Page 55 of Pretty Nightmare

“Call me Adam?”

She shrugs. “You are Adam. Daddy feels so… childish.” She wrinkles her nose.

“Well, you are a child.”

“Am I?” She tips her head way back to look at me. “Am I really?”

“Just get on with it.”

“I think there’re here. They have to be here.”

“I looked here, Peach. Every fucking where.”

“There ain’t no other places though.”

“Don’t say ain’t. Please? We already sound hick enough. But there is the house in New Orleans.”

“You said you looked there too.”

“I know. But it was a while back now. Maybe I missed something?”

“Maybe you missed something here?”

“Point.” She’s just about to open her mouth to say something when my phone dings a text. “OK, here it is. It was a note.” I eyeball her. “And don’t ask me where it came from. You don’t need to know. It said, ‘They pack them in with no regard. They leave no marks and sing no songs. They cover them up and walk away. They did this to you. They did this to me. It ends. It begins. It ends again.’ What do you think of that?”

“Say it again.”

I repeat it.

“Hmm. ‘They pack them in. They cover them up. They leave no marks and sing no songs.’”

“Where do people usually sing songs?”

“A church?”

“Church. Maybe. Fuck. If I have to dig up the fucking church we used to go to in New Orleans, I’m gonna—”

“No, no, no! Wait! I got it! It’s not a church, it’s a cemetery!”

And that, my friends, is how it’s done.

I hug her. “I love you so much.”

“Love you too, Adam.”

I laugh and then get up and pull her to her feet. “Let’s get some pizza. We’re gonna need it. We have a big night ahead of us.”

CHAPTER TEN - INDIE

Nathan St. James was the boy next door.

Those words follow me around like a half-starved stray kitten, mewing and whining like it’s trying to get my attention. And I know it’s wrong to turn your back on something so small and helpless, but if I could make it go away, I would.

I would do terrible things to make it disappear.

But I can’t. Can’t do that with thoughts. They linger. Even if you manage to banish them for a while, they linger. And then, when you’re not expecting it, they come back and start begging for attention again.

I have tried my best to sort through the past several years. Not just the four I’ve been missing, but the long-ago ones too. Before Adam bought me. Before McKay took care of me. Before Donovan helped me cope. Before Maggie.