Page 22 of You Belong Here

Someone had been in my room. Someone who was not Delilah . And they had written on the walls—a threat, that they were watching.

Was it a message for me? A warning? Or was it something meant just for my daughter?

The message was spread across the three walls visible from the bed where she must’ve slept. It had been addressed directly to her:

Hey there, Delilah

I can still see you

Did you think you could hide?

A wave of nausea rolled through me, and a sound escaped my throat.

I felt sick, fury rising to the surface.

Someone had targeted her, taunted her, haunted her.

Had they chased her out of her dorm room, followed her back to this place—determined to let her know she wasn’t safe even here, in her family’s home?

The people who grew up in Wyatt Valley would know that this was a likely place for her to go.

Please, I can’t go back—

It was the mantra in my head when I learned she’d been accepted here.

I had always feared it wasn’t safe for me to return.

I had fallen under suspicion of knowing more than I did about Adalyn: what she’d planned, where she’d gone, and how she’d gotten away.

The memory of the crime may have been lost for the students, but the fractures in the town ran deep.

They thought I was protecting her, saw me as a traitor.

Like I had picked a side and chosen wrong.

But it had never occurred to me that, in my absence, they would target my daughter instead. My parents had continued to live here for the last twenty years without any issues.

What could have driven her here? Where would she go next?

How scared she must’ve been, reading that message on the wall. Why hadn’t she told me?

In all our calls, she’d never given me any indication that there was something seriously amiss—nothing that seemed beyond the normal issues of rooming with someone else for the first time, keeping her own schedule, trying to make new friends.

Her Instagram feed had become annoyingly sparse over the last month.

I’d thought it was just a sign of her busy schedule or shifting priorities.

She used to post photos to her page from her theater shows, dressed up with friends.

Over the summer, there’d been a photo dump from her graduation party; another from our summer backpacking trip.

I could always pick up on small things she didn’t say directly in what she chose to show.

But nothing new had been posted since last month, when she’d shared a picture of the mountain ridge in the distance, peaks disappearing into the clouds. The caption read, succinctly: Here.

It was a view I knew she could’ve seen only off campus, standing at the entrance to town, on the crest of a familiar road, near Maggie’s house. It was the view I’d once mapped out and tattooed onto my own wrist.

My breath had caught in my throat at first, seeing that same picture on her page. But then I’d thought: Good. She’s exploring. She’s getting out there, discovering her world. Finding her place.

It hadn’t occurred to me that she had been escaping something instead.

I could feel the presence of her now—eating breakfast downstairs, sleeping in this bed, hiding from something—and wondered if the scent I’d noticed first was not the staleness from the bones of the house but a lingering fear.

For whatever reason, she hadn’t told me. And she hadn’t reached out to Maggie.

There was only one other adult I could think of whom she’d be in contact with.

I sent her father a text, hand trembling, trying not to panic him. Trevor, when was the last time you talked to Delilah?

I was trying to be vague, hoping for nonchalance. It was just after ten a.m. on a Saturday, and he might be sleeping. I was no longer privy to the details of his private life.

There was a time when Delilah used to tell me things after her visits in D.C.

When she’d mentioned someone else hanging around with them, I’d asked him about it point-blank.

I wanted to know whom my daughter was spending time with.

He’d said, Her name is Raya. She’s a preschool teacher .

But by the next year, it was a new woman—this time Kelly, a kindergarten teacher.

I asked if it was on purpose, a trend. Aging up his girlfriends’ careers to match Delilah’s grade.

I’d meant it as a joke, but he’d said he needed to be sure whomever he brought home loved kids, and this seemed the safest bet.

I’d laughed, told him the safest bet was just to find someone who loved him, and the rest would follow—Delilah was an extension of him after all.

He’d gotten engaged to the second one—the kindergarten teacher, Kelly.

He’d even asked me if Delilah could be the flower girl.

But they’d broken it off before we bought a dress.

Delilah was too young then to share any insights as to what had happened, and there were lines I wouldn’t cross on my own.

