They could even take a vacation, drive all the way to the gulf, rent a little condo on a Texas beach. She’d never seen the ocean, and neither had Everett, and she wanted to show him that before it was too late. Before he grew up and moved away and told stories of the strange, isolated life she’d given him.
And he would move away. She knew that. When his father had first vanished, Everett had wailed at the idea of leaving their house and moving. “Dad will come back and we won’t be here!”
She’d cried with him, but it had been a simple grief, because she couldn’t fix the problem. After three months of missed mortgage payments, the bank had swooped in, and they’d been homeless. This job had put a roof over their heads.
But now . . . now life was more stable, and she’d lived through a few years of Everett’s complaints about “this stupid town,” and she wanted something better for him.
They were so close. Another year and she could move up instead of over. With a better credit score, she could find work in accounting, pretend the past six years hadn’t happened, and even tout her long, steady commitment to one company. One more year and they would escape this town for something better. All she had to do was not fuck it up.
The town no longer seemed as idyllic as it had when her father had moved them to Herriman, settling in his old hometown to raise a family. Lily had spent three happy years here before Dad had decided he didn’t want a wife and child anymore. Well, not the same wife and child, anyway. He’d found comfort in the arms of another woman pretty quickly, and then he’d found comfort in having two strong sons.
Her mother, barely treading the waters of emotional stability before the divorce, had needed a job and an apartment—and above all else, a new man—so she and Lily had moved to St. Louis.
If Lily had returned to Herriman with her own husband and child in an attempt to re-create her old happiness, that effort had failed spectacularly. It was time to move on. Or almost time.
When she eased off the highway exit toward the dark road to the business park, she noticed the car right away. It was parked on the frontage road that stretched out like a tail along the small neighborhood of shuttered houses, but outside the reach of the closest streetlight. The dark-colored sedan faced the road, but if there was someone inside, Lily couldn’t see them. It was all one twisted lump of shadow and reflection.
She rolled past the corner, straining to look, but then she snapped her head forward and drove on. It was none of her business. She’d left her burden at that truck stop, and now she was free and clear. Goose bumps shivered over her skin, but she made it home, closed the gate behind her, and refused to look back.
CHAPTER 5
When the boy sitting next to Everett got up to exit at his stop, Josephine plopped right down into the vacated seat and leaned close. “Hey,” she said.
“Hi.” He’d passed her in the hallway at school that morning and dared to tip up his chin in greeting. She’d smiled and said hello, and he felt like maybe they were edging toward friendliness.
She bumped him with her shoulder. “I asked my mom if I could hang out at your place after school, and she said that’s fine if your mom calls her.”
Everett drew his head back in alarm at this sudden acceleration. “My place? Why would you want to come to my place?”
“I want to see your environs.” She drew the word out, sounding like a comic-book villain. “Your apartment sounds cool.”
After a nearly sleepless night of thinking about what he’d found in that locker, Everett felt too tired to navigate this minefield, so he decided to just ask. “Are you doing this to make fun of me or something?”
She rolled her eyes and slouched down in her seat, staying quiet for so long that Everett began to squirm. She finally sighed and tipped her face toward him. “Okay, like I said, Bea moved, and I’m stuck way out here for three more years until I get my driver’s permit. You seem like a nice guy. You’re the only one around. We should be friends. That makes sense, right?”
He kept staring at her until she rolled her eyes again. “Are you racist?”
“No!” he practically shouted.
“So your social calendar is full way out here? You have secret woodland friends or something?”
It took effort not to crack a smile at that. He crossed his arms tight over his chest as a reminder to play this cool. “No, I don’t have secret woodland friends.”
“Then invite me over, dummy.”
Everett didn’t know what to do. He hated that she’d brought up his living arrangements last time, but a lot of that was self-consciousness rubbing his insides raw. The way he lived was weird. There were definitely no other kids in Herriman who lived in a business park, so it burned like fire that she pointed it out. But he was better than that, wasn’t he?
He could give Josephine a chance, if only because Mikey had become so entranced by the demons of online gaming. Everett uncrossed his arms cautiously. “All right, fine. You wanna come over?”
“Yes, I certainly do,” she answered formally. They didn’t say another word about it. When the bus stopped with a whine of brakes and the door whooshed open, they stepped off and turned down the long road toward the cement block buildings in the distance.
“Walk on the wrong side of the road,” Everett said, nudging her toward the left. “That way you can see trucks coming.”
“My mom always says that too.”
“Does she tell you not to have your earbuds in when you’re outside?”
“Yes.”
They both bit out hard laughs before they settled into quiet. His mom had been acting so weird the night before that he’d convinced himself she’d seen him coming out of that locker. When she hadn’t exploded in anger, he’d spent their whole evening together worried about her quiet disappointment and when she might spring it on him.
The relief he’d felt when she’d kissed him good night and sent him off to bed had lasted one blissful hour. Then he’d been awoken by the sound of his door closing. A quiet sound. Noticeable in its sneakiness.
He’d heard the same sound from the front room then, the purposefully soft closing of a door followed by the distant jingle of keys.
What the hell?
Everett had tiptoed at first; then he’d raced to the living room to look out the window when he heard a car start. His mom drove into the maze of the storage facility, and two minutes later, the gate had opened and she’d sped out into the night.
An emergency trip for milk, maybe. Or eggs. Laundry detergent? But why had she gone deeper into the complex before driving away?
He’d lain in bed for nearly an hour, first just weirded out about his mom’s behavior. But then he’d started thinking about what he’d found that afternoon in the new locker, and he’d clutched his covers over his face and squeezed his eyes shut.
There were innocent explanations for a board papered with information about missing girls. He knew that. Maybe the renter was a cop or a private investigator. Maybe even a reporter. At first he’d been thrilled with the discovery, though he’d only spent a few minutes poking around before he’d worried his mom might come looking for him.
But then, lying in the dark, the only person within one square mile of a pitch-black night, he’d started imagining more dangerous possibilities. What if the renter was obsessed with the missing girls because he’d taken them? What if Everett had been poking around the belongings of a serial killer? What if there were cut-up body parts in those storage bins?
At long last, he’d heard the creak of the gate rolling open, then the rumble of a car, the engine ticking loudly in the familiar way of his mom’s ancient hatchback, and his eyes had actually burned with thankful tears. He’d turned over on his side, ears straining at every sound of her unlocking the door, setting down her keys, then slowly opening his bedroom door to peek inside.
Where had she gone? Was something wrong?