"All right. Is he okay?"
"I don't know." She exchanged a poignant look with her son. Then Sylvie turned to me. "Willow, if there's anything I can do to help, please let me know. I hope… No, I'm sure Kelsey is fine."
"Thanks."
Sylvie grabbed her purse from the counter and headed out the back door.
Drake ran the towel through his hair. Then he tossed it on the table and sat down. He waved me back to my chair. "Tell me again what's going on."
"Kelsey is missing." I sat on the edge of the chair, not liking the fact that Drake and I were alone. But that was ridiculous. He wasn't dangerous. He was just angry because his heart had been broken a long time ago, and he couldn't get over it. I shouldn't be nervous; I should be compassionate.
"Maybe she went to stay with one of her girlfriends," he suggested.
"No one in our group saw her or spoke to her after she left the bonfire with Gage."
"So, Gage drove her home."
"Yes—around eleven. We were all in our rooms by then. None of us saw her come in or heard him drop her off."
"Where did he and Kelsey go after the bonfire? They left there around nine thirty."
I stared back at him. "How do you know that?"
"I saw them leave. Where did they go between nine thirty and eleven?"
"I don't know. I didn't ask where they went."
"Seems like a good question."
"It's not a good question," I retorted. "Kelsey disappeared after Gage dropped her at the house."
"That's his story. No one can corroborate that, can they?"
"Actually, the doorbell camera recorded Gage dropping off Kelsey. He didn't lie. Gage loves Kelsey. He's going to marry her on Saturday."
Drake gave me a mocking smile. "Maybe Gage didn't lie about dropping off Kelsey, but he is a liar."
"You don't even know Gage anymore. Maybe he told a few lies when he was a kid—"
"People don't change. At his core, Gage is a liar. He told Sheriff Ryan that he never saw Melanie the day she disappeared. It wasn't until someone reported seeing them together that he admitted he'd forgotten seeing her at the beach. How do you forget seeing someone a few hours before they go missing?"
"You're still really angry," I said, noting the sparks in his blue eyes.
"I am," he admitted.
I knew his anger included me, too. But I didn't want to get into that. "I'm sorry. I know you're hurting."
"This isn't about me."
"No. And it's not about Melanie. It's about Kelsey. I don't believe Gage would hurt Kelsey."
"You didn't believe he would hurt Melanie, either."
"You have no proof that he did."
"You have no proof that he didn't."
"He had no motive. Everyone liked Melanie, Drake. She was really popular in my circle of friends, more popular than I was."
"She was well-liked, but she wasn't one of you. And when something happened to her, that became obvious. Suddenly, no one remembered anything. No one was available to talk. Lawyers were called in. Vacations were cut short. The families at Chambers' Point circled their wagons, and they got off this island as fast as possible. You left five days after your best friend disappeared."
"I had no choice. My parents made me leave. They said I'd done everything I could do, and I had. I talked to the police. I searched with the other volunteers for three days."
"Three days," he scoffed. "I've been searching for ten years. I've been battling to get past the walls your family and friends erected, with no help from the one person who should have been willing to break down those walls with me."
"With you?" I challenged. "You weren't even talking to me unless you were accusing me of horrible things. The one person who should have believed me when I said I'd done everything I could to remember, thought I was lying. I don't know how you could have believed that, Drake."
"And I don't know how you couldn't remember an entire night."
"I was drunk. I was wasted. And you know why I was drinking so much that night."
He stared back at me. "Don't blame me for what you poured down your throat."
I couldn't get over how cold he was being. "You are so mean now. What happened to you?"
"You know what happened. My sister disappeared. She's gone because you got drunk and you didn't meet her like you were supposed to."
I caught my breath at his punishing words, but I could see the guilt in his eyes, too. "All that is true. But it's also true that I got drunk because you hurt me. I thought we had something, Drake."
"We had sex one time. And it was a mistake," he said harshly. "You just didn't want to accept that."
"Oh, I knew it was a mistake. Believe me, I knew. You didn't have to shove it down my throat by making out with someone else. You came to Ben's that night just to throw that girl in front of me. Tell me that's not true."
He paled at my words, his jaw tightening. I waited for him to defend himself, but there was only silence.
"Nothing to say?" I challenged. "You're suddenly speechless?"
"That was a bad move," he admitted.
Now I was shocked. "You're admitting it?"
"I was wrong."
"Wow." I was so stunned I didn't know what to say.
"Look, I didn't want to hurt you, Willow. We shouldn't have messed around. It meant too much to you, and I knew that. I needed to push you away."
"Well, you did a great job. But you hurt me, and you didn't have to. I was leaving for college in a few weeks, and you were going back to school in another state. It's not like I was trying to march you down the aisle."
"I know. I overreacted."
"And you hurt me even more when you told me Melanie's disappearance was my fault."
"I can't apologize for that," he said, shaking his head. "You were supposed to meet her at Five Falls. And you didn't go."
"You're right. That was my fault. But we don't know if she ever went to the waterfalls. We don't know what happened to her or when it happened. The last time anyone saw her was four o'clock in the afternoon. I wasn't supposed to meet her until eight. So, where was she after four?"
"I don't know. That's what I can't figure out." He paused. "I don't just blame you; I also blame myself. I should have been paying more attention to Melanie. I should have been watching out for her."
"Melanie didn't want you hovering around her, scaring off the cute boys, which you often did without even trying. She hated when some guy would tell her he couldn't ask her out because she was your sister."
"Who said that?"
"A bunch of guys. It happened a lot. No one wanted to mess with your little sister."
"Maybe that was good." He took a breath. "But I never knew she felt that way. I wish she would have told me."
We stared at each other for a long minute, having both finally spoken words that had been running around in our heads for the last ten years. I wished I felt relieved, but I didn’t. There could be no resolution until we knew what happened to Melanie, and I doubted we ever would.