What We'll Burn Last, page 21
CHAPTER 36
LEYNA
Saturday, 1:32 p.m.
There was only one thing Leyna cared about bringing with her. She headed upstairs to her sister’s bedroom.
As much as Leyna wanted answers about Grace, she suspected she’d missed her chance to know more. As time passed, her own memories grew fuzzier—she was nearly certain Grace had been wearing jeans with her blouse, but she couldn’t remember if her hair had been loose or in a ponytail. And how sure was she that Grace’s hands had been empty? Earlier, she’d known that her sister carried nothing with her, but in her experience, there was nothing more unreliable than unwavering certainty. Outside her sister’s door, she closed her eyes and tried to reconstruct Grace as she’d been that night, but a thousand other images competed, and the only thing she could be sure of was that Grace was gone and that Leyna could’ve prevented it.
She hadn’t been able to help Ellie either, but maybe her story would end differently. Amaya said Ellie liked to force reactions from others, that she was fully committed to her craft. Maybe this was what Amaya meant, and Ellie had immersed herself in the role of Missing Girl and was now on her way back home to scavenge the emotions of her loved ones for her play.
Screwing her eyes more tightly shut, Leyna tried to picture it—Ellie walking through her parents’ front door with an awkward apology: Sorry I made you worry, but it wouldn’t have been the same if you’d known.
Yeah, that felt like bullshit.
Either way, Leyna hoped the girl was safe. The wildfire wouldn’t reach Sierraville or Sacramento, but Leyna knew there were other dangers even more deadly and unpredictable.
She left the hall light on and pushed open the door—and inhaled sharply when she saw Grace’s face. Three of them, actually, staring back at her from the bedroom wall.
My God, she was beautiful.
She moved slowly closer, stopping a couple of feet from the portraits. She resisted the urge to reach out and touch them, brush the blush of Grace’s cheek with her fingertips, afraid the sweat from her hands might stain them or start the process of corrosion.
She must’ve lingered over her memories longer than she’d realized, because she heard the door close and then her mom coming up behind her.
“You did a great job with these,” Leyna said, her voice husky.
“Thank you.” Her mother’s voice was surprisingly reverent. She pointed to the one where Grace looked youngest and wore her pale blue blouse. “I painted that the year she turned eighteen. Seventeen months after she disappeared.”
Carefully, she took down the portrait. Then she went to the closet and selected what Leyna guessed was a second portrait, this one secured in a cardboard box.
She counted the boxes. Twenty-one. She’d assumed her mom painted Grace once a year, but it looked like it was more often than that. She was overcome by the urge to go in the closet and rip open all the boxes to see as many versions of Grace as existed in the world.
Leyna gestured toward the one her mom held. “Can I see?”
“We should be going.”
“Please.”
Her mom hesitated, then unwrapped the box, taking care to keep the packaging intact. When she was done, she propped it up on the bed, against the wall, beside the portraits of Grace.
It was a portrait of Leyna. Leyna’s hair was shorter—just above her shoulders, tucked behind her ears. She always tucked her hair behind her ears when she wore her hair that short. She had on a white collared shirt and wore a gold medallion necklace. She’d once owned that shirt, and she still owned that necklace.
“I might’ve stopped by the restaurant a few times.” Her mom cleared her throat and looked away.
“I never saw you.”
“I never went in,” her mom said, as if this were the most obvious and natural thing in the world, stalking her daughter. And yet—Leyna felt a moment of unexpected warmth.
Meredith fidgeted. “Do you need a minute?” she asked, as if she needed one herself.
Leyna shook her head. “You’re right. We need to leave. I just have to do one thing first.”
Leyna snapped a photo of each of the remaining portraits with her phone, then moved on to the Polaroids still hanging on Grace’s wall. There were dozens of them, clipped onto twine. She considered taking them down and throwing them all in a shoebox, but it suddenly felt right leaving them there, and what most interested her wouldn’t fit in one anyway. There was no way to store that blank space where the fourth missing Polaroid had once been clipped.
