The Girl from Widow Hills - Megan Miranda Page 0,6

the panic set in, resuming my search. Checking the shelves, the windows, counting the cups in the cabinets, peering into the garbage can. Growing restless and increasingly panicked as the minutes ticked by.

Searching for signs of what I had done in the dark.

TRANSCRIPT FROM LIVE INTERVIEW

OCTOBER 18, 2000

She’s a tiny little thing. Well, you’ve all seen her picture by now. Big brown eyes and all that hair. She was just standing there in the middle of the street, in the dead of night, outside my kitchen window. This was before she went missing. Maybe a month or two back. My daughter was sick, so I was getting her a glass of water. Spooked me at first, seeing someone standing out there, watching back. Until I turned on the porch light and saw it was her. I called out to her from the front door, but she didn’t answer. I knew who she was, knew her mother. Knew where they lived. It’s not that far, not even a mile, probably. But she must’ve walked all that way barefoot, in the dark. Had to cross three or four streets between her house and mine—I’m just grateful there aren’t many cars out that time of night.

I walked up to her and said her name again, but she just stared right through me. There was nothing behind her eyes.

MARY LONG

Resident of Widow Hills

CHAPTER 3

Friday, 6 a.m.

I HADN’T GONE BACK TO sleep, too high on the adrenaline, trying to understand what had happened during the blank spots of my mind.

But everything seemed calmer in the daylight. The sliver of glass could’ve come from anywhere. Outside, maybe, from any time in the past. A forgotten shard rising up from the dirt in the rain; the earth turning over.

The disorientation and panic, a side effect of waking up outside with no understanding of how I’d gotten there. A biological reaction. I had to keep busy, keep occupied. Keep my mind from drifting back to the contents of the box in my closet. The sweater. The phone. The bag. The bracelet.

I took a long shower, focusing instead on the pressing matters of work: the quarterly report for the hospital and the unyielding budget that required department cuts to be made—and it would be up to me to give an opinion on the matter. Two years in, and I was still proving myself.

My alarm went off while I was getting dressed, and when I silenced it, I noticed a text that had come through late the night before, just after midnight.

A quick drop of my stomach at Jonah Lowell’s name. Even now. Every time. Thinking of you.

Of course. Unprompted, after months of silence, waiting until I’d successfully excised him from my thoughts. Of course, in the middle of the night, when I could picture him in his living room, hair disheveled, feet propped up, bourbon beside his laptop.

Last I’d heard from him was three months earlier, in May, when he’d texted: Will you be in town for graduation?

A slippery slope with him.

Back in May, I’d responded on impulse, had slid into an ongoing conversation, an endless flirtation. I’d been talked into a visit. I knew better now.

With the distance, it had been easy to forget why it hadn’t worked.

To be fair, I was here in Central Valley, with my current job, because of Jonah. He’d been my grad school professor in health care management initially, was coming here on a temporary consulting assignment, and there would be a spot for me in the group if I wanted it. I was in even before I knew the details: It was a newer hospital in a rural area, necessary to the surrounding communities but still looking to find its footing—and its funding. It had been having trouble getting doctors and nurses to come and then stay.

Central Valley really was halfway from one place to the next, but not close enough to either extreme to commute. The college was too far to the east, and no one but the skiers heading west came out this far. On the map, this town was a pit stop. A bathroom break between the outer edge of a larger town and the mountain lodges.

I’d come because I thought I was in love with Jonah back then. But I’d stayed because I was fully in love with the place instead.

When the hospital offered me a full-time role, I accepted. It was good for my résumé, a higher position with more autonomy than I’d land at a larger