with hopes and dreams over a lifetime of lying next to each other.
“ALLIE,” MY MOTHER was saying. “Alexis. Are you hurt? Don’t move, sweetie. Everything feels okay pulse-wise. Did you fall?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Don’t speak,” she said. “It’s just too much of too much. You’re sweating and it must be seventy in here.”
My mother didn’t think it was so very strange. I hadn’t been eating or sleeping much; the pills might have made me groggy. I was not bruised, just sort of slumped in a gangly but not untidy heap near my bed.
“Mom, I need some time alone,” I told her.
“Alexis, you need a hot meal. That’s not a request. It’s almost four.”
“Four in the morning?”
She sighed. “Of course in the morning.”
My heart began to thump, remembering I’d heard Juliet’s voice.
First: “Allie. Call now. Hurry.”
Then, weepy: “Bear! Call me. Call back right now!”
Finally: “Allie-Bear. Don’t call. Don’t call until I tell you. Wait.”
I began to blink rapidly. Juliet. Juliet.… Maybe she’d called long before she’d died, and her phone had been damaged so the calls hadn’t been received until now. The first call was time-stamped during her funeral. I’d called for her and she’d called back. But that was insane. It was sickening. I knew her phone hadn’t been found. But did that mean …?
Madness, I know, is anesthetic: Garrett Tabor could have gotten the phone and forced her to prerecord a series of messages, just to torment me. First, she cries out, stubbornly, releasing a wail of pain only at the last blunt moment. Then she’s like a child, crying hard—not for me, for anyone. Then she’s collected. How could that be faked? It was her. It was Juliet. It was part of a plan, not coincidence. But a plan for what?
My mother shook me. “Allie! Look at me!”
“Just give me two seconds, Mom,” I said.
She stood and marched to the door. “I want you downstairs, dressed, and at the kitchen table by 4:15 at the latest.”
Hustling, I backed up my phone on my computer. I got dressed: sensible jeans, sensible sweatshirt. I didn’t want to freak out my mom any more than she already was. For the first time since Juliet had disappeared, I felt in the moment, invigorated, focused. I had to act now. If I had no proof that she was alive, at least I had proof that she had been alive long after even the autopsy suggested she was. These recordings and Garrett Tabor were connected in some way. She’d foiled his plan for her. It wasn’t evidence, but it was suspicious enough to mount an investigation. It could be put together in a chain that would be enough to indict him for something.
I quickly tidied up in the mirror over my bureau.
But then another thought occurred to me. If she was dead, then Garrett Tabor was pulling the strings. He’d somehow orchestrated this. He wanted to scare me so badly that I’d know: if I said a word, it would be the word that would pull the trigger on something even worse than the worst possible thing. That something-even-worse would really happen then—an apocalypse, and it would be my fault. Juliet would never be redeemed, and my own life would be nothing but ash. Still, if there was an off chance, literally a ghost of a chance.…
I clung to this knowledge like an overfilled glass of water. It could tip and spill. I could tip it by telling Rob or my mother or Tommy. I could run to them now and say, take this glass from me. But they wouldn’t be able to take it. If I did not lose my mind then, I never would.
I CAME DOWNSTAIRS to find my mom arguing with Deputy Sherriff Sonny Larsen.
“No,” Mom was saying. “You can’t come in until I make sure that Alexis is properly dressed and has eaten.”
“You’ll need to keep the door open then. This is a serious charge.”
Thank you, universe! I thought, bounding down the stairs. Thank you, thank you! I hadn’t had to say a thing. He’d been caught and charged! Here were the Marines! The balance had been restored. The glass would not spill. They’d got him. Somehow, they’d put the pieces together themselves.
“Allie,” my mother said, stepping aside. “Deputy Chief Larsen.…”
“Miss Kim,” said Officer Larsen. Her sour smile almost looked like a sticker, pasted on her blocky face. “I have here a complaint against you for assault and battery.”
I blinked at her. “I’m sorry?”
“You and your mother need to come