Then my husband says, “She’s right here.” Something in the formal way he’s speaking cuts right through me. It’s the police. He must be talking to the police, and they want to confirm my whereabouts before they drag me off to jail.
I have to leave. I have to go somewhere, anywhere away from here.
The door is closing behind me when I hear Emma call, “Lizzie?”
If I turn back, I won’t be strong enough to leave.
My vision is blurry with tears as I run down the hall, but there’s a group waiting for the elevator. I can’t handle being with all those strangers, not when I’m falling apart.
I veer down another hallway and lean against the wall beside a fire extinguisher. Closing my eyes, I take a breath and let it fill all the emptiness inside me. But instead of calming me down, it illuminates the magnitude of my loss. Every memory of Emma’s face, every echo of Andrew saying “think things over,” ignites pain throughout my body.
I know what the police have. The emails, plus the prior relationship with Glenn, plus the incident. The last time I saw Ava. She must have told Glenn. No wonder they think I’m guilty. It will all come out and everyone will hate me. I’ll be handcuffed and convicted. I’ll never be free again.
My breath hitches, like I’m having an asthma attack. What if they find Ava and it’s too late? There’s not a single thought that can calm this storm. Losing Andrew and Emma hurts too much to think about, but I can’t take refuge in my hatred of Ava. She really might be in danger, someone might have taken her, and I’m scared for her, surprisingly. But there’s no time to worry about my sister, because the police are coming for me and I have to run.
But I have no idea where to go. Just away from the police.
I duck into a stairwell and take the stairs at top speed. Panic makes me careless and I stumble, banging my shoulder against the wall. It barely registers.
There’s a gray exit door and I bolt through it. I’m at one side of the hotel by a dumpster. The parking lot is small, not busy. As far as I can see, there’s the divided highway, other parking lots, tall buildings and hotels, and a few little islands of landscaping. Nowhere to blend in. Nowhere to hide.
I hear distant shouting, and I don’t stop to see if it’s the police or hotel staff or reporters. Running at an angle, I dart across the little alley that separates one hotel from another. There’s a group of people boarding a shuttle bus, and on instinct I beeline for them.
My future has tunneled down to a single point: get on that bus. I have no idea where I’ll go after this. Every place I can think of—Texas, my parents’ house, that hotel room—is closed to me. After I met Andrew, I hoped I’d never be this alone again.
I keep my head down, let my hair swing over my face, and join the group, waiting my turn to climb aboard. I could be a tourist, a student, a wife. The driver doesn’t ask for identification. I’m just another hotel guest going from point A to point B.
I don’t sit by the window. There’s an empty seat next to a woman in a pantsuit, and I collapse on it just before she can set her laptop bag down. I’m trembling. Sweat dampens my hairline. I catch a glimpse of two police cars outside the hotel as we pass. I was right, but there’s no triumph in it, only terror. Leaning back to obscure my face, I hope I’m not considered armed and dangerous. Just a flight risk.
It doesn’t matter where we’re headed. The airport, the historic district, the Metro. It doesn’t even matter how long it takes. Andrew and Emma will be getting into a car, heading back to the airport. They’re moving farther and farther away from me. Maybe if I can solve this mystery, maybe if I can find Ava, I can follow them.
I just need time to think and plan. But memory is swamping all my thoughts. The look on Andrew’s face when he realized I’d lied again. The last time I saw Ava. The reason the police think I’m guilty.
I shut my eyes, but still I see Ava staring at me, blood running down her face.
* * *
It was the end of summer, and the air was so thick I wasn’t sure I could breathe. I had driven my crappy hatchback the seven hours from Providence past New York and Philadelphia. At the time, Ava was living in Maryland, right on the border. She had a fairy-tale cottage in a little town. The whole thing was so charming and sweet, it made me sick.
The end of a love affair is never easy, especially because Glenn wasn’t the love of my life. But I’d thought we had something separate from Ava. That we could have found each other without her. The dedication in her book had exposed that lie. We were together because each of us was at odds with her. He’d slept with me to get back at her. I’d slept with him to prove I was better than her. We were with each other, but it was always about my sister.
I scratched his chest and nipped his shoulder, constantly demanding his attention, trying to exorcise the ghost of her memory. But when we were lying together afterward, my head on his arm, his eyes were closed. I couldn’t help wondering if he was still, always, only thinking about her.
For a full week after Glenn disappeared, I woke up angry and went to bed angry. My jaw clenched until my muscles were taut with pain. My stomach was too knotted for food, my nerves too wired for sleep.
At the bookstore I saw an entire window filled with Ava’s new book. It was displayed on the wall of best sellers. Glossy, shiny, menacingly bright letters. And inside every book the same message.
When I passed the dump display with the blown-up picture of Ava herself, I couldn’t hold back my poisonous rage. I grabbed the flimsy cardboard edge of her cute choppy haircut and yanked the whole thing to one side. Books scattered as the honeycomb shelf came away from its base. I put a foot on Ava’s black leather jacket and pulled her cardboard head from her shoulders.
I didn’t stay to find out I was fired.
I left my adviser, left school, dropped everything. I didn’t pay my rent or my utilities or pick up my paycheck. I didn’t give two weeks’ notice anywhere. My anger was driving me and I let it gather my things and hit the road.
Done. Gone. Over.
I didn’t know I was going to her house, I swear. I didn’t have a plan. I almost never do, at first. But when I passed into Delaware, I knew where I was heading. Ava had been living here since her divorce from Beckett. I’d been to the house only once with my parents, but my clenched hands turned the wheel as if on automatic. I hated Ava. I hated her and I was going to hurt her like she’d hurt me.
There had been plenty of chances to turn around. When I think about it now, even when I’m angry, part of me wishes I could change the story. There were so many moments I could have chosen a different path.
There. When I drove past the English Department without a good-bye to my graduate studies. I should have stopped and gone inside to breathe the heavy smell of paper and hear the rolling laugh of Peggy, our office manager. I should have gone into the main office and asked what she was reading. She would have given me a sticky toffee and told me about the professor who’d called her at two AM with a printing problem. I could have let Ava go and finished my degree.
But I was spoiling for a fight, so I went to find one.
I could have stopped there. When I pulled off for gas at a Jersey Turnpike service plaza. There was a woman with a golden retriever whose wide doggy smile could have diffused me. I should have knelt in front of that dog and stroked his ears and kissed his silky head. I should have remembered that Glenn wasn’t the only good thing in the world and I was worthy of more love than he could give.