Towering - By Alex Flinn Page 0,14

I’d fallen near the McNeills’ and Mrs. McNeill had given me the crutches and driven me home. She didn’t question me, so I mentioned how much Ginger had enjoyed the walk, how I thought she was getting fat and needed to exercise, so I planned to do it every day.

I do. For once, something is happening to me.

7

Wyatt

Mrs. Greenwood was knocking at the door. “Wyatt, the man is here to install the computer thing.”

“Okay.” Quickly, I stuffed the notebook into its prior spot and opened the door.

It was weird, reading a missing girl’s diary. Danielle had been hanging with a guitar player named Zach before she disappeared. Did Mrs. Greenwood know? Did anyone? Probably not, since Danielle had been so secretive. Maybe the guitar player was the reason behind her disappearance. Maybe she’d run away to the city with him. Or maybe he’d murdered her.

Should I ask Mrs. Greenwood if she knew? I, more than anyone, knew the importance of not keeping secrets. Some people were big on them, but I knew that secrets could kill like handguns and knives.

Still, this secret was almost twenty years old. Mrs. Greenwood probably didn’t need to be reminded of painful memories that were best left dead.

I thought back to Danielle’s diary. What could I ask that would bring it up, yet not bring it up.

“You know what this place could really use?” I said. “A dog.”

I knew she’d had a dog when Danielle was alive. Thinking about a dog wouldn’t be as painful as thinking about her probably dead daughter.

Which is why I was plenty surprised when she immediately burst into tears.

I mean, really burst into tears. Even the Wi-Fi guy looked up from his work to give me a dirty look for making the sweet old lady cry. I shrugged. I didn’t know it would cause that reaction.

“Oh, God, Mrs. G, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would upset you so much. I was just talking. I don’t need a dog. I’m so stupid.” The Wi-Fi guy nodded. I said to him, “Don’t you have work to do? Come on, Mrs. Greenwood. I’ll get you some water. Or tea, maybe. Do you like tea?” I took her arm. I had it in my head that old ladies liked tea.

Finally, she started walking with me.

She had calmed down by the time we reached the kitchen. I sat her down and started hunting for a kettle. I thought I knew how to make tea. You just poured the hot water over the tea bag.

“I’m being silly,” she said. “We used to have a dog, a yellow Labrador, back when Danielle . . . she was the sweetest thing, and one day . . .” She brushed a tear from her cheek.

I knew what was coming.

“I found her out in the road, dead. She’d gotten out somehow and ran into the street. Cars go so fast here. She didn’t stand a chance. I blamed myself for not protecting her well enough, for not taking good enough care . . .”

She sniffed, and I wondered if she really meant the dog, or if she meant Danielle. It must be hard for a mom as overprotective as she obviously was to have a child disappear. And Danielle was her only child too.

“It’s not your fault,” I said. “Dogs get out sometimes. It happens. You can’t protect them all the time.”

“I didn’t do enough. I used to complain about her. She probably never knew how much I loved her.”

I found the kettle and hunted in the cabinet for tea bags. Clearly, if she’d gotten that upset when I asked her about the dog, I couldn’t ask her about Danielle. But what if the guitar player had killed Danielle? Maybe he was some kind of serial killer who’d killed lots of other girls too? Maybe he was still out there.

Or maybe Danielle was alive.

But I couldn’t ask Mrs. Greenwood. Besides, she’d probably never known about Zach. Obviously, Danielle was big on secrets.

“You never got another dog?”

“Oh, I didn’t think I could take care of it. A dog needs walking, and I was getting old.”

“This would be a good place for a dog. Lots of wide-open space.”

Lots of space to bury a dead body.

But I was thinking it must be so lonely for her. She’d been a widow for as long as my mother had known her, and then, to have her daughter disappear and the dog die, all in one year. It must have been unbearable. I knew something