Breakfast was a sad, wilted sandwich and a bag of chips. I didn't want to stay long at our place before heading to Cindy's parents, desperately wanting to avoid facing Mom's worried glances over what had happened the previous night.

The Sunday morning's light rain disturbed the mulberry trees lining our street, and the pavement was littered with overripe berries. I went out of my way to step on a couple, imagining that disgusting reporter's head with each satisfying squish. I had already given a statement to a kind, stuttering policeman, and the case was basically closed; the man had been arrested and wouldn't be bothering me anymore. I had no idea what kind of punishment his behavior entailed, but luckily, our old neighbor, Ms. Robinson—a walking megaphone for gossip big and small—halted me mid-walk and informed me of it all. What that man did was a third-degree breaking and entering, and if he was lucky, he would get only a couple of months behind bars. If not, he was looking at three to five years. What some people wouldn't do for a story.

When I got out of the Uber, even in the dull glow of the cloud-shielded sun coming through the window, the house looked almost the same as the last time I had been there a decade ago. It was only when I stopped to take everything in that I noticed the missing pieces. There was no more dog bed on the porch, and no shoes were stacked neatly on the rack beside it.

I headed down the grass path, trying to make myself as weightless and inconspicuous as possible. The sunflower bike Cindy had ridden when we were kids was tossed carelessly on the lawn. An adult-sized bike—baby blue and retro-looking with a white basket—was propped against the mailbox in the back corner. A daddy longlegs skitters out of the basket when I touched the handlebars. A wooden heart hanging on the front door read BLESS OUR HOME. To the left of the house was a small yard boxed off by a white fence. To the right, there was a Dead End sign and a patch of woods. And then there was the barn. The barn had a face; they had taken the door off its hinges years ago, leaving a gaping hole for a mouth, while two windows high up formed the eyes.

Cindy's dad stepped out onto the porch. My memory of him was filled with booming laughter and kind eyes, a man who always had a Werther's Original in his pocket. But the man standing there now was different. His shoulders were rigid, his face was a roadmap of worry lines I didn't recall, and in his hands, he held a rifle.

My breath caught. It wasn't aimed at me, but the message was clear: this was his territory, and he was protecting it. I wanted to run, but that would have been useless because I ran like a drunken ostrich, according to my brother. I was contemplating turning around and fleeing the property—possibly the state—when Mr. Heathcliff called out, "Rhiannon Carmichael, is that you out there? Heard you were back in town for the funeral of your no-good father."

To be honest, Victor kind of deserved it. He had always made disparaging remarks about the people living in this neighborhood, which, to me, screamed classism and a total lack of empathy.

The words tumbled out of my mouth. "It's me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Don't shoot."

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Heathcliff tilted the rifle twenty degrees downward. It was still close enough to send a bullet flying into a less vital part of me.

"I just..."

"Let me ask again. What're you doing on my property?"

Suddenly, I was eight again, and I could practically smell Mr. Heathcliff's turkey-and-mustard sandwich breath in my face. I couldn't stop my knees from shaking. "It's nothing—I just wanted to say hi to Roxy. But I'll leave now."

His wife, Darlene, emerged from the house. She was a few shades blonder and several pounds heavier than she had been the last time I saw her.

"Don't be silly, Heathcliff," she said, and her husband shriveled under her gaze. "Let her in. Come on inside, Rhiannon. Roxy'll be right down."

"Want some breakfast, lamb?" she offered as I slid into a kitchen chair.

"I'm okay," I nodded weakly.

Darlene gave me a disarming smile. "I'm guessing you want to wait for Roxy, and not talk about Heathcliff's mad behavior or watch the five best videos of cats knocking things off tables." She gestured at her tablet. "Coco loves them. He's at his vet check-up right now with Greg."

I nodded, wondering who Greg was, while hoping she didn't sense how the mention of her husband inspired a sick feeling in my stomach.

Darlene's eyebrows lifted. "Are you okay? Heathcliff has been a handful lately."

