“What is it?” I asked, afraid of the answer.
I watched his bottom lip tremble. He started shaking his head, and gave me a look that suggested he would rather undergo surgery with no anesthesia than finish his previous thought.
“Seriously, Tommy,” I pressed. “Tell me.”
He sighed, giving in. “They’re putting a team together to search Grassy Waters.”
A wave of nausea rolled over me so strongly, I had to hold my fist to my mouth.
“I know,” Suzannah whispered. “I reacted the same way.”
Grassy Waters was the natural preserve that lined Loxahatchee, twenty- two acres of swampy water and woods, brimming with alligators and snakes. Parts of it were open to the public for canoeing and sightseeing, but locals knew to otherwise avoid it. It was not somewhere Hazel would have gone willingly. If they were searching Grassy Waters, they were searching for a body.
5
My childhood bedroom, like all of the bedrooms aside from Hazel’s, had sat mostly untouched. When we all lived here, the house was never quiet. There were always lights on, a television blaring, people engaged in a loud conversation. Now, it all felt incredibly still.
When I left for college, I had taken three suitcases full of stuff: mostly necessities—clothes, makeup, and my laptop. But also one full of mementos, including scrapbooks and family pictures of Will.
My mother had purged the house after the trial, desperate not to have any lingering evidence of her allegedly murderous child. But I’d managed to recover a lot of it, digging through the trash late at night before Will’s things, our memories, were taken away for good. I didn’t know then that these items would become crucial to writing my book. I just didn’t want to let our history get erased.
My dad had gotten the house in the divorce because mom felt guilty for cheating—and because Steve was loaded. He initially thought he’d sell it, but ultimately decided against it. This house was his last connection to our family. I had begged, pleaded, and bargained with him for years to move out when I still lived here. I was desperate to be closer to Will, to get out of Loxahatchee, but he wouldn’t budge.
I didn’t understand my father. How could you hold on to a house but not your own son? His tipping point had been the conviction. The day they read outguiltymy father’s loyalty dissolved. We had endless fights about it.
“How could you abandon him?” I’d cried that day. I couldn’t understand.
“I saw the look on Gary Hopely’s face when Will was convicted,” my father had told me solemnly. “The relief that his daughter’s murderer was facingpunishment. I understood it, Rose. I have two daughters. What would I do if it had been you or Hazel? I trust our criminal justice system. I have to come to terms with what Will did.”
From that moment on, he never mentioned Will being innocent again. I held out a little hope he’d change his mind, because at least he still talked about him—unlike my mother, who acted like he’d never existed. After a few years though, I gave up.
Sitting in my old room, I was exhausted but knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I paced back and forth on the carpet, remembering the last time a girl had gone missing from our street. A girl who had been found murdered.
In my experience, when girls went missing, it was because they were dead.
I felt guilty for the thought, the dread creeping back into my stomach and making me nauseous again. Hazel was my sister.She might be fine. She probablywasfine. We’d find her tomorrow recovering from amnesia after an accidental head injury, or coming down from a bad trip, or at a motel with some guy.
And when she was back, I was going to take that tour of NYU with her and encourage her to go. To get away from Loxahatchee and all the people who heard her last name and knew her life story. Hell, I’d help her pay the tuition if I had to. I felt a desperate longing for my little sister. I needed to be in her space. Somewhere full of reminders of her.
Tommy and Suzannah were still on the back patio, where I’d left them earlier. I could see them from my bedroom window, holding hands across the table, seemingly silent but settled.
I crept out of my bedroom and down the hall to the door at the very end, Hazel’s room. I looked behind me before I twisted the knob, which was stupid because I was her sister and had every right to be there. Still, as I crept inside, I made sure to close the door behind me.
Hazel’s room had changed considerably since I’d last seen it. Gone were the ponies and dollhouses that I remembered. It had become a teenage girl’s sanctuary in my absence.
The bed was wrought iron and covered in a dusty pink quilted comforter. The walls were lined with artsy prints from Urban Outfitters and framed photographs of Hazel with her friends. She had a desk in one corner, and a couple of shelves covered in books and trinkets. But there were still faint traces of the little girl I’d known if I looked hard enough. I could see it in the large watercolor horse painting over her bed, and the horse tchotchkes that sat mixed in with her books. Her room was covered in evidence of a life in Loxahatchee. A life that was maybe even happy.
People wondered why she lived here with Dad, in a place where her family was so hated, instead of with our mom in Tampa.
Truthfully, I didn’t know the reason. After the divorce, my pregnant mom promptly moved in with Steve. She was desperate to start over where people didn’t know she’d raised a murderer, and might still let her have a career. Tommy was away at college by then, and I was about to graduate, but Hazel was only seven.
Initially, Hazel had joined her, but only a year and a half ago, she’d begged my father to let her come live with him. Our mother hadn’t liked it, but Hazel had apparently kicked up quite the fit. She despised living with Steve and the twins, and felt like an outsider in her own home. That was one of the few things I’d picked up on when we did talk—nothing held my attention like criticizing my mother. I think Hazel never forgave her for the divorce. Even as a young child, she had enough happy memories to know that her new life was a pale comparison.
“It wasveryRose of her,” Tommy had told me at the time.
I was too preoccupied to notice. Just six months after Hazel moved back in with my father,The Smileys Next Doorpublished, and the neighborhood’s hatred of us was reignited. Our mother swore she never would have let Hazel go back to Loxahatchee if she had known what I was writing. But somehow, Hazel had managed to create what seemed like a happy life here, to get people to accept her for who she was.
But the room had a strange, cold quality to it now. I knew the police had been in and out all day, since Hazel was reported missing, taking anything they considered evidence. Evidence of what, I didn’t know, but Suzannah had told me earlier that they’d left with diaries, notebooks, her MacBook.
