Only She Came Back, page 26
“You can have a life!” The motor was louder. Soon it would reach us. “Just tell the truth, Kiri! People sympathize with you, they like you—you don’t need to disappear!”
Kiri stiffened and drew herself up. She said in that cold voice, the voice she’d used in the cave, “You know nobody made me go meet Callum, Sam. I wanted to. I had to face him. And now I have faced him, I understand something. You were right.”
“About what?” I whispered.
She shrugged, but then her face softened. “I have power. I can’t really love anyone until I understand that nobody can make me a better person but me.”
Another wave of nausea.
“This isn’t the way.” Tears streaked down my cheeks. “You can’t just keep running.”
“Shh.” She’d slid out of the car and was extending a hand to me. “Someone’s here.”
I looked up through my tears, expecting and almost hoping to see a police cruiser. But it was only a giant RV with a gray-haired driver, who was edging it carefully into a space.
“Please.” I took her hand and let her tug me out, sobs choking me. I couldn’t go back to my life, not now that I’d become part of her story. Even if I couldn’t trust her, I couldn’t spend my life lying. “Please. Stay with me.”
Her arms folded around me. Her lips met mine, soft and alive, and her fingertips pressed hard into my back, and her hair cloaked my face. I kissed her back, wanting to stay inside the pulsing glow of her forever.
Callum was right—she was incandescent. But I didn’t want to trap that glow on a screen and turn it into rising columns of numbers: views, likes, shares. I just wanted to be in the light.
“I have to go on alone from here.” She kissed me a last time and stepped away.
Through the blur of tears, I watched her open the passenger door and get in. I watched West’s lips move as he looked at me, and I knew he was making me promise never to say a word.
I nodded—that part was easy. When you love someone, sometimes you just have to accept what they’re telling you. Callum had asked me what I could give Kiri. I hadn’t been able to answer then, but I knew now. I could do what he had refused to do: I could let her go.
I cried as I walked to Owen’s car. I didn’t watch as the Grand Cherokee pulled out, didn’t wave to her—couldn’t. I had to get out of there before the old couple in the RV had time to notice any details about us, because there was no telling when or where Callum’s remains might surface.
I didn’t look back until I was behind the wheel, and by then the Grand Cherokee was a speck in the distance. It was too late to gun the motor and race after them.
Kiri wanted me to have a life, and now I had to figure out what that would be.
30
NOVEMBER 27, 3:14 PM
On the day of the first snowfall, I thought I saw her again.
It was a slow day at the Grand Nine, and I had my laptop at the ticket counter so I could type up my transfer application to Emerson. My journalism prof was a reporter moonlighting as a teacher, and she said I needed a school where I could join the staff of a good student paper and learn from the ground up.
I was working on the essay:
Like many people of my generation, I grew up fascinated by sensationalist stories I found online. I didn’t think it mattered how you got the story as long as it was a good one. But…
Here I was supposed to say what I’d learned so far. That I liked the stability of having an ethical code to follow. That every choice you make about how to tell a story affects someone. Every quote needs a context. Every statement needs a source.
My gaze drifted from the screen to the plate-glass front of the theater, now white with whirling snow. Wind tossed sheets of it at the glass and spun it in circles. I could almost feel the cold flakes stinging my cheeks.
She was out there somewhere in the wilds of Canada. Was she trudging through a snowstorm right now, cold and alone? Was she hunting game or splitting logs to keep herself warm?
On September 2, I had received a postcard with a Colorado postmark. Got our friend settled. She can’t stay here for good, but I think she’ll be fine for the winter. No signature, but I knew it was from West.
When I remembered Kiri, I saw her with shorts baring her long legs, a sheen of sweat on her skin. My gaze fell to the screen again, and I switched tabs and typed her name into the search bar.
My finger hovered over the return button, but I couldn’t seem to bring it down.
A car drove up and parked in the lot, snow churning in its headlights. The driver’s door opened. Wind whipped long, platinum-blond hair as a girl got out.
I stopped breathing.
She was tall with broad shoulders, and she pushed the snow-damp hair out of her face with delicate fingers. She stood a little hunched beside the car, as if she were self-conscious about her height.
Then a boy got out on the passenger side, and two more girls joined them from the back seat, shattering the illusion. The blond girl turned to speak to her friends. Her face was wide and ruddy, her brows almost auburn.
Not you. Never you.
They brought the chill into the lobby with them, talking and laughing about a UVM hockey game, brushing snow from their coats and scarves. The girl who wasn’t Kiri reached the counter first, and I smiled and she smiled back and asked for a ticket to Marvel’s Thanksgiving release and a medium popcorn.
I swiped her card and printed out her ticket. Behind me, explosions echoed softly from Theater Three.
I handed her the paper sack. She’d unbuttoned her coat to reveal a baggy sweatshirt that said ADDISON COUNTY 4-H.
She must have noticed my expression, because she frowned. I shook my head: Never mind.
I sold tickets and popcorn and Pepsi and kombucha and Keurig coffee to her three friends, and all of them disappeared into the theater, leaving me alone again. The snow still pelted down, turning blue as twilight fell.
I’d remembered something, or thought I had. And now it wouldn’t let me go.
I unzipped the interior pocket of my backpack and slipped my hand way inside until I found a tightly folded packet of notebook paper.
Kiri’s diary. I knew I should burn it, or at least find a safer place for it, but I couldn’t seem to make that final sacrifice.