My face was pushed into a frilly emerald scarf as Cindy's mom folded me into a tight hug, a cloying smell of cheap perfume filling the back of my throat. Someone who was okay wouldn't come unannounced into their former best friend's house. My fingers tightened around the edge of the table. No, I was not okay. I needed there to be a reason for what had happened to us, and now that I had potentially found one, now that I was here, I could barely handle it.

Roxy came down the stairs with a young boy curled around her neck like a spider monkey, shrieking into her ear. That explained the adult bike and "Greg."

"Mom, can you take Isaiah away for a while?" She gave Darlene a tired smile, and her mother nodded. Darlene used to tell me that sometimes it was easier to let her daughters speak for her; they loved to speak, and Darlene didn't always. They worked well together like that—the way a mother and daughters should.

My mouth went dry as I pondered the fact that Roxy was a mom now. Where had all the time gone? She looked so spooky-similar to Cindy, with freckles dotting her nose and big, marsh-green eyes. She was wearing a Gaffney High sweatshirt smudged with day-old eyeliner. She was beautiful, just like my bestie used to be, in a way that always made me feel like something that had crawled out from a sewer. I had expected more of the people at high school to take notice of me, because I guessed I was sometimes a narcissistic little sociopath like Victor. But instead, I had always been a ghost hanging in the corner, pretending I didn't notice the occasional confused glance thrown my way.

"We haven't heard from Cindy in years," Roxy started, without me even having to ask.

"And you don't know where...?"

"No. As soon as she finished high school, she just left. Gone. Vanished into thin air. Sometimes I wonder if I ever really knew her. I mean, I hate to say it, but she was kinda conceited."

She didn't sound like she hated to say it at all. In fact, it sounded as if she had been dying to say it to someone for a very long time.

The sound of the front door slamming froze me in place.

"Darlene?" Heathcliff's voice called out from the hallway.

I caught pieces of their conversation. Darlene's voice murmured, "...know it's hard for you. She probably didn't know who else to turn to. To ask about..."

"We're not a halfway house, Darlene," Heathcliff's voice snapped. It was angry. "I want her gone."

I turned back to Roxy.

"Why don't we go upstairs, huh?" she asked. "We'll be okay in Cindy's room."

The floor complained underneath me as I stood up. There was a loaded silence in the hallway as we climbed the staircase. The bedroom door creaked open, revealing a space frozen in time. It was unmistakably Cindy's, but it felt like stepping into a memory box—a snapshot of her life before everything. The air smelled faintly of vanilla and something else sweet and youthful.

My gaze was drawn to the largest photo in the biggest trophy case. It was Cindy, beaming, surrounded by four of her friends. They were all posing for the camera, their mouths painted a vibrant cherry red and their cheerleading pleats a blur of blue and yellow. The photo was from the first home game of the season, back when Gaffney High still had a cheerleading squad, back when life felt simpler and brighter. The trophy case itself held a mix of academic awards, sports trophies, and small, personal mementos. There was a faded blue ribbon for "Most Spirited," a collection of hand-painted rocks with inspirational quotes, and a framed photo of her and Roxy, younger and carefree, laughing on a beach.

A pang of grief hit me. It was like Cindy was still there, her presence lingering in the carefully arranged displays, but also undeniably gone. The room, not unlike mine, had been preserved exactly the way it was. It was a shrine—a place of both comfort and pain, a place where memories collided and the past felt both close and impossibly far away.

I turned to Roxy. "You told me you might have something for me."

"I do. I think I have an idea of what happened to Cindy."

"Oh?"

"She was hanging around this boy, Joshua, a lot..."

"I remember him. Wasn't he more like the one who had a crush on her? It was a bit one-sided."

"Well, I don't know if it was one-sided." Roxy's razor-thin eyebrows arched up. "With Joshua, I mean."

My heartbeat quickened. "What are you talking about?"

