Page 58 of They Say a Girl Died Here

“You were seen, so don’t deny it,” he continued. “I presume you took them from Jamie’s motel room?” He sounded as tired as he looked. The bags under his eyes were darker, and there was a slouch in his shoulders. Todd hovered behind, but Anna didn’t look at him as she shrugged. She didn’t like looking at either of them. They knew about the thing. It made her skin crawl with exposure, as if she were murdered and naked already. “So? He would have wanted me to. To keep women alert.”

“That may be, Anna, but no one in town needs this right now. We’re remembering two dead girls, two of our own. This is disrespectful as well as unnecessary. Michael Cairns killed those girls and the police killed him.”

Anna stared at him. Of our own. None of them would care if it was her. Maybe they’d be relieved. No one digging around asking questions. “It’s not a crime to put up posters.”

He smiled at her. It was an easy smile, warm, making thick creases in his face, and had no malice in it. “Unfortunately it is. That’s what I’m here to remind you. Don’t get yourself in trouble over this. This was Jamie’s obsession and it frustrated me, but I got why he felt that way. This isn’t your obsession. You’ve got your own, different problems—” Her skin prickled. There it was. The thing. “Maybe go talk to someone. It can’t hurt.”

“Another girl’s going to die,” Anna said. “I know it.” Her words were loud in the quiet and Jeannie—already listening hard—whipped her head around. “So I’m not going to apologize for keeping the pressure on to look at the case again. Arrest me if you want. Lock me up.” Her heart raced. She’d be safe in a cell. “But I’m not going to stop.”

“All right, Anna.” The sheriff rubbed his face in his hands before sighing and looking back at her. “All right. I’ll leave it for now. But people here are still hurting. This isn’t your pain, but you do need to respect theirs.” He straightened up and nodded to Todd. “Get us some coffees, and I’ll see you back in the car.” He headed toward the restroom, leaving Anna, awkward and embarrassed, with the deputy.

“He talks about the rest of the town,” Todd said quietly to Anna as he waited for Jeannie to bring over the takeout coffees she was making. “But he’s part of the town. I was young, but I remember how hard he worked after Lila’s and Bonnie’s murders nearly sent him over the edge. To lose another of the town’s kids. He couldn’t believe it. Blamed himself for not catching the guy after Lila, that’s what Pete told me. If they hadn’t gotten Michael Cairns, he’d probably have had a breakdown.”

“Maybe that’s why he accepted Cairns’s guilt so easily.”

“Oh jeez, Anna.” It was Todd’s turn to be frustrated. “He accepted Cairns’s guilt because the man was shot in the middle of a crime, had incriminating photos on his phone, Sailor’s Choice soap in his bag, and a baseball bat in the trunk of his car, and even the state police were convinced he was the guy. Let the dead rest. Or at least let the living have some peace. The man’s done his best.”

“Have you looked in the file yourself?” she asked. “Maybe there’s something in there they’ve missed.”

“It’s not my business.” Todd took a step back. “If the sheriff asks me to look, I’ll look. I don’t even know where the file is. I think he has it somewhere. I know he got it out after Jamie died.” He nodded a thank-you at Jeannie for the coffees and they both saw her withering side-eye at Anna. “I’m sorry. But this is my job. I mean, you’ve got my number and I’m happy to listen or hang out or whatever because I like you, but I also agree with the sheriff. Maybe you need to talk to someone, you know, professional.”

She could just see that. How would she explain Grandma and the timelines all running in her head? They say a girl died here. Off to the nuthouse with her.

“You’ll be sorry when another girl is murdered,” she called after him as he turned to leave. Her neck was burning hot and she knew it must be blotchy to look at. Crazy Anna who got the police to test her own blood. No wonder he didn’t take her seriously. She took a long, shaky breath, ignoring Jeannie’s muttering about her to Miles. She watched as Todd headed to the waiting police cruiser outside.

You’ll be sorry when it’s me.

69

If the tension between them hadn’t been so bad, Anna might have laughed at the irony when she saw her little sister’s hair. Mom had gotten it styled into an edgy pixie cut before taking her into school, and, if anything, Callie looked even more beautiful than before and was now twice as excited about the sleepover and the party. Equally ironic was that Anna was now glad Callie was going away for the weekend. The party held its own evils, but if Caroline was there, then she wouldn’t be here. She’d be out of the way. One of them at least would be safe. Caroline didn’t look at Anna once during dinner, talking solely to Mom and Grandma, and she chattered so much there was no space for Anna in the conversation anyway, and even though it was Bonnie’s anniversary and she was still discreetly wearing her straw bracelet, she didn’t mention the Farmhand once.

