Page 12 of You Belong Here

I left my parents’ house without eating. The true pulse of the town was in the outer veins. On this street were two hallmarks of town: the deli on the corner, with a line stretching uncharacteristically out the door, and the Low Bar.

The Low Bar had existed for as long as I could remember.

By the evening, this place would be packed.

But it was still pretty early for the dinner crowd.

It was situated at the lowest point of the valley, or so they claimed, and was frequented mostly by locals—though it also had been the one spot that would serve the underage college kids back in my day.

This was a place that once was dimly lit and hazy, with windows that seemed to be fogged up from the smoke, or dust, or both.

The slogan had been hand-painted in script on the back wooden wall: Everything’s up from here.

There used to be pool tables in the back room, high-top tables with too many stools, a dartboard on the far wall, and a jukebox that I knew was just for show.

When I stepped inside now, most of the tables were currently occupied—definitely by out-of-town families, but also by locals who had gathered to watch the baseball game on the televisions around the room.

I opted for an open stool at the bar and was quickly handed a laminated menu by a man who looked barely old enough to serve liquor.

I texted Delilah while I waited: I’m heading home soon. All good?

Her thumbs-up reply came as I ordered Coke and a burger, my comfort food of choice.

My phone chimed again, but with a message from Trevor: How’d it go? Let me know when it’s a good time to visit her.

Trevor always defaulted to me instead of Delilah. I was used to receiving daily questions from him throughout each summer visit: Is she allowed to watch The Shining ? She says yes…

Over the years, he and I had become civil, friendly. Dare I say friends, even.

I remembered the time he had called out of the blue, voice shaking: I thought you should hear it from me first. I lost her today. She ended up with a security guard at the museum, my name over the loudspeaker.

She’s okay, was all I could say. A question but also an answer. A grace I had learned to give him over time. I never told him about the times I’d lost her, too.

She was upset, he told me. But she knew what to do.

In the end, Delilah never told me about it. I thought that was telling, too. She was keeping his secret, protecting him.

Now I sent him a screenshot of the flyer for parents’ weekend in mid-October, along with a note: Book early. My parents don’t even want me staying in their empty house. Don’t take it personally.

Tell them I say hi, he replied. And then: Or maybe don’t. Your call.

I smiled, just as my burger was delivered.

The last time we’d all been together was for Delilah’s graduation party, in the fenced backyard of my townhome.

Trevor had made the trip but stayed at a nearby hotel.

He and my father had made surface-level small talk—their fields of expertise overlapped at the edges, and Trevor told him about the newest exhibit at his museum.

But my mother didn’t engage with him, pretending he hadn’t spoken or acting like he wasn’t standing in a room with us.

For a psychology professor, I thought she had some pretty giant blind spots.

But then I wondered if instead this was a master move designed to keep him on his toes, make him sweat, question his choices—even all these years later.

My mother was horrified from the start that we didn’t share custody and that I wouldn’t accept his support. But I didn’t want it—refused it, even—and that was something she couldn’t understand.

But by then there was so much about me she didn’t understand. He was a good person, I was sure—but he wasn’t for me.

Trevor and I had met abroad while he was in the midst of an art history master’s program and I was finishing up my disastrous final year. It was a reprieve from our normal lives. We never meant for it to be anything serious or permanent.

He’d been working in a coffee shop on campus the first time we met, in the early London spring, cold and gray and wet. Beckett, he’d said in a distinctly American accent, handing me my drink, one side of his mouth quirked up. Like Samuel Beckett?

My parents are both professors, I answered, warming my hands on the cup, and a slow grin spread across his face. I knew, from that first crooked smile, that I was in trouble.

One morning later that week, he ran his thumb across the tattoo on my wrist and asked if it was a heartbeat. The idea sounded so beautiful, and I said yes. He asked whose it was, and I told him it was mine.

