Page 39 of The Girl from Widow Hills
CHAPTER 12
Saturday, 5 p.m.
THERE WAS A VISCERALreaction to speaking about the past. Something I’d long gone out of the way to contain. A shaking that started in my fingers, a tremor that worked its way through my body, though no one seemed to notice but me. The precursor to panic; something that seized my mind and body alike. This biological desire to keep the past contained, in a different part of the world—a different person, with a different name.
I’d thought maybe the detective was too young to remember. That enough time had passed. It was our parents’ generation that really experienced the case so immediately, who felt that terror and relief deep in their bones. So I started at the beginning. Assuming she knew nothing.
“I was born Arden Olivia Maynor,” I said. “There was a terrible accident when I was little. I was lost, trapped, for days. And it felt like the entire country was watching my rescue. I changed my name before college, to escape the media attention. It was just . . . so much.”
As soon as I said that name, I could see recognition settling in, sharp and surprising.
“The girl who was swept away in a storm,” Detective Rigby said, something close to awe in her voice. “The girl who held on to a grate for three days.” She didn’t mention the sleepwalking, but she must’ve known it. That fact must’ve been there, lodged somewhere in the back of her mind.
“Well, no. Not exactly,” I said. That was the story my mother seemed to want to believe—something beyond miraculous. The story, hyperbolized in memoriam. “But yes, I was swept away in the flash flood and trapped somewhere in the pipes for three days before making my way to that grate. I was found clinging to it, three days later. Sean Coleman. He was the man who found me. That’s his name.”
The detective didn’t blink, didn’t even seem to be breathing, when I told her what the name Sean Coleman meant to me. I could sense everything shifting as I spoke. The investigation resettling from Rick’s house to right here.
Because it had to be about me.
He had to be heading for my property, my house.
Sean Coleman had to be coming here.
Or he was watching. At least that much was clear.
Detective Rigby said she’d be back, but I stood as she walked toward the door, trying desperately to convey something—twenty years’ worth of meaning—into a pointless request. “Is there any way—” I began.
She turned at the door, her mind already halfway across the yard, or on the phone, to the next person she would tell. A chain that had just kicked off, and here I was attempting to ask her if there was any way to stop it. To leave me to my life, when the man who saved me was dead. I knew it wasn’t fair. And yet I asked. “What if none of this is relevant?”
She did me the benefit of acting like I had a chance, even though we both knew that wasn’t a fair thing to ask. “I don’t know yet,” she said. “But what I can do is let you know first, okay? I’ll let you know what we find out. Sit tight, and don’t talk to the media.”
Of course I wouldn’t. But I could already see the headline. The hook. The man who saved me had come back looking for me twenty years later. And now he was dead outside my house. I could already see the fingers flying across the keyboard, matching the speed of the rumors. The Girl from Widow Hills. Moving backward in time, from the ten-year anniversary, to the five-year, to the original event.
A part two:Where are they now?From hero to victim. From victim to witness. A reshuffling of roles. As if, all along, we were in a tragedy—it had just taken us a few extra decades to get there.
The detective left, and I was still staring at the closed door when Bennett shifted behind me.
He was holding his phone out in front of him, like he was following a map. Though he’d obviously just performed a quick Google search, seen all he needed to know. As his hand dropped to the side, I saw my photo from years earlier, smiling at me from upside down.
I couldn’t read his expression. “I wasn’t trying to hide it,” I said. “I just tried to move on. The things people say, Bennett. The letters they would send. It’s a thing that happened to me, and I don’t even remember it. I mean something to them. I can’t be who they want me to be. I don’t want to.”
“I’m not judging you,” he said. And yet something had closed off. A door we’d just pushed through swinging back. “It’s just, I’ve known you for over two years. We know each otherpretty well, Liv. Were you ever planning on telling me?”
All I could feel now was the space between us. A rift opening up.
“We don’t really know that much about each other,” I said, and his face shifted, like I’d hurt him. I’d been wrong about him—there was plenty on the surface that was easy to read if I watched closely.
Maybe it wasn’t for his lack of trying—he’d invited me to his family home, after all. Maybe he’d been able to read into me more than I’d thought, and understood that he had to move slowly, handle with care. But he wasn’t being honest here, either. “Come on, I didn’t even know about your girlfriend until yesterday.”
“It’s a little different, not bringing up the ex who dumped you. And, like, not telling someone you were famous and changed your name. Seems like something pretty important.”
The truth was, I hadn’t considered telling him. Or anyone. It was a thing I had fought to keep behind me for so long, it had never occurred to me to let it out voluntarily.
“I guess that’s my answer, then,” he said.
“I’ve never toldanyone, Bennett.” Couldn’t he understand? It wasn’t a lack of trust in him specifically. It was everyone. It was survival.
“No one? No boyfriend? No college roommate?”
