Okay, let's face it, Maine is creepy. That's all there is to it. Creepy, creepy, creepy and too damn cold.
For a second I wish that Nick Colthad followed me all the way up the driveway. He's cute and he has that whole I'm-going-to- keep-you-safe thing going on. Not like there's anything to be scared of. What do pixies do? They frolic in flower gardens, right?
Only this guy points.
I walk over to the window that looks out at the driveway, the woods, the lawn. "I'm being ridiculous."
I stare out into the dusky lawn. The woods at the edge of it seem full of secrets, full of unexplained things.
I never should have read all those scary books when I was little. What was my dad thinking keeping them in the house? Pain wells up in my heart and then the ache comes.
My dad. It is so hard to just think of him.
I turn away from the door and sit on the couch where he used to sit. I put my face in my hands and rock back and forth a little, but I do not cry.
No more.
Betty crashes out of the kitchen, bringing the smell of burned meat with her.
"I murdered the pork chops, just fried them to death," she says.
"That's okay."
"I have Campbell's soup… chicken noodle."
"Cool."
She eyes me. "Okay. What's going on?"
"Tell me about the boy who went missing last week. What happened?"
Betty turns to glance out the windows. "It's almost dark. You should be back before dark. You don't know these roads. They're dangerous."
"I was at Issie's."
"Oh, that's good. She's a sweet girl. Jumpy. Her parents work at the bank."
"Uh-huh. Yeah… I kind of sort of went off the road a little bit. I didn't hurt the car! I swear. Nick pushed me out."
"Nick?" She wipes at her face with the moose dish towel and motions for me to follow her into the kitchen. "Nick Colt?"
I nod.
"You didn't get hurt? Were you speeding?"
"It was ice."
She takes it all in. "He's a good boy. Cute. Don't sigh at me. He is."
"Tell me about the boy. Please?"
"He was out alone at night. He was an eighth grader. He didn't show up in the morning."
"So what? Everything is all business as usual?"
"No. We had search parties. The state police came in." Her shoes slap against the wood floor. "You're getting all motivated again. Maybe Maine has already been good for you."
I decide to ignore her psychoanalysis. "Do the police have any leads?"
She opens the cabinet and pulls out two microwavable soup containers. "No."
"And what do you think?"
She pops the plastic top off the containers and starts prying off the metal lids. I wait while she puts it all into two bowls and plops them in the microwave for sixty seconds.
Finally she says, "I think he ran away."
I wait. She turns around and leans against the counter, like it's too hard to keep standing up. "Okay… a long time ago this happened. Almost a couple decades ago. Boys turned up missing.No girls. Just boys.
One a week. Always at night. It was in the national news."
The timer on the microwave counts down the seconds, getting closer and closer to zero.
"Mom and Dad never told me that."
"They wouldn't. It's not something anyone around here wants to remember."
"And now you think it's happening again."
"I hope to God not."
"But it might be."
The microwave beeps. She chucks the pork chops into the trash can. "It might be, but he may have just run away."
"Seriously, why did Mom send me here? A boy went missing."
"People don't go missing in Charleston? I bet the murder rate's a lot higher there." She swallows. She pulls in air through her nose like she expects she'll never breathe again. "She thought she was doing the right thing. It wasn't easy for her, Zara. You weren't acting alive anymore. She thought a change of scenery would help."
"Was I that bad? Really?"
She stares out the window above the sink, past the old glass insulators she collects. "Yes."
Right after dinner my cell phone goes off while it's charging and I rush over to the counter to get it, even though it's probably just my mother, but the display says it's a Maine number.
I flick it open. "Hello?"