And in that moment I became Beckett Bowery, named for a great Irish writer, who tattooed her own heartbeat on her wrist, as a proof of life, of living. I liked his vision of me better than the truth. He was studying the classics. What chance did either of us have?

I’d been in the middle of a disappearing act. And suddenly I was seen.

At the end of that summer, while trying to catch up on my degree requirements, I realized I was pregnant.

I was twenty-two. I kept it to myself for a week, then two, then three, letting the idea take root and grow.

I’d close my eyes and try to imagine a different life stretching out in front of me, starting over in a town I’d never been—a place with no history.

When I finally told Trevor, sitting across from him at that same coffee shop, his face went pale, mouth half open, mug hovering in the space between us, frozen in midair. And when he spoke, it was knee-jerk and all wrong. I don’t think I’m ready for that, Beckett—

It knocked the wind from my lungs, turned my limbs numb. But I had already run through all the scenarios. I had already decided that I didn’t need his help. That I could do it on my own.

Delilah had always belonged fully to me.

I asked for the check just as a man slid onto the barstool two down from me, hands laced together on the countertop.

“What’s the word, Wes?” he asked as I handed over my credit card. A local, I assumed as he fished the phone from his pocket, placing it on the bar.

“Nonstop busy,” the bartender—Wes—said, eyes widening at the growing crowd behind us. “The usual, sir?” he asked.

“Please,” the man said, repositioning on the stool, pivoting to watch the game.

Wes brought him a Sprite, then leaned forward, resting his arms on the bar between them. “Getting lots of questions today about the house on College Lane,” he said. “Parents, I guess.”

“I’m not surprised,” the other man said, dragging his glass closer.

“I can’t believe they didn’t get it cleaned up before move-in,” Wes added. He must’ve understood the optics, even at his age.

The man sighed. “Insurance is still investigating.”

“Was it not an accident?” I asked, looking directly at the man beside me for the first time.

He was about my age, broadly built, with jet black hair, slicked back and just starting to gray along the sideburns.

“Have we met?” he asked, grinning slightly. A line, or maybe not.

Wes handed me my credit card and a receipt to sign. “Thanks, Ms. Bowery.”

There was a twitch at the corner of the other man’s mouth. “Ms. Bowery,” he repeated.

Wes tapped the bar top between us. “The sandwich will be out in just a minute, Detective.”

My heart sank as the recognition clicked. It had taken a moment for me to see the other version of the man before me from twenty years earlier. Time had softened his physique—and his demeanor.

“Fred Mayhew,” he said, extending his hand. “Been a long time, Beckett.” His eyes, a rich brown, held my gaze.

I took his hand, warm and large, then pulled away to sign the check.

He’d been a young patrol cop when Adalyn disappeared, pulled into the biggest investigation this town had ever seen. A couple years older than I was, with something to prove. The same age as the victims. He and Charlie and Micah had all gone to school together.

It seemed that Officer Mayhew was now a plainclothes detective.

“You back in town to see your folks?” he asked.

“On my way out,” I said, slipping off the stool.

“Drive safe,” he said with a smile, in a way that made me wonder if he knew I’d been here all along.

I sat in the car, engine idling, unable to shake the feeling of dread.

There was so much to sift through, and I had a hard time deciphering the true threats from the hypothetical.

It was the fact that my parents were leaving, while it seemed like everyone knew I was back. It was the four hours of distance between my home and here, which had always seemed like a buffer and now felt an improbable distance.

Or maybe it wasn’t this place at all. Maybe it was the fact that I was leaving Delilah. Maybe I’d feel this way no matter where I was leaving her.

Were the dangers here really any different from elsewhere?

My parents had lived in town for the last twenty years without incident. They’d continued teaching there even after I’d been asked to leave. Time moved on.

I was the only one who let the past creep in every time I stepped foot in town.

I pulled away from the curb, heading up the sloping road—heading home.

I passed the spot I’d once stood with Maggie during high school, at a clearing beside the road, tracing out the ridgeline that would one day become the tattoo on my wrist.

