One year gone a novel, p.5
One Year Gone: A Novel, page 5
As Carter filled him in on how our daughter had apparently deleted all her social media, Tony’s face fell. He turned to look at Joe and me, and the heaviness in his expression was enough for me to feel my stomach tighten.
“Well,” he said, clearing his throat, “I’m one for positive thinking, so right now I don’t see any reason to get too alarmed. I’ve had kids run away for a day or two and then come home. Let’s hope the same thing happens with your daughter.”
He forced another smile, then hitched at his belt again.
“Anything else comes to mind, I don’t want either of you to hesitate in calling me. Day or night. I mean it. We’re gonna do what we can on our end, but I’m going to be honest with you. It’s not like Wyn’s a thirteen-year-old girl. She’s seventeen years old—almost an adult. Now, I see it in your face, Jess, that you don’t agree, and I have to admit I don’t either—she’s still a minor—but the way these things work, and based on what happened at the high school yesterday and the fact it looks like she’s packed most of her things . . . Well, you can see why it’s gonna be tough for me to make this a top priority.”
Part of me wanted to shout at the man. To tell him to forget every other issue the police force in town was dealing with and focus solely on finding Bronwyn.
But then Joe’s hand touched my back, and like that, the fight went out of me.
“We understand,” Joe said. “Please do whatever you can.”
“Oh, believe me,” Tony said, “we will. We’re gonna notify the state police to be on the lookout for her car. So we’re gonna need the make and model and license plate number. Carter, is there anything else I’m forgetting?”
Carter was silent a moment, thinking, and then he said, “Yeah, actually there is. Do either of you have access to your daughter’s bank account?”
6
WYN
Day of the Pep Rally
The sign at the entrance to Fox Lane was stern and direct:
ROAD CLOSED
It hung off a traffic barricade. Three six-foot white-and-orange-striped boards held up by iron uprights. Two yellow LED lights had been situated on both ends of the top board, blinking lazily.
The barricade wasn’t especially large, but Fox Lane wasn’t a wide road, so most drivers knew better than to try to squeeze past it.
Wyn wasn’t of the same mindset.
She nosed the Escort between the barricade and the edge of the road. Her passenger-side tires dug into the loose dirt and grass. Only a couple of feet, nothing more, and then she adjusted the steering wheel to get back onto the pavement.
Fox Lane wasn’t even a secondary road, so it wasn’t well maintained. It had probably last been paved thirty years ago. Now much of it was cracked, loose gravel smattered all throughout.
The gravel made the road especially dangerous when driving at high speeds. Kids in town—the boys, usually—would often race down the lane. Hence the reason this ragged strip of macadam had earned the name Fast Lane.
Wyn had once heard that a kid had gotten up close to ninety miles an hour for a couple of seconds before wussing out and applying the brakes.
Fox Lane was maybe a mile and a half long. It connected Frog Hollow Road and Hidden Valley Road. Frog Hollow was considered one of the main roads through town, while Hidden Valley was considered a secondary road. But a quarter mile down it led to Tobias Road, which was practically a highway in a town the size of Bowden.
The shortcut could save about a minute, but not many people bothered taking it. Mostly it was the teenagers who’d just recently gotten their driver’s licenses—the lamination still warm—who tore down the road to see just how fast they could get before their nerves got the best of them and they lifted their feet off the gas pedal.
Woods surrounded Fox Lane, and there was always the threat of some animal darting out into the road. If you lost control, there was an excellent chance you’d go off the road, and since there wasn’t much road to begin with, that most likely meant into a tree.
Wyn, her fingers tight around the steering wheel as the Escort coasted forward, closed her eyes.
Maybe she shouldn’t have come here, after all. Not today, not with everything she had planned.
But she had to—she had to—and so that was why she was here, at just after seven o’clock in the morning, her car going no more than five miles an hour, the tires crunching over that loose gravel, and before she knew it, she’d reached the spot.
Fox Lane wasn’t a straight shot, at least not all of it. For three-quarters of a mile or so it was, and then the road curved about thirty degrees.
Dead Man’s Curve was a name Wyn had heard mentioned, though as far as she knew, nobody had actually died there. Some cars had gotten scraped when they came too close to the trees, yes, but nobody had ever flipped over or gotten smashed.
That was, not until two months ago.
As she came to the curve, her foot eased against the brake, and the car stopped.
She placed the Escort in park and then just sat there, silent, listening to the weird constant ticking of the old engine before she finally turned it off.
Morning sunlight streamed through the trees, crisscrossing shadows everywhere. Birds were in those trees, chirping their morning songs. Many of the leaves had already fallen, and those still attached to their branches were aflame with amber and gold.
She grabbed the flowers off the passenger seat. Pansies, which weren’t Taylor’s favorite (she had loved tulips), but they were the best Wyn could get this time of year. She’d purchased them yesterday from Shepherd’s and left them in her car overnight.
Now she stepped out of the car, clutching the flowers at her side, and stared at the oak tree standing at the base of the curve.
She wondered if the tree had known when it was just a sapling that it would one day—many years later, decades later, a century later—be the cause of a young girl’s death.