She followed her mom to the bedroom door, stealing one last glance over her shoulder at the portraits. On the wall of Grace’s bedroom, at least, the sisters had been reunited.
CHAPTER 37
MEREDITH
Saturday, 1:41 p.m.
When she’d entered Grace’s bedroom, Meredith had closed the door behind her out of habit. Too many ghosts lived in that room; best to keep them contained. Now Meredith opened the door to semidarkness. Though it was only midday, the room-darkening blinds were drawn to help fight the heat, but Meredith would’ve bet her Winsor and Newton brush set that she’d switched on the light when she’d come up the stairs.
Leyna moved closer to her, steps tentative, as if she, too, was surprised by the gloom. They remained still as their eyes adjusted. Meredith listened intently for sounds beyond her daughter’s breathing.
Leyna glanced at her mom, brows raised, and mouthed: Is someone here?
Meredith shook her head, more wish than answer. Even in the dim light, she felt seen in a way that raised goose bumps on her arms.
Leyna’s fingers grazed the wall next to the light switch, the one Meredith was now certain had been toggled on before she’d entered Grace’s room. An inch to the right, followed by one soft tap, and the hallway would be cast in full LED light. Leyna hesitated before dropping her hand. Was she thinking, like Meredith, that it might be safer to remain in the dark?
Downstairs, a door clicked shut.
Someone leaving? Or someone entering?
Earlier, the severed battery cable had seemed a nuisance, a message not much worse than others delivered before, like the mail thrown in Meredith’s garbage or her recycling can “accidentally” upended. A message like the bag of dog crap Meredith had once tossed in the open window of the Durans’ Audi.
Now Meredith’s heart drummed at that click of the door. She waited for the generator to fall quiet again or for the sound of glass shattering, drawers opening, footsteps ascending the stairs.
The hall was quiet but she couldn’t shake the sensation of being watched. Someone had threatened her through Brian. Someone had sabotaged her generator. Someone had left a warning for her in the woods. And now, someone was in her house.
Her house.
She clenched her fists to stop their shaking.
How dare they.
Leyna lifted her foot as if to take a step, then set it down again, likely afraid a creak of the floorboards would give them away. She glanced at her mom, mouthed another word: Who?
There was only one way to get that answer.
Meredith thought of the knives in the kitchen, the tools in the garage, and the Taser locked in the box downstairs. All useless to her. At the moment, she would’ve settled for a turpentine-soaked rag and a match.
Meredith’s eyes locked with Leyna’s, which were wide and bright. This was the expression her daughter had worn as a child when climbing trees or trailing, unwanted, after her sister.
It was also the expression she’d worn at eighteen when she’d announced loudly to the neighborhood that Adam had killed Grace, and anyone who didn’t believe that had their head firmly lodged somewhere dark and unpleasant.
Meredith had forgotten how fearless her daughter could be.
Leyna marched down the stairs, flipping light switches as she went, each spotlight a challenge. She’d spent more than half her life looking for her sister. Why would Meredith expect her to hide now that she’d gotten that close to the truth? Her daughter had never been built for half measures.
In the kitchen, a canvas was on the easel, facing away from them. She’d stowed the half-finished portrait during her argument with Leyna, before they’d headed upstairs. So who had brought it out again and stuck it on that easel for her to find?
Meredith crossed the room to the easel. A sudden chill shot up her spine. When Leyna stepped around her to view the portrait too, she gasped.
“Is it—was it—another portrait of Grace?”
That she had to ask spoke to the violence with which the painting had been defaced. The eyes had been removed, the mouth gouged, the cheeks slashed to ribbons. The palette knife that had been used still jutted from Grace’s throat.
Leyna stared at the painting with open revulsion that quickly gave way to anger. “Why?”
Meredith knew it was because of what had happened to Grace and Adam. But the question occurred to her again—who could know about that?
