The Girl from Widow Hills - Megan Miranda Page 0,46

get some sleep before my shift tomorrow. Will you be okay?”

“Yes.” I needed to get back to my bedroom to check the box. Figure out what had happened. Despite what I’d told Bennett, I no longer thought of Rick’s proximity as a comfort, either. I no longer knew what had happened in this house.

“Elyse said she’d swing by before heading in to her shift tonight. But I’m also going to leave my phone on. You can call me,” he said. He raised his arm like he might pull me into a hug. He did, but it was awkward, and stiff. Like we were pretending at something now. Arden Maynor was a stranger to him.

As she was to me.

AFTER BENNETT LEFT, I looped the bracelet over my wrist, trying to line it up with the scratch. Trying to trigger a memory. Searching deep into the recesses of my mind, trying to shake the night into focus.

Had I walked to the closet, clasped this on my wrist? Listened as the charm jangled when I moved? The sound I remembered close to my ear as my mother braided my hair.

She’d worn it for as long as I could remember, even though, after the accident, that part of me drifted. The damage to my shoulder meant I’d lost the flexibility: a buildup of scar tissue from the dislocation, and the bone below that took too long to set. Still, after everything, she enrolled me in classes. As if to prove that I could go on.

She showed those pictures to the press six months later, sold others for publication. The long scar, exposed and on display. I wondered what they’d paid for them; I wondered what I was worth.

I hated being watched. By the five-year anniversary, old enough to make my own decisions, I wanted nothing more to do with it. By the ten-year anniversary, I suspected that I was, and continued to be, a commodity for her.

Looking back after so much time, Arden Maynor felt like a role I’d played once. A character I’d read about—her backstory in a book. Describe her in three words: brave; capable; survivor. Play the role until you believe it. Until you become it.

But I was no longer that girl. I’d shaken her off, piece by piece.

In high school, I’d found my own skill: running. One that required mental strength more than physical skill, though no one seemed to believe me when I said that. I wasn’t built like a runner. My legs were shorter than the average runner’s, but I could cut through the air, and if I went out fast, no one could catch me. It defied logic, because I couldn’t catch someone else. Never seemed to gain on them. But I knew something no one else did. I’d learned long ago that endurance was a feat of the mind and not the body, so I gave over to that someone else. A brief disconnect. The switch flipped. Another voice in my head, and all it ever said was Hold on—as if my life depended on it.

But for years after, my mother wore that bracelet. It didn’t matter that I was no longer that girl. She held on to that image with a fierceness I’d never understood.

I’d stopped noticing it only after the ten-year anniversary, when things started disappearing from the house: things she sold, things she lost. By the time I left home, I thought it had long been traded for something else.

And now it was here. Here, out of the box, in my living room. Had I been wearing it—had I lost it—before the body of Sean Coleman was discovered outside my house?

Finally, I was alone. No Bennett, no Elyse, no Detective Rigby, no Rick stopping by. Just this house and its secrets—waiting for me to uncover them.

TRANSCRIPT OF LIVE INTERVIEW WITH EMMA LYONS AND SEAN COLEMAN

OCTOBER 22, 2000

EMMA LYONS: Mr. Coleman, will you walk us through how you found her? How it happened?

SEAN COLEMAN: It was luck, I found her. That’s all. I was walking home from the search, a shortcut back to where I’d parked my truck. The streets in Widow Hills have been lined with cars for days, you know? So I was just walking back. And that’s when I saw.

EL: What did you see?

SC: I saw her hand, and I knew. I knew it was her.

EMMA: What did you do?

SEAN: I called for help. I grabbed her wrist and I called for help but no one heard me. So I took