I’m standing on the other side of the river. It’s completely dark here, except for the stars. Behind me, I see the faint light from the flashlight, the rain slanting across the view. I can’t see the path in front of me. I reach out my hands as I walk, feeling the leaves and twigs marking the path, holding on to tree branches, until I start to get the feel of the thing. A path, slowly emerging in the shadows.
“Caleb?” I call. It’s tentative, unsure, because I’m standing here soaking wet, and I feel outside myself for a moment. That if I were to step back and look at the scene, I’m sure I’d be witnessing the unraveling of a girl in the dark, in the woods, who has swum through a river in the cold, because she thinks her ex-boyfriend isn’t really dead.
I take another step, away from the sound of the river. There’s a sliver of light through the trees, and as I move, it disappears. And then there’s the noise: like water hitting something else. I move through the trees, closer and closer, until I’m upon it. It’s a green tent, the front flap moving in the wind. I throw it open, my hands shaking, and peer inside, into the darkness.
I wait for someone to speak, for a hand to reach out and grab me, but there’s nothing. I crawl inside, feeling for anything left behind. And then I hear heavy footsteps outside. A light shines on the outside of the fabric. My shadow, illuminated on the far side.
“Caleb?” I call, but no one responds.
I crawl back out of the tent, because someone’s here, and I’m running for him, for the shadow, but the light is in my eyes, and I can’t see who’s there.
Then the shadow’s edges take shape: He’s older, heavier, harder. It’s the man we saw on our hike. It’s his father. I hold up my arm to block the light, and my steps slow. A deep voice says, “No one by that name here.”
“Please,” I say, walking all the way up to him. “I need to talk to Caleb.” I’m shaking, because I’ve done it. I traced him back to this man, from the pieces left behind. I grab onto the front of his jacket—here, solid, the image of a photograph, brought to life.
He steps back, pries my hands off his jacket, looks me over again—this crazed girl dripping wet, who has dragged herself from the river, like a memory.
He shakes his head, sadly.
“I know he’s alive,” I say.
“Sweetheart, you need to get out of here.” He looks over his shoulder, and I know he’s there somewhere. I know it.
“Caleb!” I call. “I made a mistake. Your mom followed me.”
The man freezes, and that’s when I know I’ve won. His grip tightens on my arm and he drags me farther back into the woods. But I don’t understand. The trees close around us, and there’s no one here but us.
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” he hisses. He has pulled me out of sight, and I think I should be afraid, but I’m not—I’m too close. I’m driven forward, to see it through.
“I do,” I say back. “I know exactly what I’ve done. That’s why I’m here. I’m telling him. To run.” I hiccup, and he lets go of my arm.
I step back, and he looks down at what’s in my hand. What I have grabbed from my pocket and held out in front of me, the only thing I have left. Caleb’s Swiss Army knife.
He frowns. “I’m not going to hurt you. You need to go back,” he says. “Now.”
“I can’t go back.” He looks down at me then, as if just finally understanding what I’ve done to reach them. He turns his back on me, and starts moving, but he doesn’t object when I follow him. We’re on a trail, leading to a clearing. In the clearing, the sound changes, to rain on a roof.
There’s a small circle of metal trailers, not attached to cars. They’re rentals, I see. The door to one creaks open, the light behind silhouetting a figure. It moves down the steps, to the darkened shadows of the trees. A hood over it, to protect from the rain.
Standing in the shadows is a shape. The shape becomes human. Becomes real.
He lifts his face, to both of us. “Dad,” he says.
And then I’m standing across from a ghost. Except I’m not sure whether the ghost is him or me, because he looks at me like he’s never seen me before. Like he has no idea who this person is before him.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
But all I can think is, I’ve done it. He is here, exactly as I believed, as I hoped.
“I found you.” That’s the only thing there is. The only thing to say. I found him. When no one else believed it, or no one else could do it, I was the one who fit together the clues he left behind, who traced the beginning and end, to here.
But I don’t step any closer.
We are standing across from each other, and I am suddenly afraid. I thought I knew him, but the pieces I’ve discovered do not line up to the person I thought I knew.
“How?” he asks. He also does not move to come closer. In fact, I’m scared he might turn and run at any moment. That I’m not understanding something, that this Caleb was never meant to be found. That he’s already gone, somehow.
“Your mom had me cleaning out your room. I figured it out. I know what happened in that room.”
He cuts his eyes to his father.
“We have to go,” his father says.
But Caleb doesn’t move. “We can’t yet. You know that.”
