I shook him off and kept walking. Aunt Bridgette and Dr. Cooper were always going on about how hiding from who I was and what had happened to me was just a temporary fix. At some point, you’re going to have to face it, said my aunt. You’re going to have to own it. Until then, it owns you.
My aunt, my mother, and my grandmother had all moved and changed their names after my grandfather was convicted of the crimes he had committed. My aunt said that she used to lie awake at night, imagining what would happen if anyone discovered that she was the daughter of a murderer. Now she has a blog where she bares it all. It’s embarrassing and painful to read, but she’s received some positive attention for it. And she’s established a foundation to help the families of convicted murders. I think that’s why she’s so hell-bent on “helping” me. You should write about your experiences, put them on paper. There’s power in claiming and narrating your life. But I don’t want to see those words on the page. My story is more complicated than Bridgette’s. And I can’t just cast my mother and myself as victims and my father as the villain. It’s so much more complicated than that. We are all complicit in our own disasters, aren’t we?
But there was something inexplicable about Luke, about his trail of bread crumbs leading me into the forest-the pull was inexorable. Maybe it was time. Everything was rising up, and it was time to face it or be swallowed by it.
There was a hole in the ground, cordoned off by wooden posts and a frayed piece of crime-scene tape: Marla Holt’s grave. A door-size piece of wood had been laid over the opening, but it had clearly been moved aside a number of times. From where I stood at the edge, I could see beer cans and cigarette butts accumulating at the bottom. People had no respect for anything, it seemed. A woman had died here, been murdered and buried. And yet some people still apparently considered it a cool place to party.
I kept walking toward the barn.
“Seriously,” Langdon called. He was lingering at the edge of the grave. “That doesn’t look safe. Don’t go in there.”
But I kept moving and he didn’t come after me. He seemed frightened now. I always knew he was kind of a wimp; I didn’t hold it against him. I assumed he’d come in after me if he needed to, but there was no reason to act the hero until it was necessary. He was nothing if not completely rational.
I stood in the doorway and heard a whistling where the light wind outside was finding its way in through the cracks and gaps in the rotting wood. There was graffiti on the wall, the usual unimaginative scrawls:
and
(really?) and
Liquor bottles, cigar and cigarette butts carpeted the dirt floor, a filthy, careless confetti. There was a little pit where someone had stupidly built a fire. I saw used rubbers, and a composition notebook covered in something red and gooey, magazines faded and swollen with moisture. The whole place was a testament to how badly people sucked, how stupid and boring they were, how totally base. Places of neglect always made me hate the world, how no one takes care of anything, or worries about the consequences of their actions. Beck would have understood that. I could have told her that and she would have nodded her head, and said, Fucking losers. But she had abandoned me, just like everyone else.
I walked a careful circle around the space and looked for something shiny and new in the sea of rotted debris, a straight line in a chaos of furled and uneven edges. The moon was bright, so I could see fairly well and I didn’t see anything. But part of me knew that Luke wouldn’t have put anything in here. He wouldn’t have liked it in the barn; the disorder of it would have unsettled him. And I knew that because it unsettled me.
He wouldn’t have lingered looking for a good place to hide his clue, someplace obvious but not too obvious. I knew then where he’d left it. In the grave, of course. Because that was the worst place to hide it-the place that would most upset me.
When I returned to the grave, I saw that Langdon had moved aside the wooden cover and climbed inside. I found that very surprising. It takes some sangfroid to climb into an abandoned grave filled with who knows what kind of garbage. He was lifting himself out as I approached, and then stood panting from the effort, dusting off his pants.
“Why did you do that?” I asked him. Suddenly I had the strong sense that someone was watching us. I scanned the open field, the trees around us. Maybe the police were following me. It would make sense, since they seemed to think that I had something to do with Beck’s disappearance. Now they seemed to think I had something to do with Elizabeth, too. But I didn’t see anything in the dark shadows.
“I saw something,” he said. He was bent over, still out of breath. He was one of those thin people who were out of shape in spite of outward appearances. He was sedentary, a creature of intellect. His brain was so big, he hardly needed his body at all. At least that was my impression of Langdon. I remembered what Beck had said that night. I heard he has a boyfriend in the city. Was it true? I didn’t know; we didn’t have that kind of relationship. Usually there was a careful, respectful distance between us. This was as close as we’d ever been.
“What did you find?”
He had an envelope in his hand. I saw my name scrawled on the surface, but it had already been opened.
“You opened it?” I said as he handed it to me.
He shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “Curiosity killed the cat and all that. I thought better of reading it, though.”
I snatched it from him. I kept hearing Luke raging about how I shouldn’t have told anyone and how it was our game.
“Why are you here?” I asked him.
He glanced toward the trees, around the clearing, as if sensing, as I had, that we were being watched.
“I don’t know,” he said. He offered a weak smile. “I’m your adviser. I’m advising you.”
He looked a little embarrassed, with a half smile and a hike of his shoulders. He put his hands in his pockets, keeping his thumbs out. He started rocking a little up on his toes. The result was that he looked boyish and unsure of himself. I unfolded the envelope and took out the sheet of paper. It was the stationery I’d seen in Rachel’s drawer, from the box she kept next to her journal-white linen with a silver-embossed edging.
“You didn’t read it?”
He shook his head, but I wasn’t sure if I believed him. My hands were shaking, from the cold, from fear. The stress I was under was like a vise, slowly tightening every second. Dr. Cooper had left a note for me at the police station. She’d apparently waited until my aunt arrived. They wouldn’t let her in to see me, my aunt had said. I was supposed to call her when I got home. Don’t hesitate to call me. Don’t let the pressure get too intense. And don’t forget your meds.
The smart thing to do would have been to hand the letter to Langdon, go back to my dorm room, and let my aunt take me back to Florida-if the police would let me go. The truth was, I really couldn’t handle this. And Luke’s game seemed, in that moment, like it might be the thing to push me right over the edge.
I didn’t want to read it. I wanted to tear it up and throw it away. But, of course, by the light of the moon, I did read it. Curiosity didn’t kill only the cat.
You shouldn’t have let her touch you.
You shouldn’t have let her see.
You should have known all along that
You belong to me.
Where did she go when you left her?
Why did she run away?