Of course, Wyn knew the tree wasn’t at fault. It could have been any number of trees that Taylor’s car might have smashed into that night. It didn’t look like the tree had taken much more damage than a dent from being rammed into by a two-ton vehicle.
As Wyn approached the tree, something glinted on the ground. It was there for a second, and then it was gone. Most likely pieces of Taylor’s car that hadn’t been swept up after the accident. Wyn assumed the police or whoever it was had attempted to clean up as much as they could, but still slivers of glass and other pieces of the car had managed to slip through.
That glint alone nearly broke Wyn, but she pressed on. Ignoring the birds in the trees. Ignoring the part of her that wanted to second-guess her plan for today. The thing that would give Taylor’s sudden and tragically premature death justice.
The soles of her sneakers crunching against the loose gravel, Wyn walked right up to the tree and placed her hand against it. She closed her eyes, listening past the birds and the quiet breeze, trying to see if she could feel anything within the tree. It had absorbed so much force, so much energy, that surely echoes of it might still be inside.
Wyn shook her head, muttered, “Don’t be silly,” and bent to place the flowers at the base of the tree.
That’s when she heard the approaching vehicle. The quiet hum of another engine. Wheels slowly rolling over gravel.
Wyn turned and watched a red Honda Civic slow to a stop behind her car. The engine died, and the door opened, and Aaron Colvin stepped out.
Her stomach twisted at the sight of him. The boy she had known almost her entire life. The one who had always been a good friend. The one who, for the past year, had been her boyfriend.
Aaron had been her first kiss, though she’d told him that she’d kissed another boy when she was at summer camp, a total lie made up on the spot because she’d felt embarrassed thinking she was too old not to have had her first kiss yet.
And then, of course, they’d had sex. But only once. Neither of them had really known what they were doing, both having confessed to being virgins, and in the end the whole experience had been so awkward and uncomfortable that whenever Aaron tried to initiate things after that, she would always find a reason to stop.
Aaron was tall and good-looking, with wavy brown hair and blue eyes and a cute smile. But he had always been shy, and his awkwardness around girls meant that he hadn’t dated much. He didn’t play sports either, which was a serious blow to a high school boy’s social standing, but because his father was the town mayor, he’d been accepted into the popular crowd by default. He was invited to all the cool parties, but he was never the one people hung around with, always just standing off to the side.
Taylor was the one who had gotten Aaron and Wyn together last year. Always looking for an opportunity to play matchmaker, Taylor had grinned at Wyn when she mentioned how she’d heard Aaron had a major crush on her and asked if Wyn liked Aaron too, and Wyn had said sure, she liked Aaron just fine, and the next thing she knew they were out on a double date with Taylor and Sean Heller.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
He wore jeans, his Bowden Badgers hoodie, and sneakers. And his Phillies baseball cap, the one Wyn had gotten him as a present after they’d gone down to Philadelphia to watch a game last spring. This one wasn’t the traditional bright red but was instead gray, the team’s logo blue and red on the front of the cap.
She still remembered the day she’d given him the hat, how excited he’d been, his eyes glowing like a kid’s on Christmas morning, and how from that day forward he’d worn it every chance he got. Even now, almost two months after they’d broken up, he was still wearing the hat.
Aaron quietly shut his car door—the car in which he and Wyn had spent many a sweaty make-out session in the back seat—and walked toward her.
She said, “Did you follow me?”
Obviously he had. It was written across his face. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed him trailing her.
“I figured you might come here,” he said. “But, um, yeah, I did follow you.”
Again, her stomach twisted. She didn’t like being so isolated like this. Not that she didn’t trust Aaron—he had always been a gentleman around her—but still she felt too open, too vulnerable.
She looked away from him, toward the trees on her left. Autumn Porter’s parents’ farmhouse sat on the other side of those trees. Autumn was one of the Seasons, as Wyn had dubbed her and Summer Green, both girls Wyn had grown up with and who had become cheerleaders, just like Taylor.
Autumn had admitted to seeing Taylor that night. She said that Taylor had come over to her house and that she’d appeared drunk, and that Autumn had tried to get Taylor to stay with her but that Taylor got into her car and drove away before she could stop her. Autumn said that by the time she’d gotten into her own car and tried to go after her, Taylor was long gone. Autumn told the police she’d thought Taylor had headed west, which was the direction Autumn had gone, though it turned out Taylor had gone east instead. And a quarter mile away turned off onto Fox Lane and hit the gas and drove straight into the ill-fated oak tree.
She hadn’t been wearing her seat belt. The airbag, too, hadn’t deployed.
The impact was enough to send her through the windshield and headfirst into the tree.
Wyn’s father worked for the township. She knew that there was a chance she could have asked her father to find out exactly what had happened—how Taylor died—but she never felt comfortable crossing that particular line.
Besides, the official word was that there had been alcohol in Taylor’s system. More than enough to get her drunk. She shouldn’t have been anywhere near a steering wheel, let alone driving like a madwoman down Fast Lane at that time of night.
