CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“It’s just a few routine questions,” Moser says. “We’re going through everyone who knew Bailey at this point.”

Ashley puts down her napkin. “Knew?”

Moser goes red in the face. Ellie Knepper gives him a look like he’s the stupidest man she’s ever laid eyes on.

“You can follow us back to the station if you’d like,” she says, glancing at Andrew. “It shouldn’t take more than an hour.”

“Why can’t you talk to him here?” My father asks.

Andrew stands up. “It’s fine. I’m eighteen. They’re just routine questions, right?”

He looks at Ellie Knepper for affirmation, but Moser pipes in: “You bet. We’ll have you home before Jeopardy!”

“Andrew—” Ashley starts to get up, but Andrew is already putting on his jacket. “Mom. I’m eighteen. You really shouldn’t leave Lauren and Kacey alone. Russ has to work, remember?”

My father goes red in the face to match Moser’s. And then Andrew is gone, stepping out the front door and chatting with Moser about Badgers basketball like this is a perfectly normal Friday evening.

But I know better: nothing will ever be normal again.

Andrew isn’t home in an hour, or two for that matter. I hear his car pull in at nine, nearly two hours after Moser and Knepper showed up at our doorstep, and I hear his footsteps head straight for his room.

At a quarter to eleven, when I hear Ashley’s bedroom door shut, I text Andrew: you up?

He types back: yeah.

Me: what did the police want to talk to you about?

Him: I’m coming down. Den?

I’m up and out of my room in an instant. I slip into the den, leaving the light off. The remnants of today’s fire still glow in the hearth.

I grab the poker and stoke the fire, waiting for the delicate sound of footsteps. Andrew slips into the room, rubbing his eyes. I can’t bring myself to pounce on him about Burke just yet; he looks like shit.

I sit down on the hearth, leaving room for him to sit next to me. “How was the search?”

“Pointless,” he says.

I wait for him to go on.

Andrew rubs his eyes again. “I didn’t want to find her—I know we were supposed to want to find her, but—”

He didn’t want to find her body.

“Every time we saw something out of place, we were supposed to flag it. I saw this black trash bag.” He props his elbows on his knees and leans forward, his face in his hands.

I put a hand to Andrew’s back. Feel his sharp inhale. He sits up straight. “I don’t think they have any idea what they’re doing. They wasted so much time by not looking for her right away. They say if a missing person isn’t found in the first forty-eight hours…” Andrew covers his face again, his voice trailing off.

I mentally complete his thought. Then the odds are that they won’t be found alive. I pull my knees to my chest. “Who did you talk to at the station? Moser?”

Andrew shakes his head. “Some uptight guy. Detective Burke?”

I force myself to say the words: “What did they want to talk to you about? Me?”

Andrew’s hesitation confirms it. I nod. I am strangely calm for someone whose world is crashing down on her.

“Hey,” I ask. “Did you go somewhere Saturday night?”

Andrew pops a knuckle. “Where would I go?”

“You lied about picking up your prescription.”

Andrew lowers his head. Massages his eyelids. “I just drove around.”

“Saturday night. The night Bailey went missing. You just drove around.” I’m furious—Ashley might suspect that I wasn’t home in bed like I said I was that night, and meanwhile, Andrew was the one who snuck out.

“Look, I know how it sounds, but you have to trust me,” he says. “I told the police about it.”

“Where did you go? When did you sneak out? I didn’t even hear you.”

Andrew looks at me like he’s in pain. “Kace, just let it go.”

Anger flares in me. “No, I won’t let it go. That detective thinks I had something to do with Bailey going missing and meanwhile you’re just driving around—”

Footsteps overhead. The stairs creak. Moments later, Ashley appears in the den doorway. Andrew stands, like he was on his way out, but it comes off suspicious as hell.

Ashley looks from Andrew to me. “What are you doing? Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Andrew says. Hands in his shorts pockets. “Everything’s good.”

Ashley searches her son’s face. “I heard you get up—”

“We were just talking,” I say. Even though it’s the truth, it sounds like a lie rolling off my tongue. Ashley looks at me. There’s something in the way that she regards me that wasn’t there before.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Andrew says, as if that’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for having a clandestine meeting in the den in the middle of the night.

“Well, try to.” Ashley frowns. “You’re both overtired.”

She’s looking at us as if she sees something she can’t unsee.