“I’m getting the tent, Caleb, and then we’re going.” And then his father disappears back into the night, and Caleb turns back to the trailer. I pocket the knife, trailing after him—always a few steps behind.
“Caleb,” I say, “whatever happened to Sean, it doesn’t have to be like this.”
Inside now, he turns to me, and I see the shadow of the boy I knew in his expression. “You know me,” he says. “You know I didn’t do that.”
I also thought he was dead. He let me believe that. He made me believe that.
“I thought I knew you. I don’t. You ran. You let us all think…”
He shakes his head, everything pouring back. “Sean was hurting me. He was choking me. I’d confronted him about these papers I found—”
“In the library,” I say. “I have them.”
“You have them,” he repeats. “I accused him of framing my father. Of putting him in jail for something he didn’t do. My dad swore he didn’t do it, that he was nowhere near that house that day. He thought it had to be my mother, but nobody believed him, because there was a witness. Only when I looked up the witness, you know what I found?”
“Yes,” I said. “I know.”
“They must’ve been having an affair. It must’ve been their plan together. She convinced Sean to lie. They both set my father up to take the fall.”
“Oh,” I say. I know some of this, because I’ve followed his footsteps. But I didn’t know he suspected his mother had been the one to put his life in danger. I’m starting to understand why he left, why he couldn’t stay.
“He was angry. He was so angry, Jessa. I thought he would kill me. My mom came upstairs, and she pushed him off. And I used that letter opener to take a swipe at him, and he stumbled back. I didn’t even hit him. He stumbled back. Near the window.” He takes a deep breath. I know what comes next. The window screen is gone. The concrete has been painted.
“But he was okay. I swear he was okay. Until he lunged for the letter opener in my hand, and she pushed him.”
His mother, then, coming to his aid. As a mother would.
“She was helping me, Jessa. It was because of me. He was so furious. I’d never seen him so mad. I don’t know what he would’ve done if he thought I was going to tell the police or something.”
The day comes back into focus. “I was there,” I say.
“All the evidence pointed to me, so she decided. We weren’t going to tell. We couldn’t do anything for him. She said, we’ll say he left. And it was just like that. We said he left.”
“You said she kicked him out.”
“You had showed up. You saw my face. What could I say? So I made something up, but my mom thinks you know. She thinks I told you.”
“Oh.” The reason for her keeping such close watch. All along, she thought I knew more than I let on. She didn’t know she was leading me right to it, just as I did for her.
“I have to go now, but I want you to know that. I want to know you believe that, Jessa.”
And I do, I realize. I wonder: can I take both sides? The parts I do know, and the parts I missed? This is what I know deep in my bones: he didn’t do it. I can tell because I’ve seen the different sides of him—the regret, the love, the fear, and the anger. I do know the sides of Caleb now. I know what a lie looks like, and he’s not lying.
“If you told the police it was self-defense, Caleb, your mom would’ve confirmed it. You didn’t have to disappear.”
He laughs then, and it’s pained. “Oh, no, Jessa, she would not. I wanted to tell. The guilt was too much. I thought we had done the wrong thing, and I couldn’t live with it, not in that house, in that room. And you know what she said? ‘All the evidence points to you, Caleb.’ She said she kept his pocket watch and wedding band, that they would have my blood. And we used my car to move him. Then we took his car when we left that week and sold it for cheap. I only realized after why she made us use my car, and not his. She said it was because we were selling it, but come on. It was to make sure I never said anything. And if Sean had helped set up my dad back then, then so did my mom, right? Jessa, who had I been living with?”
His voice drops, and he’s asking. He’s really asking.
“You could’ve left…,” I begin, but Caleb’s already shaking his head.
“She would’ve never given me permission to leave. Not even for college. She’s the guardian of my account, and as long as I was there, she could use part of the money to maintain our quality of life. But I have to be there. Leaving was not part of the picture for her. You know why she’s so determined to find me? It’s not because of me. It’s because the money is no longer hers. It goes to my dad, if I’m dead. It should’ve been his from the start. My grandparents left the money to me because my dad was in jail. This was the only way.”
“It’s not,” I say. “There are still other options. It’s not too late. You have to tell the police.”
He shakes his head. “It’s my blood on his things. His DNA in my car. He was in my trunk. We were fighting. Mia knows it, everyone knows it. We’d fought before, even you would say that, if asked. I was the one driving Sean’s car when we went to sell it. When I told her the evidence could point to her instead, she said there were cameras on the gas stations we passed, the storefronts, every place I drove by, with her following. Evidence that it was me. She had me completely under her thumb. My money was in her hands until I turned twenty-five. Everything went through her.”