Whoever had done this had likely entered with the intention of sending a message—I know what you did. If the person hadn’t stumbled across the painting, Meredith might’ve found the same message written on her refrigerator whiteboard that Leyna had found on the snack-cake wrapper pinned to the sugar pine.
As Meredith stared at the angry slashes that crossed Grace’s painted face, the dull anger inside her chest sharpened into something far more dangerous.
Meredith grabbed her designer duffel, two portraits—one of each of her daughters, now hastily wrapped in paper pads—and the locked metal box that contained her Taser. “You can drive.” Meredith handed the bag to Leyna and excused herself. A minute later, she came back with a bottle of wine. She tipped it in Leyna’s direction.
Two paintings, a bottle of wine, and a Taser. The necessities.
“If I’m going to spend the night in that tiny apartment of yours, I’ll need a good cabernet.”
The wine would also dull the anger that continued to eat at her, allowing her to focus on finding out the identity of the person fucking with her family—and fuck with them right back.
CHAPTER 38
LEYNA
Saturday, 1:49 p.m.
Outside, the sky was smokier than Leyna had expected. After she loaded the bag and two canvases in the back of her Ford Focus, she propped her phone in the closest cupholder. She wanted to be ready when she caught a signal.
When Meredith approached the passenger seat, she wrinkled her nose. “I should’ve brought my sheets. I’m guessing yours aren’t linen.”
“Actually, Mom, I sleep on a burlap sack.”
Her mom slid in beside her. “I’m so sick of this crap,” Meredith said. “I’m not even going to complain if it snows all damn winter.”
A memory floated, no more substantial than a fleck of ash. When Leyna reached for it, it dissolved as easily.
Leyna had always loved Plumas County winters—the earthy scent of petrichor after the first rain, trees and mountains frosted with fresh snow, puffs of breath hanging in the air like tiny clouds. Everything green and white and quiet. But Grace and her mom both hated the cold. All winter, Grace would complain about the short days and the hideous sweaters and bulky boots she was forced to wear.
Why can’t we move to San Diego so I can wear sandals all year?
Grace would stay in her sundresses and blouses well into autumn, until her exposed skin grew too numb and she packed them away in defeat. Winter always won.
Around them, the ash swirled like flakes of snow.
Her mom spoke then—“Forgotten how to drive?”—but Leyna was so absorbed in her memory that the voice seemed to come from a great distance. Heartbeat spiking, she pulled out the Polaroids. She flipped through them, stopped on the one of the potluck. Her eyes burned, but she forced them wider. She couldn’t be sure.
She grabbed her phone and quickly scrolled through the photos. She zoomed in on one she’d taken of the collage on Grace’s wall.
In her left hand, Leyna held the Polaroids. In her right, the phone. For several seconds, her eyes darted between them. Then, nearly breathless, she turned to her mom.
“I need to talk to Dominic.”
Her mother’s eyebrows shot up and she folded her arms across her chest. She stared for a beat, then said, “Why the hell would you need to do that?”
The Durans were gathered in the driveway preparing for their own evacuation when Leyna approached. When he noticed her, Dominic walked toward her, which earned him a disapproving look from Olivia. Rocky didn’t seem happy to see her again either.
Olivia scowled at her son. “We need to leave,” she said.
Dominic gave his mom a quick hug. “I’ll meet you in town,” he said, and returned his attention to Leyna. “What’s going on, Ley?”
Olivia seemed unsure what to do. She stood halfway down the driveway. “I’m not leaving without you.”
At her obvious panic, Leyna felt a pang of guilt. She was about to wave off his help—Never mind. I can do this alone—when Dominic called over his shoulder, “I’ll be right behind you, Mom.” When Olivia still didn’t move, he added, “Get Thea out of here.”
That did it. Olivia lifted Goose into the back seat next to Thea.
Once Dominic and Leyna had moved out of earshot of his parents, she held up the Polaroid taken at the neighborhood potluck. He squinted at the photo; the groove between his eyebrows deepened.
“Do you remember what month this was?” she asked.