I stared at my phone, waiting for an answer. But my message was still sending—stuck in limbo. Just like when I’d arrived in August and my mother had chastised us about our communication methods: You have to call .

I’d thought it was partly because my mother, from a different generation, just preferred phone conversations. She had a joint email account, for the love of God. But it was also a matter of practicality here in the valley, especially with their Internet service currently disconnected.

My finger hovered over his contact. Trevor Dayton. I placed the call, pacing the tiny square of my old bedroom. The phone rang three times—I imagined him sleeping, in bed with someone else, disoriented by my name on the display.

“Hello?” he answered, sounding out of breath—but also unusually close.

“Hi, sorry, am I interrupting something?” I asked.

“No, I’m just running. I was, anyway.” I heard a car in the distance, imagined him at the edge of a sidewalk, standing on a city corner, pacing. And then: “Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” I said. “I was just wondering if you’d talked to Delilah recently.”

He didn’t speak at first. I heard the cars moving in the background in a steady rhythm, the honk of a horn. And then he sighed. “She texted me last week,” he said. “Asking if I could Venmo her some cash. I guess she was having problems with her bank account?”

He left the question hanging. Waiting for me to answer—to provide some insight.

“I didn’t know that,” I said, my stomach dropping. “How much?”

“I sent five hundred. Should I not have?” he asked. “I’m sorry, she just so rarely asks me for anything…”

But I was trying to understand what he was saying.

Delilah had needed money, and she hadn’t told me.

She had saved a lot over the last few years of working at our local community theater during the summers.

There were ATMs around town if she needed cash.

If she was short on funds, she could’ve asked.

But she’d gone to her father instead.

“Beckett?” Trevor said, and I realized I hadn’t responded. “What’s going on?”

Like he could read it in my silence. Feel something simmering through the open line of the phone. Something coming for him, too.

“I got a dropped call from her last night,” I said. “I couldn’t reach her after, and I panicked. Drove straight up here.” I tried to laugh it off, waited for him to tell me I was being ridiculous. Or imply something like my mother would, that I just couldn’t let go.

“Okay,” he said, voice rising slightly, waiting for the punch line.

I stared at the thick black lettering on the wall. The implicit threat of the words. The danger I could feel, pulsing through the room.

“Something’s off here,” I began. “I don’t know, I might be panicking for nothing…”

“Beckett, tell me.” His voice was so close, like the phone was pressed to his face in a white-knuckle grip.

I sucked in a breath. “I can’t reach her. I can’t find her, Trevor.” My throat was tight, and then I spoke the four words I swore I’d never say to him. “I need your help.”

I knew as the words left my mouth that I’d made it real. Taken an abstract idea and turned it solid, brought it to life with my words alone, like I’d once thought possible. All it took was a singular fear, a desperate plea.

Delilah was missing. Someone had been inside this house. And now Trevor was coming.

Maybe she was spooked and hiding. Maybe she’d asked Trevor for cash so she could disappear for a bit. Without a credit card trail. Without a phone.

Maybe she had been calling to tell me, had meant to leave a message but gotten caught up in the night.

It used to be easier to disappear, to go completely off the grid.

Adalyn Vale had done it twenty years earlier.

Back then Facebook was in its infancy; we didn’t even know the word for social media.

It wasn’t prevalent on every campus yet—and definitely not on this one, with a crowd who preferred to shun popular culture.

Back then only a few of us carried phones, and when we did, they were flip-screen, with limited data plans and crappy coverage. It was easy to overlook a missing person as a series of missed connections: notes left on a whiteboard; a dorm landline ringing in an empty room.

Even now I didn’t have Facebook. Used Instagram only as a practical way to keep up with Delilah, with an alias that wouldn’t come up if someone were to search my name.

Had an unlisted address, a decision made mostly for safety.

Chose not to have my own website to advertise.

But I was bound by my relationships. To truly disappear, you had to leave everything.

Adalyn had left behind her entire life. Her bank account; her family. Me.

And the police were convinced she had help.