The cameras that he used, later, to fake his disappearance. This must’ve been how his mother was so sure he had done it. Destroying the car, a piece of evidence. Using the cameras, to prove it. Leaving.
“You put him in the river?” I ask, my hand on my stomach, the thought unbearable.
“No, not the river,” he says. “Not near us. Drove down at night, to the Pine Barrens.” He chokes on the horror of what he’s done, shakes his head, turns away, as if he can’t bear me looking at him, either. Endless miles of untouched forest area, where he might be. “I wouldn’t do it. Got sick on the side of the road at the entrance. She left me there. Came back an hour later. So, I don’t know exactly. It would be my word against hers.”
“How is this life any better? You still lose,” I say. We’ve all lost.
“The trust. On my death, it goes to my dad. We’re just waiting for the paperwork to clear. I’ve been staying in the tent, in case someone comes looking for him. But after that, then we can leave, and we’ll be fine. We’ll be gone. I’ll be someone new.”
“You won’t be fine. You won’t have college. Or family.” Or any of the people you’ve left behind, I think.
“She took years from my father. She took years away from me, too. It’s all I want now, to make up that time with my dad, to have the future years with him now.”
Of course Caleb had a plan. He always had a plan.
I believe Caleb is telling the truth, that he didn’t do it. But I also know I won’t trust him again, not in the same way, not ever. I step back.
“You left us all behind. Mia too.”
His face falls, and I know I’ve struck a nerve.
“I’ve been taking care of all of them for years. My mom can figure it out now.”
“Your mother had a plan, too. She was tracking my phone. I didn’t know. Until just before. Until it was too late. She’s coming, Caleb. She must be.”
His father barges through the trailer door, and I jump. He has returned with the tent, and his gear. “Caleb,” his father says, “we really need to move.”
“You led her here?” he asks. He’s angry, but I’m angrier.
“You don’t get to blame me for this. Did you know that everyone blames me for your death, Caleb?” He jerks back, and I see he didn’t expect that. I know he thought of no one but himself. “She’s been using me to find you, because you disappeared. I’ve been”—empty, guilty, no one—“grieving for you, for months.” I choke out the last word. Does he not realize the impact his actions have had on everyone?
He’s already backing inside the trailer. Throwing the rest of their things in a bag. “She has to find me before the money transfers. Before the bank releases the funds to my father. She needs proof I’m alive, and then she can claim I was kidnapped or something. Either way, I’m alive, and she’ll hold on to the funds again.”
I am nothing but a pawn. An ex-girlfriend. Just a person in relation to someone else. This cannot all be for nothing. Going through his life, piecing together the story, finding him—not just what happened, an absolution, but him. All the parts of me he took with him when he left, and I need them to be mine again. For this to mean something.
“Where will you go?” I ask.
“It’s better if you don’t know, Jessa.”
“Caleb, I can fix this.”
“This isn’t your life,” he says. “How could you possibly understand? You have the perfect life, with the perfect family. You don’t have to worry about anything.”
And I think: He doesn’t know me at all. It makes me immeasurably sad, that he doesn’t even notice my own journey—all I’ve done to make it here. I’m standing right in front of him, and he doesn’t even see. How little each of us really knew about each other, underneath the facade.
“Let’s move,” his dad says. “Now.”
Caleb turns to me. “Come on. We’ll lead you out to the road this way. You can call for a ride from a restaurant or something.”
I look down at myself, wondering if he’s really serious. I’m freezing. I’m soaked. He wants to leave me at a restaurant. But I can’t go out with them, back to some access road in Pennsylvania. Not right now.
“Max is coming,” I say, and Caleb freezes. “I called him. He’s coming.”
“We’ll be gone by then,” he says, hauling his backpack onto his back. “We’re not waiting.”
I shake my head. “My things are on the other side of the river. If he finds them there, without me…” I try to imagine what Max might think. The raging river. The text, that I had tried to cross it. My phone and the backpack left behind. No sign of me.
“He’ll be fine, Jessa.”
But I jerk back. Is that what he really thought? That we had all been fine when we thought he died? And that we would all be fine without him again?
That’s when I realize, I am not who he thought, and he is not who I thought, and we are not alike in the ways that count. There are things I know about Max in my bones, too. That he is coming, and that he wouldn’t leave me—and you have to be willing to do the same for each other.
Caleb never seemed to realize the things we had to do for each other, to pull each other up.
“No,” I say. “I’m not going with you.”
He pauses for a moment, and I think he’s going to argue. But he doesn’t. There’s nothing left to say.