And then, on a whim, I veered off at the next unlabeled drive. The gravel road wove back through the wooded landscape, then widened as the trees gave way to green farmland and Maggie’s family home, like the set of a postcard.

My parents had always loved Maggie, who had been a friend since elementary school. She was trustworthy, where I was not. Loyal, where I had failed. A good daughter, with a sense of responsibility, returning home after college to continue the family business.

Maggie’s farm had always instilled a sense of calm.

Maybe that’s what I was seeking now as I walked up their horseshoe-shaped drive.

It was the sound of the crickets, the tall grass brushing soft against my ankles.

The curtains pulled wide open on the large white house and the long, welcoming front porch.

I’d just stepped onto the porch when a voice came from be-hind me.

“Beckett?”

Maggie stood at the corner of the house, muck boots pulled over jeans, like she’d been working around back. She was tall and skinny, with a strong jaw and auburn hair that was currently tied into a messy ponytail, frizz escaping from the sides.

“Hi,” I said. “I didn’t know if you’d be home.”

She didn’t seem too surprised to see me, considering I hadn’t been on this property in decades. But then my parents had run into her recently.

“I heard you’d be in town,” she said, stepping onto the far side of the porch. “Is everything okay?”

I nodded. “I just dropped off my daughter.” I gestured in the direction of campus, toward the mountains.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. Which could’ve meant: I can’t believe your daughter is eighteen . Or, more likely, I can’t believe your daughter is coming here, of all places.

She waited then. Waited for me to say something. Do something. Apologize, maybe, for drifting apart when she’d left for college. And then after: For not answering her calls. For pushing her away, just like everyone else.

“My parents are going to Peru,” I said, shifting on my feet. “They’re leaving tonight. And I just… I’d feel better if there was someone in town who Delilah could call in an emergency.”

Maggie stared back like she was waiting for me to continue—before realizing I meant her . That the only person I trusted enough here was someone I hadn’t spoken to in decades.

She blinked twice, then nodded rapidly. “Of course. Here.” She held out her hand for my phone, then entered her contact.

Two boys suddenly rounded the corner from the backyard, one right after the other, water guns in hand, yelling after each other.

“Careful!” Maggie called. She cleared her throat. “Did you want to stay a bit?” she began, but I couldn’t tell whether she meant it.

“I should really get on the road,” I said, gesturing into the distance.

“Next time,” she said, hopping off the porch, striding after her boys.

By the time I made it back to Charlotte, it was after ten p.m., and I had a message from Delilah. Roommate finally arrived. Hana likes the color black. A lot of black. So much black.

I smiled, then responded: I’m going to need pictures.

I waited for her to reply, but my phone remained silent. I wondered whether she was out, but the day she’d turned eighteen, she’d removed my ability to track her phone without telling me. I discovered it that same day, when she was late for curfew and I was checking to make sure she was on the way.

I never said anything, pretended I didn’t notice. I didn’t want her to realize how often I’d checked in the past.

As I was waiting, a new message popped up on my screen, from a number not in my contacts:

Welcome home

A chill rose up my spine.

I was alone in the house, curtains pulled shut. The only noise was the periodic drip of the kitchen faucet.

Slowly, I opened the text.

A photo had been included below the message. A picture of the campus from an aerial view, Wyatt College printed in deep red script over the top.

It must’ve been sent from the school, part of the automated system for parents that I’d just signed up for.

I laughed to myself, poured a drink, trying to shake it off.

It reminded me of the months after I’d first left home, when I could so easily be overcome by a sense of panic, for any reason. A knock on the door I wasn’t expecting. An unknown incoming number. News of a fire in a local restaurant or an abandoned building. Or anywhere at all.

It was a spiral that I’d learned to escape only by acknowledging it at the start: Oh, there it is. Where now I could look it in the eye for a brief, fleeting moment and keep going.