Grandma was quiet. She muttered a prayer before they ate, getting several of the words wrong and stumbling over the final lines. She checked Callie was keeping her elbows off the table, but her eyes were confused, as if she wasn’t quite sure anymore why it was important. While she ate small mouthfuls in her usual birdlike way, her hand trembled as she raised her fork, as if all the dead Annas inside her had reached her stomach and left no space there for food.

Mom did her best while talking to Caroline but failed to disguise her exhaustion and unhappiness. In her own corner of the table, Anna felt like a ghost. Invisible. Ignored. She couldn’t blame them either. She’d pushed them away. Even Grandma was leaving her. Was leaving because of her. Anna’s mouth filled with words she couldn’t bring herself to speak, not even now. It had been so long since she’d said anything of emotional worth, she no longer knew how to.

It was a relief for everyone when dinner was over and Anna escaped up to her room. She flung open the window, gulping in the hot night air, desperate inhales of breath to combat the fear and hopelessness of her situation. She was still alive. She was still alive. Her heart beat in time with the words until she calmed down. Three years ago it was Bonnie’s last evening alive. Six years ago it was Lila’s. Tomorrow maybe it would be hers. Or maybe it wouldn’t happen this time, she thought as she sat on her bed. But how could she know? Maybe she should run. Get away. Protect herself. But at what possible cost?

She turned the laptop on and opened her notes for the article she might never get the chance to write and figured that was as good a place to express feelings as any. She couldn’t talk about them to her family, but maybe she could write something down. What she thought was happening, at least. What Grandma had done and was doing. How much Anna loved them, even if she could never be saved.

It felt cathartic, explaining why she’d cut Caroline’s hair, telling her how much she loved her and that her life was going to be amazing and fearless and full of adventure, thanking Mom for all the sacrifices she’d made for them over these years and telling her she was beautiful and deserved the best of men or none at all #girlfriend.

Her message for Grandma was different and would confuse Mom and maybe Grandma wouldn’t even understand it unless she was in one of her moments, and with the way she was deteriorating so fast, maybe not even then. Grandma had done all she could, more than anyone could imagine, and that if there was a god, then he had no better in his flock than Evelyn Maybourne.

Her eyes filled with tears as she typed, a stream of consciousness rather than any structured thinking. Would Grandma be able to give them another chance again? Would Anna be back here typing this again? Would she remember next time? What about the thing? If she died without remembering that, then the thing would have won.

Thinking of all the Annas who had gone before, still existing in Grandma’s head, all those different times, different realities, different resets—two stitches forward, one stitch back—constantly running at once, no chance of them becoming the one Anna again until this was over for good, she felt something change inside her. A small spark of rebellion against the heavy blanket of hopelessness that was a shroud around her.

What about Lila and Bonnie? They’d never had a second chance or a third or a hundredth. Why should Anna give up now? Would they? And then there was Grandma. The sacrifices she’d made to save Anna over and over at such a cost to herself. Was Anna really going to leave Mom and Caroline a lifetime of guilt about things unsaid by giving up? She wasn’t dead yet. Not this time. And while there was life, there was hope.

She wiped her damp eyes and sat up straighter. There were twenty-four hours or so left before she’d be murdered, if the killer came in the night like with the other two. She looked across at the yearbooks again, suddenly focused.

She had twenty-four hours to solve her own murder.

70

If it hadn’t been for her pounding head, Anna thought she might not have woken at all, and as she tried to sit up, the world rolling nauseatingly around her, that might have been a blessing. Pain bloomed at the back of her skull and her throat ached. Had she been drinking last night? Everything was a blur, as if not only the thing was lost but her entire life. She looked at her phone. It was nearly eleven. Shit.

Her laptop listed sideways on the untidy sheets, the screen blank, the battery dead. One of Bonnie’s yearbooks had fallen on the floor, pages now bent backward. Her dry mouth tasted of metal. As she hauled herself upright, the world spun some more and she thought she might puke as dregs of her dreams flashed behind her eyes, sharp as migraine sparkles. Bloody handprints. Being pulled backward. The ceiling of the basement.