Something shrieks from the woods as pressure builds low in your guts, a feeling that, you think with indignity, is not unlike the urge to shit.
The sound is unlike any woods animal you know, not a fox, not an owl seizing its prey. It must be the devil taunting you, shrieking louder, longer. Please just make it stop, you think, please please please. Spare me.
You crouch low, the pressure now building to a fierce, fiery burn, and as you set your jaw you realize that all along the noise has been coming from within you, and you let out the loudest shriek yet, filling the woods with your furious, savage screams.
CALLIE
Annabelle is waiting for Callie on her front step when Callie pulls up.
Callie doesn’t notice when it happened. Sometime between the library parking lot and pulling up to the house, she’s stopped thinking of her asIris. Because it was Annabelle who stood before her, the girl from the yearbook, the girl with the tidy room—with that plea in her eyes.
“Please, come in,” Annabelle tells her, and whatever traces of emotion that Callie had witnessed back in the library parking lot are gone. Callie can see it now, the glimmer of the Annabelle who had been flinty and ruthless enough to get herself here. To remake herself.
Annabelle makes them each a cup of tea. The cups rattle in their saucers as Annabelle carries them from the kitchen. The porcelain is thin, thin enough that you could probably bite through it.
Annabelle smiles weakly as she sets the cup and saucer down in front of Callie. The living room gets a bath of natural light and it picks up the colors in the rugs and throws. Annabelle—or whoever decorated the room—has good taste. On the walls, framed snapshots of the kids.
“I took those,” Annabelle says, when she sees Callie looking. “Every summer we spend a week in the Finger Lakes. Ben’s parents have a place there.”
“Yearbook committee.”
Annabelle frowns. “Excuse me?”
“You liked photography when you were younger, right?”
Annabelle’s mouth hangs open a moment before she remembers herself. “That’s right.”
Callie clears her throat. “I should make this clear right off the bat. I’m not a private investigator. My name is Callie Hauser. I’ve spent many years working as a narcotics detective but as of August of last year I’m Chief of Police in Pine Lakes.”
“Right,” Annabelle says, and is quiet for a moment. Callie presses on.
“Back in the parking lot you asked if Sabrina had sent me. She didn’t. No one in the area has seen her since the 1990s. But I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to her. What happened to both of you.”
Annabelle raises her hands, spreads them to indicate the contents of the room. A facetious gesture that makes them both smile awkwardly, shift in their seats.
“Could I ask you some questions about Sabrina?”
Callie swipes through her phone, finds the crime scene picture of the broken bracelet. “Does this look familiar to you? It was found not far from your former home. In late winter 1991.”
Annabelle presses her lips together. “It was Sabrina’s. It had been our mother’s. We had compromised, said we would share it. But Sabrina made it hers. She had a way of doing that.”
“When was the last time you heard from Sabrina or saw her?”
Annabelle sucks in a breath between her teeth. “It would have been March 1, 1991.”
Callie notes the date. One day before Baby Doe was found.
“Was she wearing the bracelet then?”
“I’m not sure. I’d think so. She almost never took it off. We fought over it. She didn’t want me to have a chance to take it back.”
“Can you tell me a little bit about that? The last time you saw or spoke to her?”
“She said she was going to talk to him and never came back.”
Callie gets the feeling Annabelle is slipping into a code. That she is sliding into the middle of a conversation Annabelle has beenhaving with someone else for a long time. “Who is thishim? Can you give me a name, here?” She braces herself, a second away from learning the truth, Annabelle’s and Sabrina’s and her own.
Annabelle shakes her head. “I don’t know his name.”
