Or do I have it all wrong?
32
IMOGEN
I grab my toiletry bag from the bathroom and stuff it with every stray thing of mine. My posters are off the walls, books boxed away. Even Amelia’s things are getting folded into piles and tucked into cardboard. She’ll finish her room when she gets home this afternoon; then we’ll go to sleep, and tomorrow morning, I’ll have the movers load everything up and take it to Seattle.
My last task before Amelia comes home is boxing all Mom’s clothes we’re keeping and folding up her bedding—getting her room finished. After I play Toss or Keep in her bathroom, I collapse on the sheets, her citrus perfume, its orange and sugarcane notes, enveloping me, hugging me. After a moment’s break, I hoist myself back up, shove clothes into boxes, and strip her bed down to the bone. That’s when I notice the jewelry box on her nightstand. The big mirrored one that used to live high on her closet shelf. I lift it, ready to pack itwhole. Amelia and I can go through it together later. I’m sure we’ll want everything.
I’m taken off guard by its heft. My wrist flexes awkwardly under its weight. I fall against the bed with it, narrowly missing dropping it on the floor. Sitting on her bare mattress, I bring the box onto my lap as the drawers fall open, exposing a trove of necklaces. The top holds a dainty gold locket, scallop edged. I pop it open with my red thumbnail to find a baby photo of Mom: curly blond tufts, a toothless grin, eyes brimming with mischief. I smile tenderly at it and return it to its drawer for now. The lower drawer holds pieces I don’t recognize. They’re older, heavier, probably my grandmother’s.
Then I reach the bottom drawer.
There’s no jewelry inside, only photographs. A stack of glossy 4x6 prints, dated in the margins 1997, 1998. Me and Amelia as infants. I thumb through them, still smiling, admiring photos I don’t recognize. Most are Amelia and me in the same clothes, different colors. Such a twin thing.
The final photos in the stack are from the day Amelia and I were born.
In a pair of scrubs looking down at Mom in grinning bliss is a man. My mom is holding us, one in each arm, looking high off birth’s euphoria, her blond hair in a palm-tree ponytail. I squint hard at the picture, looking at the man beside her, in scrubs. Even with a surgical cap, I can tell exactly who it is.
Emmett Holloway. My stomach knots. Why was he there, delivering Amelia and me? He’s a business owner, not an ob-gyn.
Maybe he was just there, a friendly face when she had no one else. When my father had already abandoned her. Still, something about it is off.
The identity of my father has been a curiosity I have buried deeper with time. I always worried I’d insult Mom by seeking him out—as if I needed anyone in my life but her. Since he left so callously and nonchalantly, like being the father of loving twin daughters wasn’t motive to stick around, it was evident that we didn’t mean anything to him. And if I fell down the rabbit hole of rabbit holes trying to find him, only to be rejected in the end… that would have been worse than never knowing him at all.
Peering at the photos, I stare at Emmett, full of questions. Today’s events have proven that he knows more than he’s letting on. Innocently approaching him about these photos could be the best way to weasel out other answers—including those regarding the texts he and our neighbor in the black house have been exchanging…
I’ll pop over there quickly—see what I can get out of him. No harm, no foul. It’s the only option I have left.
I tuck the photographs into my pocket, snap the jewelry box closed, and throw on a coat. After locking the front door behind me, I stalk down the driveway, ready to drag it all out of him.
33
AMELIA
I descend the staircase two steps at a time outside the colossal two-story brick building that makes up the school. It’s 1:34, the soonest I could exit after the 1:30 bell, which dismisses everyone an hour and a half earlier than Tuesday through Friday. I fumble deep in my purse for my keys, performing piano-like movements with my fingers until brass teeth scrape against my nail bed.
I don’t even notice the rain hitting my cheeks, too focused on getting to my car and driving to Parker Lane’s house.
If the police—or Madison’s family—knew what I knew about Parker, everything would be different. They’d be staked outside his house, silently watching, or publicly parading with pitchforks, demanding answers into Madison’s case. They’d know as well as I do that she didn’t run off and start a new life, but that she was murdered. By this man.
All I need is to see his face. To confirm he’s who I think he is. If I’m right, I’ll call the police and tell them everything. No matter what it does to my family, no matter what it awakens. Which, hopefully, will be Madison’s case.
Traffic in the school parking lot churns sluggishly, a snake of SUVs and minivans. I mostly skirt it thanks to my faraway space, rolling out the exit and down the quiet back streets where puddles spread like slick black mirrors.
I rehearse the approach in my head. Do I park and walk right up to the door? Ring the bell? Ask for him like this is a casual social call? What if he recognizes me? What if I don’t recognize him?
Then again, why would he know who I am, now, today? Our paths barely crossed back then. And I’ve changed. I’ve grown into a woman of almost thirty.
The neighborhood behind the school is quiet, drenched in overcast light and the fresh autumn season. Rows of modest postwar homes crouch under dripping eaves, their yards glazed with rain. I keep one eye on the glowing blue dot on my phone, until it leads me to the corner house.
The yellow home’s manicured lawn borders a walkway, leading up to a snug porch with a rocking chair poised next to a cornflower-blue front door. A pot of marigolds shines beside it. It’s quaint, almost surprisingly so. The kind of place you’d expect to smell like apple pie and old books.
I idle at the curb, staring at the house as though it might disappear if I blink. The front window shows the silhouette of a person, shifting beyond lace curtains. I lean toward my car window, peering hard, but they don’t move closer.
Then the door opens. And as it does, the mailman parks his vehicle behind mine, passing my window with his stuffed satchelof letters and packages, headed for Parker’s front door. There’s an awkward dance between the mailman and someone from the house, exiting right as he tries to drop a package on the porch mat. I stare closer to see a woman, appearing to be in her thirties. Her sleek dark hair is pulled into a taut bun, and she’s balancing a toddler on her hip—their chubby fists knotted in her shirt’s collar.
He hands her a stack of mail as she tries to keep her child from lunging at the envelopes, thanking him with a distracted smile, her voice muffled through the glass of my car.
