I eye the bat on the floor, calculating the time it would take for me to get out from under the bed, to run to it, and if there would be enough time.
There isn’t.
He turns away from the window.
“I know you’re in here,” he says, his tone soft, warm. “Don’t be scared, Kylie. Please. It’s just me, your dad. I’m not going to hurt you. It’s time to go home, baby girl.”
This man is not my dad. My dad is sound asleep upstairs, sleeping like the dead. I wish that he would wake up. I pray to God for him to wake up, thinking of all the times he slept through his alarm clock going off so that Emily would have to splash cold water on his face, or the one time the fire alarm got coated with dust from the new floors going in, and it went off in the middle of the night. Nolan slept through that too.
I scream silently in my head.Please wake up. Help us.
He doesn’t.
The man comes to stand at the edge of the bed. He knows where I am. He knows that I’m here, that I’m lying under the bed. My breath shudders and I try to hold it, to control it, to not let him hear me breathe.
All of a sudden, he bows down. He crouches close to the ground, his eyes locking with mine. “Get away from me,” I scream. “Leave me alone.”
“This doesn’t have to be so hard,” he says, just like Daniel said, reaching under, wrapping his hands around my ankle, pulling as I kick.
Emily’s face is wild, harried when she finally comes in. There is blood in her hair, a small pit along the hairline. It drips down the side of her face, into her eyes. She sways. Still, she bends down; she tugs on the man’s arm as he tries dragging me out from under the bed by my feet. At first, when she pulls, he loses his grip. She manages to get his hands off me, long enough that I squirm further away, almost to the other side of the bed, where I will be free and where I can make a run to the front door for help.
Before I can, he flings her off him hard. She falls all the way to the ground. In an instant, he gets up. He searches for the bat, picking it up where he left it. He hoists it over his shoulder, bending his knees, leaning over, putting his whole body into the swing, and I’m so fucking scared all I can do is cover my ears so I don’t hear the sound as her body lurches before becoming still.
“It’s time to go, Kylie,” the man says, reaching under and pulling me easily out from under the bed, the wood floors making it impossible to resist, to find a toehold, to anchor myself under the bed.
In the distance, a door opens. The man looks up. He lets go of my arm. He tightens his grip on the bat as Nolan calls down over the stairs. “Emily?”
I whimper, “No, please, stop,” reaching for his leg as the man turns, as he makes his way from the porch toward the cottage. “Please don’t hurt him.”
Through the glass, I see Nolan standing in the upstairs hall, looking around. He’s leaned over the stair railing, covered in shadows, an almost negligible glow from a night-light lighting up his face. He’s squinting, trying to bring the cottage into focus, though he doesn’t wear his contacts when he sleeps and without them, he’s blind.
The man steps into the cottage. “Emily?” Nolan asks, his voice dulled down by sleep and the distance. He brings his gaze toward the man, though because he can’t make out the man’s face without his contacts in, he only sees that a figure has appeared and is crossing the room quickly, going toward the bottom of the stairs.
I scream, but there’s no time for him to react.
I watch as Nolan’s face changes as the man comes into focus and he realizes it’s not Emily. It’s someone else. Someone he doesn’t know. A stranger.
He stumbles back a step, shielding his body. He only ever gets one word out.Who.
I don’t watch it happen. Instead, I press my hands to my ears, my body curled around Emily’s, to block out the sound. “Wake up,” I beg into her ear. “Please wake up. I need you.”
Courtney
When we arrive at the police station, Detective Evans doesn’t take us into an interrogation room as I imagined he would. Instead, he gets me coffee with sugar and cream, and we speak at his desk. Cass and Mae take the two small chairs for themselves. Detective Evans offers to pull up another chair for me, but I say that it’s fine, that Wyatt and I can stand, though Wyatt wanders away and finds somewhere else to sit.
I look back at Detective Evans, who’s watching me.
“I was looking on my husband’s iPad this morning. I found something.”
“What did you find?” he asks.
I clear my throat. “Some recent searches about Pearl Lake,” I say, “and a Facebook post he made to thatHelp Find Kylie Matthewspage a few days ago.” I pull up the post on my own phone. I set it on the desktop for him to see, watching as he brings the phone closer to his eyes.
I’m standing behind Cass’s and Mae’s chairs. I have a bird’s-eye view of them so it’s hard to miss Cass nudge Mae under the table. As she does, I start to pay closer attention.
Mae looks at Cass. From her profile, her little chin starts to quiver. Cass looks carefully, almost negligibly back. Their eyes meet. Cass shakes her head so subtly I almost don’t notice, before she lowers her own eyes to the desk and Mae follows her lead.
Mae brings her hands under the table. From behind, I see her breath start to hitch, her shoulders undulating like a wave as she fights tears.
