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“Did you call?” I ask.
“I left a message,” he says. But his voice is funny. The expression on his face is dark. I notice that his fists are clenched. He takes a step closer.
My dad is whispering, words unintelligible, voice raspy, desperate, and suddenly my heart is hammering.
“What’s wrong with you?” I ask Badger, but my throat is dry.
I turn back to my dad, lean in close to him so that I can hear what he’s saying. He’s pointing at Badger. And I flash on the file downstairs, how Mr. Blacksmith’s old truck was there when Badger said he was elsewhere.
Then something else clicks into place. And I can’t believe I didn’t see it.
My dad pulls me in close. And, finally, I understand.
“Chet?” I say, my stomach bottoming out.
Chet, who was at the party that night.
Chet, who was here when my father had his stroke.
I turn back to Badger who is standing stock-still. “What did he say?” he asks.
Does he know? Did he hear? I shake my head, can’t find my voice.
“The map you showed me,” says Badger. He leans against the door frame, seeming to lose all his strength, closes his eyes. “My grandfather’s lake house is right there. Right in the middle, like the center of a wagon wheel.”
The lake house where Chet and Badger used to go for a couple of weeks every summer with his family, cousins, aunts, and uncles coming from all around. I always envied him that, the big family. But I remember that he hated it up there. Said it was horror-movie isolated, too many bugs, bad plumbing.
“No one goes there anymore. It’s sat empty for I don’t know how long.”
“Did the police ever go there?” I ask, turning back to my dad.
My dad shakes his head, closes his eyes. “Is this what you were working on, Dad? The missing girls? How it connects to Ainsley and Sam?”
He nods, exhausted, shoulders slumping.
I sink all the way to the ground, put my head on his lap and after a moment, I feel him rest a hand on my shoulder. Everything’s spinning.
“The police came to the house.” Badger’s voice is strained “They were questioning everyone who was at the bar the night Lolly Morris disappeared.”
I lift my head to look at him. “You were there that night?”
He shakes his head. “No. Chet was, though.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugs. “It’s Chet, Maddie. I didn’t think anything of it. He goes there all the time. The cops made it seem routine, just eliminating suspects.”
Chet. The eternal little brother. The local heartthrob. That’s all he can be to me. I can’t imagine him any other way.
“We have to go up to the lake house,” says Badger.
“I can’t leave him,” I answer, looking at my dad.
“I called Miranda,” he says. “She’s coming.”
“We need to call the police,” I say.
“It’s my brother, Mad,” he says. “I can’t call the police on him. Let’s go up there first, see if there’s anything—suspicious. Maybe there’s an explanation.”