Roxy's eyes sparkled with an I know something you don't know look. "They were awfully cozy many times, is all I'm sayin'. He lived over there." She walked to the window and pointed past the house, where some kids were playing soccer, toward the ranch-style home at the dead end. "His mother was such a doll. It's terrible how quickly the disease took her."

"That's awful," I said. "I heard he didn't have a father either."

"Oh, he had one." There was deep scorn on Roxy's face. "Left Kathleen when she was pregnant with Joshua. They were never married."

"So you think the two... what? Ran away?"

"Well, Dad would never approve of her relationship with him, of that I'm sure. He'd say something foul like, 'Mind you don't get yourself knocked up,' or somesuch."

But Cindy had never told me she had anything going on with Joshua. Yeah, he had a crush on her, but surely she would have mentioned something. We were besties. She was always more into Ethan, romantically. Roxy rolled her eyes, clearly noticing that I didn't fully buy the story.

"Whatever. None of us knows where Cindy is now. I don't want to talk about this anymore."

Whatever. The word hung heavily between us. It felt like it had just become a weapon for Roxy to use against me, landing like a blow and drawing a sharp boundary in the sand. Roxy's message was clear: if I tried to dig up things that had been buried for ten years, I would only bring the family more pain.

I would be causing Darlene pain—Darlene, who had picked me up that night at the gas station when I ran away from home. Darlene, whose quiet kindness had always shone through, and who had always slipped an extra sandwich into Cindy's lunch box even though she never had to do that, since I always had more than plenty.

I had come here looking for answers, for a connection to Cindy, and for some clarity in the swirling confusion of Dad's death and this strange homecoming. Instead, all I had found were more questions. A knot of frustration tightened in my chest. I needed to understand. I needed to know more about Aubrey—this "witch" stepmother Eli had mentioned, the one who had been a constant undercurrent in his life. Maybe she held a key, an unexpected piece of this puzzle. The thing she had done at the funeral had intrigued me ever since.

I pulled out my phone, my thumb hovering over Eli's contact. He had offered his help. Maybe his chaotic life and his connection to Gaffney's undercurrents could shed some light on the shadows that seemed to be closing in on me. I pressed call.

"Eli?" I said, my voice a little strained. "Are you busy? I'm at Cindy's old home. Could you... could you maybe take me to your place? To see Aubrey."

I bought two bags of Twizzlers and a bottle of iced tea from the convenience store next door. When he pulled into the space out front, I waved to him and he rolled down his window. I held up the candy for him to see, and Eli completely lit up.

He looked enraptured, and not at all disturbed that we were about to take a one-hour journey all because of a funeral moment and a hunch. "So we're kind of being cops, or something? You're gonna interrogate my stepmother?"

"Yeah." I smiled. It felt good to be around him, just joking. "Exactly."

"Sweet," Eli said. "This is so freaking sweet."

"You really don't mind?" I asked. "I'm sure you have a hundred better things to do."

"Nah, I am not working today," Eli said. "It's Sunday, Carmichael."

He put air quotes around that last part, the word "Carmichael," because that was what Eli used to call me. I laughed in spite of the growing knot in my intestines at the sight of Heathcliff peering suspiciously at us both from the porch. I was just glad Eli had forgiven me for what had happened on Friday night.

Eli could tell I wasn't in much of a mood to talk on the ride back. He offered me one of the Twizzlers bags, but I shook my head and kept looking out the window.

"So, how was Cindy's? Did you find out anything about where she might have gone, or..." he asked between chews.

"Well... yes and no. Her sister, Roxy, has a theory she ran off with Josh."

"Joshua Wilkins?"

"Their neighbor."

"Wasn't she kind of always into Ethan, though?" Eli puckered his lips, and it was so appealing.

"That's what I said!"

We both giggled at the same time, and then his expression turned serious. "Listen, I heard what happened last night. With that reporter."

"He must have been really desperate for the news."

"But you're okay?"

I turned to meet his eyes, and Eli gave me a worried smile.

I smiled back. "Yeah. All good."

"Good. I'd hate it if something happened to you." He returned his attention to the road.