Page 14 of You Belong Here

It had been seven weeks. Seven weeks of new routines for the both of us.

A Good morning! text from Delilah each day, sometime between eight and ten—and as late as noon on the weekends.

A FaceTime in the evening, if she was alone on her walk back from dinner, where I’d accumulate snippets of her life: Intro theater class surprisingly hard; math surprisingly easy; cafeteria enchiladas surprisingly good.

She hadn’t been cast in the fall play, but—she continued in the same breath, before I could respond—she’d joined the stagecraft crew.

An upperclassman, Gen with a G, was showing her the ropes.

It sounded like Delilah spent weekends exploring the town with a girl named Sierra. She was adjusting. Keeping busy.

I was trying to do the same. I’d even let my neighbor set me up on a blind date with her colleague, which she’d been asking to do for a year. But I’d also been counting down the time: Eight more nights until I’d be heading back for parents’ weekend. Seven. Six.

Evenings unsettled me the most. I was so used to her presence in our townhouse, the way I could hear her get up every morning, the rush of steps when I called her name, knowing she’d overslept.

In the night, I restrained myself from checking in, worried when she called me—and equally worried when she didn’t. I found myself marking time by my parents’ weekly emails, with updates and photos of their trip.

I kept my phone close, turned off the Do Not Disturb feature, and was woken hourly by the motion-notification alerts from passing cars or the sway of branches in the wind.

Sometimes when my mind started reaching—imagining all the things outside of my control in the universe, all the things that could happen to her—I would focus down to a single point. Sink into a project, immerse myself completely in someone else’s story.

I needed that now. I was being considered for a nonfiction series on famous serial killers and had submitted a formal writing sample a week ago. But I was currently in a holding pattern, waiting for their feedback.

I hadn’t heard from my agent yet, which was unusual.

Just in case, I checked the junk folder while finishing my dinner. I didn’t see a response for the proposal, but I did see several emails I’d missed, all from the same sender, with the subject line in all caps:

REFERRAL FOR MEMOIR

I didn’t usually take on work from outside my agency, other than freelance edits from people I’d worked with before. I didn’t post my contact information on a website or advertise on any social media. Whoever had sent this request must’ve gotten my details from a previous client.

I wasn’t generally picky when it came to the type of projects I took on, but memoirs made me nervous.

There was an added layer of expectation that the story was being told authentically.

A voice I’d have to inhabit perfectly. Loads of interviews with the subject.

The challenge of finding the arc, the shape.

And then there was the personality combination. The fact that a collaboration didn’t always pan out after months of working together. The nontraditional schedules to accommodate. The fight over final payments if the client wasn’t happy with the finished product.

I opened the message, from FordGroup:

Hello Beckett, checking to see if you’ve received my prior emails.

You came highly recommended as a ghostwriter for a memoir.

It’s a tight turnaround but our client is offering considerable compensation—200K, half on agreement and half on completion.

Please let us know if you’re interested in discussing further.

So the client was anonymous and the project very light on details, which also made me nervous. I didn’t recognize the name of the sender. The note was unsigned.

But it was so much money. Three or four solid projects’ worth—and for a fraction of the time.

And time, I had been learning, was the gift.

I didn’t want to loop in my agent just yet, in case it complicated the progress of the other deal. Not until I was sure.

I’d be happy to hear more, I wrote. I added my cell number and logged off for the weekend, thinking: Six more nights.

The call came in the middle of the night, just after two a.m.

I fumbled for my cell on the bedside table, heart racing from the surprise. It took my eyes a moment to focus and register Delilah’s name on the display.

“Hello?” I answered, groggy and trying to orient myself. But all I heard was dead air.

A pocket dial, maybe. Out on a Friday night with friends. Except there was no background noise—no laughter or music or chatter.

I stared at the phone, saw it was still connected. “Delilah?” I said again, pressing the phone to my ear.

Static.

No, not static—a whistle. I recognized it immediately—the wind funneling through the valley. The noise deepening as it picked up speed, heralding the change of the season. I heard it clearly then, a deep and haunting rush of air, that familiar cry in the night.

Every nerve was on high alert.

The howling.

And then a quick gust—or a gasp—before the call dropped.

I immediately tried her again, but it went straight to voicemail.

I was fully awake then, panic seizing my lungs, hands shaking as I repeatedly called her number, over and over.

I tried tracking her location, even though I knew she’d turned the feature off. I sent her a text just to see if it would go through—but it went undelivered.

I tried to slow my heartbeat. Tried to acknowledge the dread and move on to rational thoughts.

She was probably out of Wi-Fi range. Or the phone had lost charge.

Maybe she hadn’t meant to call me. Maybe she was just walking home, and the cell was in her pocket, and she’d accidentally called the last dialed number—me.

But I was out of bed now, limbs tingling with a surge of adrenaline.

I gave her ten minutes. Then twenty. Trying her again as the digits on the clock ticked forward—imagining her getting back to her dorm, plugging in the phone. But all of my calls kept going straight to voicemail.

I paced the downstairs, watching the clock keep moving. Thirty minutes. An hour. Getting closer and closer to something that felt dangerous.

I felt a crackle in the air. Kept hearing that noise in my head just before the call dropped. A breath of fear? The wind?

I imagined her running through the woods, lost, confused, with no idea what was happening. I imagined her hiding behind a tree, back pressed into the bark, calling me, scared to speak—to give herself away. I imagined the danger of that place, twenty years earlier, getting closer.

I knew I was overreacting. Seeing the danger in the hypotheticals instead of the reality. But I couldn’t stop the spiral. Instead, I was seeing everything I couldn’t stop. Everything I should’ve told her. Every secret of that place.

It was a four-hour drive through the mountains in the dead of night. I knew what would probably happen. I’d get a text an hour in that said: Oops, sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.

Or: Why are you calling me at 3 a.m., Mom?

I knew these things were the most likely scenarios. But I was also calculating the hours of space between us.

My parents’ house sat empty a few blocks from campus, and I knew exactly where the spare key was.

Delilah would never have to know that I’d panicked, driving through the night, if I was wrong.