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On Angela, on little Ros, on Ophelia, just to see how they’re coping.
I have to make sure they’re okay.
Ethan would’ve wanted it that way.
I think he’d like me watching over them, even if he would’ve given me endless shit over it and laughed his dumb head off.
He also would’ve known I’d never stop looking for him, no matter how many years slip by without answers.
I just don’t know how to tell Ophelia we finally have a clue and a new mess of questions, so I sink down in my patio chair and pop my beer tab.
She eyes me, sighs, and picks up her iced tea.
“You’re just going to sit there and grump all evening, aren’t you?”
My eyebrows go up. “Just drinking my beer, Butterfly. Shut it.”
She laughs.
“You throw that on for the bug or because you actually like the songs?” I nod at her chest and the shirt she’s wearing.
“The new album rocks! The symbol’s just a fun bonus,” she says.
Goddamn, does that outfit suit her. She’s wearing an oversized t-shirt tonight with a print of Milah Holly’s latest album cover on it. It’s a purple butterfly smeared across a black background like a soul taking flight—if it wasn’t just crushed and smeared by some clumsy asshole’s hand.
Me, I don’t get Holly’s music, but almost every girl under thirty does when the singer belts out ballads about broken hearts and pure love and good girls pushed into being bad by some uniquely awful fuckboy.
“You’re being all secretive again. Come on, what is it this time?” She huffs impatiently, sips more tea, and thunks the glass down on the little table between us. In the evening shadows, her eyes are green fireflies, as bright as the little glowing bugs dancing across the grass and trees of her blue-shaded backyard. “Did you find something new? With Ethan, I mean?”
Fuck, what’s that saying about good deeds going unpunished?
I wonder if this girl’s psychic as I shrug.
Truth be told, I’m a little embarrassed.
How could I not be, trying like hell to figure out where Ethan went for three damn years now and turning up with a big fat nothing?
If he ran off with Celeste Graves, if he got into a fight with her and—no.
I can’t think that shit.
That’s what half the town believes these days.
That he had something going on or he was so obsessed he lost his shit and disappeared them both.
Nah, I knew Ethan. He couldn’t have pulled a hair on her head when he was mooning over her half his life and he just wasn’t that type of guy.
A murderer? Even in some fit of fucked up passion or jealousy?
Not on my life.
For me, there are only two options.
One, he fessed up his feelings and she echoed them right back. They took off somewhere together to be happy without telling another living soul.
Or they didn’t make it anywhere alive—and if we ever find Ethan, it won’t be a happy ending at all.
It’s just gonna be whatever’s left of him. Hell, maybe Celeste Graves too.
