Page 55 of Last Seen

He brings her a Diet Coke. She drinks it and is finally able to open her eyes without the world spinning. Noah is watching her as if she is a bomb that might go off at any second.

“Sorry. They get the better of me sometimes. Thanks for helping.”

“Of course. I’m going to keep helping, Halley. What do you want to do now?”

Leave. I want to leave. “Nashville, I think.”

“Great. We can stop by my place on the way to get your car. I need to grab a bag.”

The pain is echoing now. She rolls her neck with an audible pop, allowing her shoulders to drop. Tension doesn’t help.

“Are you sure you want to leave with me, Noah? You have a lot of responsibilities here. There’s no telling how long—”

“Do you not want me to go?”

Noah’s voice is flat, empty, and she has that odd sensation again that there’s a familiarity between the Brockton boys and the stranger. “ You really don’t recognize me, do you? ”

“I didn’t say that. I just don’t want to be responsible for tearing you away from your life so you can protect me. I don’t need you to.”

“Oh, good to know.” Now she’s made him angry. “You just swoop into town, act the damsel in distress, and now you’re gone? Is that what this is?”

“Noah. Please.”

He scrambles off the bed. “Damn it, Cameron was right about you.”

“Excuse me?”

“He said you were trouble.”

“I am not trouble,” she scoffs. “That’s insulting. There are circumstances here that are beyond my control. I’ve tried to leave twice, and you guys wouldn’t let me. Now you want me out of here immediately. Dad’s orders, right?” The words slip out, and she realizes she’s made a terrible mistake.

“You were listening.”

“You weren’t exactly being quiet.”

“Is that why you were hiding in the bathroom with my phone? You don’t have a headache at all, do you?” At the look that must cross her face, he shakes his head. “You thought I didn’t know? Come on, Halley. I’m not an idiot. Did you get what you were looking for?”

“I can’t fake a migraine, Noah. And since we’re being honest, why do you have pictures of my sister on your phone?” she retorts. It costs her, but she’s feeling stronger.

“What the hell are you talking about?” His genuine confusion takes her anger down a notch. Either he’s a good actor, or he really doesn’t know.

“Pull up your photos. Go to your albums. There’s a set of photos from 2010, I found it from your Faces section.

You have pictures of the stranger I saw, and my sister.

And she’s pregnant, Noah. She was here, in Brockville, pregnant, eight years after she went missing.

How could you lie to me like this? How could you not know?

This place where you claim everyone knows everything about each other.

You’ve known she never left all along. I’d wager Cameron does, too, and your dad. That’s why you’re all messing with me.”

“Stay down. Don’t move. Make him think you’re dead.”

A warning from her past? Or some sort of cosmic signal for now? Is she in more danger than she realizes?

The overwhelming emotions are unfurling in her again; she feels them building, feels the blackness of her past growing. A brain is only designed to handle so much at once. Hers is starting to unravel. Add in the migraine, the medicine, the confusion ... She can’t keep this up much longer.

Noah is staring at her with alarm. He unlocks the phone and hands it to her.

“Show me.”

Breathing hard to quell the wild dread rising in her, she flicks through until she has the pictures again. Hands it back wordlessly. Watches as his face goes entirely white.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I think I have. Jesus.”

He sinks down onto the edge of the bed, swiping, swiping, swiping.

“Who is he, Noah? Who is the man with my sister? And why were you taking pictures of him?”

He is shaking his head and humming nervously. She realizes he’s saying “No, no, no” like a scared little boy. His reaction is not helping her concern.

“Noah? Who is it?”

“Ian.” His voice holds a note of terror that makes her spine tingle.

“Who is Ian?”

“He’s the one we don’t speak of.”

He says this robotically. He’s clearly been deeply shocked by the photos.

She grabs his face and points it toward hers. “Noah. Who is Ian?”

He meets her eyes, and what she sees in them she will never be able to erase. “He’s my half brother. He’s the oldest. He’s the one who survived my father’s encampment in Maine. I thought he was dead. Dad said he was dead.”

“What? Survived ... What are you talking about?”

“My dad had a group of followers who went into the woods with him, to live off the land. They all died, taken by a terrible fever. Ian survived. He was a tiny baby, came out with my dad. He was the only one. But he’s been dead for years. He died when I was just a kid. My dad ...”

The words are choked off.

“Your dad?”

“He caught him. He caught him doing things to a neighbor girl. There was a fight. My father hit him. He fell, hit his head, and died. My dad told us. He took responsibility. He killed his son and saved us from that monster. He was wrecked by it. That’s when my mother took me away the first time.”

Noah is shaking. The trauma of the memory is overwhelming him. She wonders what else the monster he describes did. Fathers don’t kill their sons. They don’t hide their sons’ deaths. They certainly don’t hide when women come to town and go missing.

What in the hell is this place?

“Noah. He’s alive. You can see proof of that. This is from seven years ago. And those pictures are from Brockville, aren’t they?”

“Yes. That’s the farm. October 2010. He was just a little older than Cameron.”

Watch out for the oldest, Tammy Boone had warned. Not Cameron. Ian.

“Who knows about Ian?”

“The people who lived here while he was alive, obviously. But I was eight when he died.”

“But he’s not dead,” she says again. “He was in Marchburg just this week. He confronted me. He said how surprised he was I didn’t recognize him. Why should I recognize him, Noah? Why should I know him?”

“I don’t know. I swear it.”

“Who took these pictures? These are pictures of your dead brother and my dead sister—who took them?”

His eyes are bleak, revulsion and fear and something deeper, a terror she is starting to understand. A terror that has to do with her, somehow.

“I inherited this phone. I swear to you I didn’t take those pictures. There’s no way I could, I was out of the country in October of 2010. I was in France.”

“Then who did? Whose phone is it?”

He swallows, hard. “It was my dad’s.”