NOAH
The humid,salt-heavy breeze off the Oaxacan coast drifts through the open windows of our bungalow, carrying the distant crash of the Pacific. It’s been almost a thousand days since the desert, since the fire, since the moment we crossed the border and vanished off the face of the earth.
And it’s been the best thousand days I’ve ever lived.
I sit on the edge of the woven hammock strung across our porch, a cold bottle of beer sweating in my hand. Beside me, Rue is bathed in the harsh, blue glow of a laptop screen. Her legs are tangled with mine, her skin untouched by the sun, her hair longer, wilder, and many shades darker than it ever was in California.
She looks like a woman who belongs here.
“Wow… They used the terrible photo,” she murmurs, her voice a dry, amused rasp over the sound of the video playing.
I lean in, looking at the screen. “Why are you watching this?”
“Because we’re legends, obviously,” Rue looks up at me. “And don’t worry, I masked our location. But can you believe this? It’s almosttwo hourslong. How could anyone come up withthatmuch to say about us?”
“Well… They got the timeline wrong,” I point out, watching a dramatic reenactment of a man in a black hoodie dragging a screaming blonde actress into a truck. “And we never drove a Chevy.”
“Shh,” Rue whispers, batting my arm lightly. “I want to hear what the profiler says about your ‘narcissistic sociopathy.’ Elias said it’s a good representation of us.”
“Oh, what a compliment,” I chuckle, but then smile, a genuine, easy expression that still feels new to my face. I press a kiss to her bare shoulder. “I love you.”
“And I love you.” Rue pecks me on the cheek.
The screen flashes with footage of the Desert Oasis motel, the flames eating into the night sky. The narrator’s deep, ominous voice fills the quiet porch, spinning a tale of a kidnapped girl who bravely turned the tables on her captor, only to perish in the ensuing fire, or perhaps be dragged off into the desert to an unknown grave.
“Wow, that’s morbid.” I watch Rue’s face as the images reflect in her eyes. There is no fear in her eyes, or any anxiety racking her body. It’s just a calm, steady acceptance of the ashes we left behind.
“You know… You don't have to watch this,” I tell her softly, my thumb tracing the pulse at her wrist.
“I know,” she says, her eyes never leaving the screen. “But I need to.”
The documentary shifts, cutting away from the crime scenes and the police tape. The heavy, dramatic music fades into something somber. I feel Rue’s entire body go rigidly still against mine.
The screen fills with the face of a woman sitting on a beige sofa.
RUE
My breath catches in my throat.
It’s Eliza.
She looks older. There are dark, heavy circles under her eyes, and her hair is pulled back in a tight, severe knot. She’s sitting in my parents’ living room—the room I used to vacuum, the room where we opened Christmas presents. It feels like looking through a window into another universe, a timeline that no longer belongs to me.
“Ruth is a survivor,” Eliza tells the off-camera interviewer, her voice fiercely trembling with a stubborn, blinding hope. “Noah Peterson didn’t break her. He couldn’t. I know in my heart that she wasn’t in that motel room when it burned. She’s out there somewhere. And I will never, ever stop looking for my big sister.”
A sharp, sudden ache blooms in the center of my chest. It’s the phantom pain of a severed limb.
Since when did she ever care about me?
I mean, I love her. I willalwayslove her. But the girl she is looking for—the quiet, compliant Ruth Iverson who played by the rules and lived in the safe, brightly lit corners of the world—died the day she stepped onto the trail at Moccasin Lake.
Noah’s hand tightens around mine. He’s perfectly still, holding his breath, giving me the space to break if I need to. He’s waiting for the guilt to drag me under.
I look at my sister’s face on the screen. She is mourning a ghost. And in a strange, bittersweet way, her relentless search gives her purpose.
But if I reached out, if I gave them back the daughter and sister they lost, I would have to give up the woman I’ve become. I would have to give up the man sitting beside me. And that’s just not something I’m willing to do.
“I will never stop looking,” Eliza says again, a tear finally spilling over her lashes.