“Late September, early October.”
“You’re sure?”
He nodded. “It was my first trip home after I started college.”
On her phone, Leyna zoomed in on a second photo of the potluck, this one part of the collage that still hung on Grace’s wall. Enlarged to that scale, the image blurred slightly, but it was clear enough that her pulse quickened as it had minutes earlier when she’d made the connection.
Leyna stabbed the screen. “I’ve been focused on the photos we found in Rocky’s cottage when I should’ve paid more attention to the ones still on her wall.”
Dominic leaned closer, staring over her shoulder. Her heartbeat grew more erratic. She blamed the thickening smoke.
In the printed Polaroid, Grace was standing, partially obscured by Leyna on one side, Adam on the other. Grace had always known how to find her best angle. But in the second photo of the potluck, Grace sat in a folding chair, hands folded on her stomach.
Did Leyna imagine the extra bulk there? Though it was only early autumn, Grace already wore one of the sweaters she hated.
Leyna lifted her phone closer to Dominic’s face. “We know Grace couldn’t have been pregnant when she went missing—”
“So you’ve said.”
“But what about earlier?”
He took the phone from her and studied the screen. After a moment, he handed it back. “The potluck was right before she went to stay with your dad for a few months,” he said, slowly but with contained excitement.
Spoken aloud, the theory didn’t sound as crazy as it had in her head.
“It was four months, I think,” she said. “That math works perfectly.”
“So even if Grace—”
He stopped abruptly, but she knew what he’d intended to say: Even if Grace died the night she disappeared, Ellie might still be Leyna’s niece—and, if Adam was the father, Dominic’s too.
Leyna forced herself to finish the sentence Dominic couldn’t. “If Grace is dead, the Byrds could’ve adopted her.” She hesitated, working through her conversation with Ellie’s friend and the doubt that still intruded. “But Amaya insists she’s seen Sarah Byrd’s C-section scar.”
“You talked to Ellie’s friend?” At Leyna’s nod, he asked, “What else did she say?”
Aware they didn’t have much time, she recapped the call quickly. Less than a foot separated them, and though she knew she imagined it, she felt the heat of him against her skin. The familiar cedar scent he always carried with him mingled with the pines and junipers and oaks. He’d always smelled like home to her. He moved closer suddenly, now only inches away, and she thought he’d noticed something she missed. But then he turned to her, his face serious, his eyes so dark they appeared black. Dominic touched her cheek, and she was transported back to his tiny apartment ten years before, fighting him for the last pot sticker. When he kissed her now, his tongue tasted of ash. She was sure hers did too.
He stepped back, and as he stared, she saw that he breathed as heavily as she did. Probably not smart, considering all the smoke.
His expression held a hint of regret, as if the kiss was a preemptive goodbye. She turned away before he could translate that expression into words. She couldn’t survive another goodbye from him.
The silence grew charged. Awkward.
Dominic spoke; his voice was huskier than before. “What if Ellie came back here?”
“After Quincy?”
“Yeah.”
Leyna had considered that. She’d run through the timeline over and over, but each time, she’d dismissed it because the math didn’t work.
Just as she had with the pregnancy.
So she ran through the timeline again.
At about ten thirty a.m. Thursday, Ellie stopped at the market in Sierraville for gas and snacks. She’d asked the two workers if they were familiar with Plumas County. When they’d said no, she left without showing them the photo.
She’d then gone to Portola where, according to Serena Silvestri, someone at the post office recognized Ridgepoint Ranch from Ellie’s photo. Later, Serena helped Ellie out by verifying Adam’s and Dominic’s identities and pointing her toward the youth center where Dominic worked.
So Ellie headed to Quincy. Dominic wasn’t there, but she asked around about him and about Adam. She left the youth center by one thirty p.m.
That was the last place Ellie had been seen—but it hadn’t been her last known location. She’d continued to update Amaya, who also tracked her on her phone. The last text from Ellie had been delivered Thursday afternoon.
