away, or if they hadn’t heard about it, they’d heard about what happened at the pep rally or even watched one of the videos online.
I’d checked that morning and found the views for the most popular video were up to over ten thousand. An hour later, it was almost eleven thousand. A few hours after that, fifteen thousand.
It had indeed gone viral, and I feared that meant Bronwyn might never come home.
When it became clear I was too distracted—and that several of the guests for lunch had heard about Wyn, some even going so far as to offer me their condolences as I drifted through the dining room—my assistant manager suggested I go home.
I didn’t want to—it felt like an acknowledgment of failure, both as a boss and as a mother—but in the end I relented.
Halfway home, I remembered I didn’t have any wine. I almost started toward the liquor store—my car drifting into the turning lane as if on its own—but I kept thinking about what Joe had said and how those two officers had done their best to avoid looking me in the eye, because there I was, a hysterical woman who’d maybe had too much to drink before bed and was hearing noises in the night.
No, I decided, I wasn’t going to continue that cycle. I didn’t need to drink. I wasn’t my father’s daughter.
Of course, that meant when I did arrive home, I had nothing to do.
I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, so I decided to try to take a nap.
It was as I was headed down the hallway toward my room that I glanced at my daughter’s bedroom door.
The door was closed, as it almost always was, but hadn’t I seen it partly ajar when I was creeping down the hallway in the dark last night?
Maybe, maybe not. It had been dark, after all. And I had believed somebody was in the house.
No, stop that. Somebody was in the house.
I gripped the knob, waited a beat, and then opened the door.
Bronwyn’s room looked no different than it had the last time I’d looked in. I’d gone through it the other day, after she’d disappeared. The police had too. I hadn’t found anything, at least not anything that helped determine where my daughter may have gone, and neither had the police.
Still . . . it wouldn’t hurt to search it one more time, would it?
I stepped into the room, my fingers flexing in and out of fists. I told myself it was just because I was anxious to get this done. Not because I needed a drink.
I almost didn’t find the note. It was hidden pretty well in her desk. In the top drawer, stuffed in that underneath portion in the back. I could have sworn I’d already looked there the other day, but there it was.
It was a piece of ruled worksheet paper, folded several times.
I felt a strange mix of dread and excitement rush through me as I unfolded the note. Whatever was written here, it could mean everything.
Then my eyes lighted on the words, and I felt a tightness in my chest.
Wyn,
I miss you. Please call me.
CM
A number was included with the note, a local number I didn’t recognize.
Who the hell was CM?
I racked my brain. Tried to think of all Bronwyn’s friends. A few had first names that started with C, a few had last names that started with M, but none that were CM.
The bedsprings of my daughter’s bed sighed as I sat on the edge. I had my phone out and started to dial the number but paused. Decided to google the number first instead.
No luck. Nothing came up.
It took longer to dial the numbers than I anticipated, that feeling of dread now bubbling in the pit of my stomach.
I tapped the green phone icon with my thumb, closed my eyes, and placed the phone to my ear.
It didn’t even ring. Went straight to voicemail.
“Hey, it’s Chad. Leave me a message.”
I disconnected before the beep. Then just sat there, staring down at the phone.
Chad wasn’t the name of any of Bronwyn’s friends, at least that I could think of. But the voice . . . something about it sounded familiar, though I couldn’t tell why. It sounded young, but not like a teenager. It sounded like an adult.
And then it hit me—practically sucker punched me in the stomach.
Chad.
Chad Murphy.
My daughter’s social studies teacher.
18
WYN
Day of the Pep Rally
Fourth period didn’t go by any quicker than the first three.
She was in Mr. Murphy’s social studies, the class right before lunch, and Wyn spent much of that time wondering where she would sit in the cafeteria. She had the weird feeling Autumn and Summer and the other cheerleaders were going to do something to her.
Wyn didn’t know how she knew this, exactly, only that it was a gut feeling, and in her seventeen years of life Wyn had learned to trust her gut.
She could just skip it, of course—get a pass for the library or claim she wasn’t feeling well and see the nurse—but Wyn didn’t like the idea of surrender. Not with the pep rally only two hours away. Surrendering now might be the thing that caused her to wimp out, and she refused to wimp out.
Then, before she knew it—hunched over her textbook, barely listening to Mr. Murphy as he babbled on in his way-too-friendly baritone—the bell rang, and like that, everybody scrambled for the door.
“Wyn, can I see you for a minute?”
She was almost to the door, her canvas backpack strapped to her shoulders, her textbook hugged tightly against her chest, when Mr. Murphy’s words cut through the din of sneakers and heels and boots already stampeding through the hallway.
There were a few other students behind her, waiting to follow her out, and Wyn stepped aside to let them pass by before turning to Mr. Murphy.
