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I’m not sure if I believe him. Last year, there was an article inNew York Magazineabout the ethics of true crime podcasting. Harley Granger was one of those featured. Some people who had trusted him to keep things off the record wound up in his podcast anyway and it had casused all kinds of trouble for them. One woman lost her job. A young man killed himself. Harley had refused to comment.
“Did you hear about the missing girl?” I ask him.
“Yes,” he says. “Lolly Morris. Do you know her?”
I shook my head. “But I know the bar where she worked. I went to school with the owner.”
He opens his laptop, and the picture I saw on the news pops up.
Local woman missing. Lolly Morris.
Harley and I both stare at it a moment. “Did you know there have been two other women in this area missing since Ainsley and Sam disappeared?” he asks.
I don’t like him using their names that way, as if he knew them, too. He didn’t.
I shake my head. That’s not possible. I would have heard about that.
He clicks on a couple icons on this desktop, and two other images pop up. He arranges their pictures on his screen. Beautiful girls, all of them young, dark hair, big eyes.
“Rachel Hawke was a dancer—a stripper—in Hollins. She left work one night, never turned up at home.”
Hollins is about an hour from here.
“Cheri Farmer, same profession, same situation. Left work, never made it home. This was in Hackettsburg.”
Also about an hour, but in the other direction from Little Valley.
Harley clicks on another icon and a map of Little Valley and surrounding towns dominates the screen. Five red dots for the missing, I guess—Ainsley, Sam, Cheri, Rachel, Lolly. There isn’t a dot for Steph. Or for me.
“Five young women missing in ten years in the same fifty-mile radius.”
“I don’t remember these news stories.” My throat is dry.
“Missing strippers without family aren’t usually big news stories, you know. No evidence of foul play. Just here one day and gone the next.”
It seems a cliché but I suppose it’s true. Lolly Morris has a family looking for her. Maybe these girls didn’t. The hunt for Ainsley and Sam has continued for a decade. It dominated life in this town from that point forward. Until Mr. Wallace died of a heart attack. And finally, Mrs. Wallace, broken, grief-stricken, left town to care for her aging parents. But she comes back every year to hold a candlelight vigil for Ainsley and Sam. On Christmas Eve. Every year fewer people come. My dad and I will be there. Badger and Bekka, Chet. Miranda, Ernie, and Giselle. We never miss it.
The timing makes sense now. That’s why Harley Granger is here.
“Notice anything about these women?” he asks.
I look at all their beautiful faces, remembering Ainsley and Sam, their laughter and smiles, their worries, their troubles. My friends. Gone almost ten years. Just gone. Real girls who had lives and dreams, known to me. Ainsley wanted a fairy-tale wedding. Sam wished she’d been born a boy, just because she thought it would make her faster, stronger. Ainsley slept with a stuffed bear. Sam wanted to play pro soccer. Not pictures on a screen, not a story someone else is telling about something that happened long ago. I don’t even trust my voice, so I just shake my head.
He puts a hand on my arm, and I don’t pull it away.
“They all look like you, Maddie.”
I shake my head, angry at him for saying so. Then, looking at them, it slowly dawns on me that he’s right. I push my chair back quickly, wood scraping on wood.
“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t go.”
I back away from him, then turn and run to my Scout, peel out of the driveway, furious at myself for taking his bait, for coming at all.
9
Five Days Before Christmas
When I wake up my throat is sandpaper dry and there’s a jackhammer in my head. Ugh. What have I done now? Since dropping out of school, I’ve made some mistakes when it came to guys. Getting drunk or high after shift, going home with a stranger, slinking out in the morning, hungover and ashamed. I wasn’t raised to be this girl. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Before I open my eyes, I decide when I go home for Christmas, I’m staying there.