A cautionary tale. Just another sad statistic of reckless teen life. It had resulted in a school assembly the following week to remind everyone about the perils of drunk driving.
Now, watching Aaron approaching her, she said, “Stop.”
He paused. Stared at her for a beat, and then frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
“Your following me is what’s wrong. Don’t you realize just how creepy that is?”
“What do you want me to say, Wyn? I’m worried about you. You haven’t returned any of my texts.”
“We aren’t together anymore, Aaron.”
“I know that. I do. But I know it’s also because of everything you’ve been going through since Taylor—”
He paused suddenly, his eyes shifting toward the oak tree behind her, and then shrugged.
“I just want to make sure you’re okay,” he said.
A flash of anger made her start moving forward, toward Aaron, though when she reached him she didn’t stop and instead walked right past him.
He called after her: “Wyn, come on. I know you must be nervous about today. I thought it’d help to talk—”
That stopped her. She had already opened her door, was about to slide into her seat, but now glanced back at him.
“Why would I be nervous about today?”
“The pep rally. I know you’re planning to sing.”
“How do you know that?” Then, a second later: “Are you Onyx Butterfly?”
Another frown. “Onyx Butterfly? What’s that? Oh, wait. Isn’t that one of your songs?”
She stared at him, not sure how to respond. The idea that Onyx Butterfly was Aaron had never once crossed her mind, though in a way it made sense: Hadn’t the person reached out to her right after she’d broken up with Aaron?
But right now, that was a secondary worry.
“Aaron, how do you know about me performing at the pep rally?”
He shrugged again. “I mean, there’s only so much time to fit everything in. There’s like a schedule. The team was told that you’d perform after the coach announces them in.”
She closed her eyes. It had taken a while for her to convince Principal Webber that performing a tribute to Taylor at the pep rally was a good idea in the first place. But when he’d finally agreed, she’d stressed to him how she wanted to make her performance a surprise. Maybe he’d thought she meant a surprise to the rest of the school.
Aaron said, “I’m just worried is all.”
She opened her eyes. Stared straight back at him.
He swallowed. Looked around at the trees, maybe hoping one of the birds might pause from their constant song to throw him a hint of what to say.
Finally he said, “You get stage fright. You’ve never performed in front of so many people before. I just . . . I’m worried.”
If Wyn were being honest with herself, she was worried too. Worried about all of it. Not just her stage fright, but about what would happen later today. After the pep rally. Once the high school—the entire world—learned the truth.
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
She didn’t wait for Aaron to say anything else. She slipped into her car, started the engine, and then drifted past him.
Wyn didn’t bother looking at her ex-boyfriend as she drove past. She only glanced at the rearview mirror to see him still standing in the middle of Fox Lane, and then the road curved and he was gone.
7
JESSICA
Now
mom
The word stared back at me. Not a question but a statement.
please help
More than just a statement. A plea. A plea from a daughter I hadn’t seen or heard from in almost a year. A daughter whom I loved more than life itself and would do anything for.
i think he’s going to kill me
That was when my sleep-and-wine-addled brain snapped itself awake. I’d been half-asleep, groggy, stuck in the no-man’s-land between consciousness and unconsciousness, and those seven words were enough to rip me from that limbo.
I shot up in bed, my head pounding from the prologue of a hangover, my pulse suddenly cranked up twenty extra beats. I didn’t bother responding, at least not via text message. Instead I tapped Bronwyn’s name at the top of the screen, the one that gave me the options of “Audio” and “FaceTime” and “Info,” and I practically punched “Audio” so hard with my finger I was surprised the screen didn’t crack.
The phone to my ear, I started murmuring, “Come on, come on, come on,” as the call connected.
I expected it to ring. Maybe one or two times. No more than three. And then I’d hear my daughter’s voice. Her lovely, soft, familiar voice.
And I did hear her voice, but the words were the same ones I’d heard spoken more than a thousand times in the past year, every time I’d called her phone.
“Hi, it’s Wyn. You know what to do.”
But instead of a beep, there came an automated voice—a deeply feminine voice, as if users would better understand it, would be more likely to accept it—telling me sorry but the person I’m trying to reach has a voicemail box that was full.
The phone dinged again, and then again.
mom are you there
im scared
I typed back a reply, my fingers so frenzied and sleep heavy that I was thankful for autocorrect.
I’m here.
Where are you?
No immediate reply. I realized I was holding my breath. Staring at my phone in the dark, panic scratching its sharp claws against the inside of my skin.
Then the gray dancing dots as my daughter typed her reply.
i dont know
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath. Tried to steady my nerves. Tried to clear my mind so that I could better focus.
Who is going to kill you?
Again, no immediate reply. Ten seconds passed with just my question hanging there on the screen. And then the dots came again, and three texts shot out almost simultaneously.
i dont know his name
he never told me
he makes me call him daddy
I nearly screamed. Before I knew it, I was up out of bed, my bare feet racing across the carpet to the bedroom door. Where I was going, I didn’t know, only that I couldn’t stay stationary, because otherwise I was going to drive myself crazy.
The phone dinged again.
