The Girl from Widow Hills - Megan Miranda Page 0,56

me. And then he ended up outside my house. I didn’t think the police had gotten this far—to the bar. They’d worked fast, interviewing the people at the G&M, where I’d seen him last.

“He was in here more than once, the guy asking for me?” I asked, ignoring his tone. How long had Sean Coleman been here, looking for me? Following me?

“He definitely had a vested interest,” he said, not answering my question directly.

“What day?” I asked.

“Does it matter? I don’t remember the day, but I can guess what he wanted.” He took a few steps closer. “You seem like a nice girl, and I have a daughter about your age, so I’ll tell you the same thing I told her. Men that much older—”

“I’m all set with advice, thanks. Unless you’ve seen Elyse.” I raised an eyebrow, gripped the handle of the glass door. I could be outside in two seconds, to my car in ten. The keys were in my purse; I could grab them on the way.

He rocked back on his heels, not coming any closer. “In that case . . .” He trailed off, gesturing toward the door.

I SWUNG BY ELYSE’S apartment building once more before heading home. I’d convinced myself that the disorder inside was just typical Elyse, home late, home drunk, dropping her bag, pulling out her clothes, falling into bed.

Had I not seen a room like this before? Hadn’t I lived with that myself? Which was why the memory prickled: I was projecting.

My mother worked nontraditional hours, too, as a health care aide, before she completely imploded. She was contracted by several different clients for home care, with a rotating schedule. If she was asleep in the middle of the day, I’d worry, shaking her awake, only to learn she’d just gotten back and didn’t have to return until the next day. It was impossible to know whether she was keeping up with her job until she was home for good.

Chaos always nagged at me, worried me, like a precursor to some danger that only I could see coming.

When I returned, Elyse’s car was no longer in the lot. I again waited for someone to open the front door, walked down that same hallway, knocked on her apartment door, which now had the sticky note removed.

Of course Elyse had been back. She was fine, and I was overreacting—the panic and disorientation over one thing coloring everything else.

When she didn’t answer my knocking, I checked the knob, and this time it was locked. I knocked again, but there was no response. I called her as I walked outside, but her phone by now was off. The call went straight to voicemail.

She’d quit, and now she was avoiding me.

I CALLED BENNETT ON the drive back home. “Elyse went totally off the grid,” I said. I was surprised he even picked up; he was usually a stickler for the rules of leaving his phone in his locker while he was working.

“What do you mean by totally off the grid?”

“I mean her car is gone and the phone is off. Trevor hadn’t seen her. She’d been back to her apartment, and she knew I was looking for her, and she took off anyway.”

“I’m sure she’ll be back, Liv. Maybe she went home for the weekend.”

It always caught me off guard when Bennett talked like this, about going home. He’d lived here four years, and yet there was a childhood house several hours away that he referred to as home.

Still, I couldn’t remember Elyse ever talking about home the way Bennett did.

“You’re sure?” I asked. “She quit, Bennett. Does that sound like someone who’s planning to stick around?”

“She wouldn’t just . . . She’s your friend . . .” He let the thought trail.

“Right, you’re right,” I said before ending the call. But I knew how fast someone could make an impulsive decision and change their entire life.

My mother had quit her job in Widow Hills after I was found. Thought we could live off generosity and the book contract alone—and we did for a time. She didn’t want to go back to work when we needed her to. Had developed a deep distrust of the medical establishment after the surgeries and the rehab and the medicine. She said no one was interested in fixing me, just wanted to pry deeper and find more things in need of fixing, bleeding us dry.

It was why, I think, I felt a pull to health care from the other side. I