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Badger releases a disgusted breath. “Keep telling yourself that. You know what? Stay the fuck away from my friend. She doesn’t need to talk to you. She’s suffered with this long enough.”
“Maddie,” says Harley walking past us toward the door. “Think about it, okay? That’s all. I know there’s a part of you that wants to talk; you wouldn’t keep coming back if you didn’t. Evan Handy will have his say. I want you to have yours.”
I look away from him, and the bell rings to signal his departure. The door slams shut.
When he leaves, Badger pulls me in tight and I start to sob. Dr. Cooper always says that trauma is about disassociation. You have memories without feeling, or feelings without memories. I’ve struggled with putting together my memories of that night—it’s a fun house of images, a riot of feelings. They don’t fit together into a cohesive whole.
When I’ve cried it out, leaving a giant snotty, teary stain on his tee shirt, I look up at Badger. He grabs the box of tissues from the counter, hands it to me, and I wipe my face.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asks. “Talk to me.”
Finally, it just comes out. I tell him about the Christmas presents.
“Maddie,” he says blowing out a breath when I’m done. “Why—?”
I don’t have a good answer. Because, at first, I thought it was Evan somehow. As sick as it sounds, I still wanted to believe that he loved me. And then it became a yearly reminder of this thing that ruined my life, a kind of never-forget memento. It was only just now, after learning about the other missing girls, that I realized what a horrible mistake I’ve made.
I try to tell all of this to Badger, but I can see he doesn’t understand, just shakes his head, at a loss for words I suppose at this failure of mine. Yet another one.
I don’t want to look at him, or anyone. I just want to be alone.
“Go home,” I tell him. “Bekka must be waiting for you.”
He shakes his head. “She’s not.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not going well, you know. Me and Bekka. It’s—not working. Hasn’t been for a while.”
That doesn’t surprise me. “I’m sorry,” I say. “You’ll work it out.”
But he just shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Not this time.”
I’ve heard it before. It seems like Badger and Bekka have been on the verge of breaking up since they got together. They had a screaming fight the night of the party to celebrate their elopement, while the guests danced and partied. She’s wild, fiery, jealous. He’s quiet, thoughtful, maybe too shut down in some ways. It was never a perfect mix. Bekka was Badger’s first everything, just like Evan was mine.
He sinks down into the beanbag in the kids’ section and I finish closing up, both lost in our thoughts.
“Does your dad still have the room set up?” he asks.
As usual, he’s reading my mind. My dad brought all the cold case files home, all his years of working with Mrs. Wallace. There’s a small room in the basement that he used as an office. It’s basically a shrine to the events of December 23, 2014, a physical manifestation of my dad’s compulsion to find Ainsley and Sam. The door has stayed closed since his stroke. The doctors said he would recover, at least partially. But he hasn’t. He’d been in that office around the clock in the weeks before his stroke. What was he working on?
The simple tasks of shutting down the store, Badger’s presence, calms me. I’m more stable as we’re getting ready to go.
“I’ll follow you home,” says Badger. I pull on my coat and start killing the lights.
“Did you know her?”
“Who?” he asks, getting the lights in the back. Just the night-light is on behind the counter now, casting its warm orange glow.
“Lolly Morris,” I say. “The missing girl. I know you spend a fair amount of time at Headlights.”
“Just to shoot the shit with Billy,” he says with an easy lift of his shoulders. “I may have seen her. I don’t go therethatmuch. Chet goes there more than I do.”
“I’m just thinking. If itisconnected.”
“Maybe it’s not connected.”
“But if it is? Maybe if we can find Lolly, then we get closer to understanding what happened to Ainsley and Sam. Maybe we figure out who else might have been at Evan’s that night. What if that person is still around? What if that’s who’s been leaving the gifts? Maybe he was frequenting Billy’s bar, too.”
