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Kyrie leaned back, her eyes wide. I remembered the first day then, the whispers in class. Not from Eric, but from Justin.Who let the Crypt Keeper in?
“And what was he saying?” she asked. “He’s … I heard he isn’t taking it well. That the coach is on him about his game. He’s … off. Not handling it well. He had a job at the feed store behind the Cafe, but he just stopped showing up. He’s not like that.”
I took a long drink of my Pepsi, then grabbed a fry from Kyrie’s basket. “He’s been having dreams that Amber was pregnant.”
Kyrie blinked, then shook her head. “No way.”
“No way?”
“No way. She would … she never would have cheated on Eric. They’d been together since … since they were kids. Kinda. I mean, they were boyfriend and girlfriend in kindergarten. Then they got together in high school. They had plans. Everyone knew they were going to go to college in the same town.”
“Sometimes people change their plans,” I offered. “Right? What if she changed her mind?”
“And got pregnant? By Eric?” Kyrie asked.
I cleared my throat, then said, “Or someone else. He said … he said they never did it.”
Kyrie pushed her food away. “So he’s spreading some rumor that she got knocked up by someone other than him. That she not only broke a vow to God, but cheated on him? Nice of him to spread rumors like that about his missing girlfriend.”
“I don’t think he’s spreading that around. It seemed like when he was telling Justin, it was like … a confession. Like he’d never told anyone about the dreams before.”
Kyrie’s hand moved, resting on her belly. I tried not to look at it.
“Maybe she was pregnant. Let’s pretend that’s true for a moment.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Maybe that’s why she’s gone.”
“Ran away with the other guy?”
Kyrie shook her head, leaning close, her voice dropping. “Maybe whoever the dad was took care of it.”
When I heard people in Hart Hollow talk about the missing Amber Hughes, they mourned her potential. Mourned all she was supposed to be. Pristine. By her parents’ side. Not a runaway.
But I knew what it meant to run away. To leave your life behind. There’s a reason people did it.
Kyrie spoke of Amber like she was dead, like she knew her fate. It was unsettling. “She should have been the fall festival nominee for the senior class. It would have been her. I know it,” Kyrie said, eyes dark.
I wanted to reach for her hand across the table, comfort her in some way. But I didn’t. I sat there, listening.
It was the only comfort I could offer. The room in the back erupted in laughter, and Kyrie’s eyes flitted briefly past me.
I pulled her attention back to our table. “Is it a pastor’s daughter thing?” I asked. Kyrie was the junior class nominee. She’d asked me to be her escort, but I declined. I didn’t want to walk across the gym floor in front of the entire school. Or suffer through the awkward expectation that I kiss Kyrie if she won. So she asked her lab partner from science instead. He agreed.
“What thing?” Kyrie asked.
“Who are the underclassmen nominees?” I asked. I didn’t pay attention to the announcements. The only name I heard as the announcement was made in the gym during a pep rally was Kyrie’s. The other names drowned out as I daydreamed. I probably wouldn’t have been able to place faces to names, anyway. Though the school was small, I was still playing catch up.
When Kyrie looked at me, her eyes looked darker than usual, frightened in some way that she pushed back. “They’re all pastors’ daughters,” she said.
* * *
When I returned home from the Raven’s Nest that day, Valerie was cleaning the kitchen and stocking groceries from the grocery store.
Wordlessly, I helped unload and grabbed a broom to clean. Certain tasks were just ingrained in us.
Finally, she spoke. “Did you know there’s a Catholic church on the hill overlooking the town?”