Keeping one eye out for customers, I unfolded the papers on the counter and shuffled through them until I found the entry I thought I’d remembered: Last time I saw her she was wearing a faded T-shirt that said CIMARRON COUNTY 4-H, so I guess she once had a home, too.
Colors suddenly seemed a little brighter and sounds sharper, as if a voice had woken me from a deep sleep. All this time I’d been waiting for news that Natalie’s body had been identified and returned to her family. But the bikers had disappeared without a trace, taking any knowledge of her with them. If other campers had noticed her, they hadn’t come forward. No one knew enough to connect the Jane Doe to her origin. I hadn’t thought I did, either, until now.
Her T-shirt could have been thrifted. But… I cleared the search bar and googled Cimarron County. It was in Oklahoma.
My prof would have told me to call the FBI hotline, but I knew I’d never do that.
I texted Reggie: Hey, you in class?
Nope, rehearsal. We’d got into the habit of texting now and then, usually about random stuff like shows we were binging. What’s up?
My hands trembled so hard I had to keep retyping. You still in touch with Aliza Deene?
Sure, why?
The screen swam before my eyes. Was I doing the right thing? But whatever Aliza had said about Kiri, Natalie didn’t deserve to be remembered as an anonymous corpse found in the red sand. She deserved to go home to the people who loved her.
Tell Aliza that the girl found in Lost Village National Monument was named Natalie, and she could be from Cimarron County, Oklahoma.
When I hit send, a weight lifted from my chest. Wherever Kiri was, I knew she’d understand what I was doing.
Reggie sent me a strip of exclamation points, followed by a question mark.
Outside, the snowfall was thinning as dusk advanced. I remembered how the UVM student’s bright hair had flashed as she stepped out of the car, and I remembered the magnetic closeness of Kiri in the summer heat, and I hoped she was somewhere safe and warm as night darkened.
I had my essay to finish now and my own stories to tell.
I wrote: Just pass that on to Aliza. No names. She’ll know how to check it out.
TRANSCRIPT OF VIDEO POSTED ON JANUARY 28 BY ALIZA DEENE OF MURDER MOST F**KED UP
So, on the six-month anniversary of Callum Massey’s disappearance, what do we even know?
We know that Callum was an emotional abuser and very possibly a pedophile. Don’t come for me in the comments, Cal stans! You can choose not to believe Arianna Dunne if you want, but she’s consistent and credible, and those pics of her with Callum when she was thirteen are just freakin’ creepy. I think it was brave of her to come forward and talk about every way he screwed with her head, and yeah, I’ll die on that hill.
Were the BPD and the FBI negligent in Kiri’s case? Hells, yeah! Burlington is only an hour from the Canadian border—get a clue, cops! It was way too easy for her to slip away. Would she have made a break for it if she weren’t guilty of something? Doubt it!
But do we know she was guilty of murder? We don’t, friends. In case you’ve forgotten, we have exactly one body.
Her name was Natalie Tobin, just nineteen years old. A girl who used to have a room full of mystery novels and horse figurines; a girl who ran away from home when she was seventeen, headed for LA, and never came back. A girl who died in a fall, a girl whose blood ended up mingled with Callum’s on that sweatshirt. We’ll never know why.
I’m proud of the role I played in bringing Natalie’s remains home, but this isn’t about me. It’s about Natalie. It’s about the anonymous tipster who helped me ID her. It’s about Arianna, who was courageous enough to let us know what kind of person Callum Massey was and why he would want to disappear. And it’s about Kiri.
Kiri, honey, if you’re alive out there, I wish you’d come back and face the music. I know I haven’t always said the nicest things about you, but that was before Arianna came forward.
Not all of us think you’re guilty. Some of us want to hear your side.
Acknowledgments
True crime is a fraught subject, for good reason—one that has always made me feel fascinated and queasy in equal measures. I want to thank everyone who helped me navigate the quandaries of exploring our culture’s fascination with murder stories in Only She Came Back.
My wonderful agent, Jessica Sinsheimer, saw the potential in the story and supported it steadfastly. Liz Kossnar helped me dig deeper into the characters and themes with her transformative editing. Jenny Kimura made the book’s multimedia aspect come alive on the page, and Peter Strain took my breath away with his haunting imagery. Many thanks also to Kelley Frodel, Jake Regier, and the whole team at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
Thank you to my coeditors at the newspaper Seven Days, especially Dan Bolles, Elizabeth M. Seyler, Pamela Polston, Carolyn Fox, and Mary Ann Lickteig, for helping me find the time I needed to write this book. Local journalism matters, and we prove it every week.
Burlington is a great town, and I hope its citizens will forgive me for occasionally fudging its geography. Thank you to Josh Hallmark of True Crime Bullsh** for giving me insight into the work of a true-crime podcaster.
Thank you to Nicole Lesperance for the early read and to Dayna Lorentz, Rachel Carter, Jennifer Mason-Black, Jesse Q. Sutanto, Marley Teter, Grace Shim, Ellie Marney, and Elizabeth Bonesteel for the ongoing support. I’m endlessly grateful to all the readers I’ve met on BookTok who dished with me about fake diaries, like Go Ask Alice, while I was creating Kiri’s diary.
Eva Sollberger, thank you for being my fearless companion in consuming true-crime media and for giving me Lily, my small but fierce resident cougar. Dad—you were never shocked when I asked ghoulish questions as a child. Mom—you’re the sweetness and light I need to balance things out. Love you all.
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ALSO BY MARGOT HARRISON
We Made It All Up
The Glare
The Killer in Me
Margot Harrison, Only She Came Back