He stood there with his hands in his pockets, his shirtsleeves rolled up, tie loosened around his neck in that perpetual Jim Halpert look. He smiled at her, then quickly crossed over to the door to shut it before lowering his voice.
“Is everything okay? It didn’t look like you were paying attention most of class.”
“I’m fine,” Wyn said. She should already be in the cafeteria, securing a table and making sure she didn’t look weak.
She started for the door, but Mr. Murphy stepped in front of her. His hands were out of his pockets now, his arms crossed over his chest.
“I’m worried about you, Wyn.” His voice was soft, almost tender. “I know you were close to Taylor, and it’s a damned shame what happened to her. Ever since her accident, you’ve been . . . distant.”
The second bell rang, meaning she was late for lunch.
“Hey,” Mr. Murphy said, shifting slightly on his feet, and Wyn suddenly had the sense that he wanted to reach out and touch her arm or her shoulder or maybe even her chin, and this feeling somehow transferred itself to Mr. Murphy, whose face suddenly went blank, like he’d been caught.
“I should go,” Wyn managed, and Mr. Murphy nodded quickly, stepping back and clearing his throat.
“Of course. Did you want me to write you a pass?”
“No thanks.”
Wyn had her hand on the doorknob but paused. Something had occurred to her, a revelation that almost knocked her sideways, and she turned just slightly enough to see the young teacher from the corner of her eye.
“Onyx Butterfly?”
There was a pause, maybe an extra second or two where Mr. Murphy attempted to process what Wyn had just said, and she felt her stomach tighten at the possibility that he would smile, chuckle, do something to acknowledge the fact that he had indeed been communicating with her all this time.
But Mr. Murphy, after that extra second or two of what Wyn realized was confused silence, said, “Huh?”
“Nothing,” Wyn said, pushing open the door. “See you later.”
By then the hallway was deserted, a ghost town or, well, a ghost hallway. Students were either in the cafeteria or class, and Wyn hurried down the hallway, wanting to make sure she made an appearance, that she showed the Seasons—and herself—that she wasn’t afraid.
She turned the corner and stopped short.
Coming her way were Autumn Porter and Summer Green, as well as Monika Stevens and Skylar Jennings.
They moved side by side, the four of them, Autumn and Summer in the middle, Monika and Skylar flanking them.
As soon as they saw Wyn, they slowed to a stop.
They just stood there then, staring at Wyn.
Wyn stared back at them.
She thought about Taylor, and how Taylor had always told her not to overthink things, to not worry about what anyone thought of her, especially the Seasons, and before Wyn knew it she was in motion, angling toward one side of the hallway to bypass the girls.
None of them moved or even made a sound until Wyn had almost reached them, and that was when all four girls, as if controlled by the same puppeteer, moved to the side to block her path.
Autumn said, “Where do you think you’re going?”
There was more than the obvious challenge in her tone. Her blue eyes practically shone like a hungry predator’s, a slight smile riding her glossed lips.
Wyn still had her textbook hugged to her chest, which she felt made her look weak, defensive, so she slowly lowered it to her side.
She wasn’t going to say anything, she decided. Engaging with these four—or at least Autumn, who had crowned herself the queen bee once news of Taylor’s death had spread throughout town—wasn’t worth her time. They wanted to rattle her for whatever reason, and the only way to fight back was to show that she wouldn’t, that she couldn’t, be rattled.
When Wyn didn’t respond, a touch of anger flickered through Autumn’s eyes.
“We heard you’re performing at the pep rally.”
Wyn didn’t answer.
Summer took over, maybe sensing her friend’s rising impatience.
“Are you sure that’s such a good idea? We heard about what happened at the America’s Got Talent tryouts. You really want to embarrass yourself like that again?”
It was hard—damn near impossible—but Wyn managed to keep her face blank. Every fiber in her body wanted to scream, wanted to shout, wanted to take her textbook and throw it. But she couldn’t do that—she wouldn’t do that—and so she just stood there, staring back at them. Doing her best to look bored.
Summer smiled, her face as radiant as a black hole sun.
“Taylor told us all about it. How you choked. Would be a real shame for that to happen again, wouldn’t it?”
Again, Wyn did everything she could not to react. She was almost positive Taylor hadn’t said anything to the girls—Taylor wasn’t the only one Wyn had confided in, which had been stupid of her, for sure—but still, the mere idea that her best friend in the world had betrayed her confidence . . .
“We’ve been wondering,” Autumn said, “why you would even want to perform at the pep rally in the first place. You could have performed at the special assembly for Taylor last month, but you didn’t. Instead, you want to perform at the pep rally. I even heard you asked to perform at the homecoming game tonight but that they couldn’t fit you in. Tell me, Bronwyn”—and the way she said Wyn’s proper name dripped with so much disgust it was a wonder the head cheerleader didn’t spit after she uttered the word—“why do you so badly want to perform at the pep rally?”
