Page 23 of You Belong Here

There had to have been a car—we all knew that.

Someone had picked her up and smuggled her out of town after her trail in the snow ended.

There must’ve been a call she made from the dorm, or from a phone somewhere else in town.

There had to be someone who’d agreed to come and get her out, shuttle her away, help her start over—while the rest of us were still out searching.

Even I knew there were some things you couldn’t do alone.

I kept pacing the room, wondering where to go next—find Violet, get ahold of Bryce? I couldn’t think straight, shaken by the knowledge that someone else had been in this room.

The attic door had been slightly ajar when I’d come upstairs. And suddenly I wondered if someone else had been in here, waiting—watching.

The access point to the unfinished space up here was one of the quirks of this house, with a narrow door cut into the wall beside the bathroom sink.

When I was young, I’d keep an eye on it from my spot behind the shower curtain, its presence unnerving.

There was no lock, and I used to imagine someone on the other side, waiting to emerge.

Once, a bat had gotten trapped in the attic space on the other side of my bedroom, desperate to escape. Scratching at the walls, flapping against the ceiling. The sound had haunted me long after the bat had been captured and freed.

When I was a teenager, I used the attic space to store anything I didn’t want my parents to see: the bag with my fake ID, a collection of empty bottles after a party until I could sneak them out on recycling day.

From inside, I could hear everything below: my mother emptying the dishwasher in the kitchen; my father on the phone in his office; the noise of the television carrying from the living room.

Now I pushed open the narrow door to the attic and felt a warm gust of air from inside. I stepped into the darkness and got a whiff of staleness—a stronger scent than downstairs now that I was closer to the bones of the house.

I used the light on my phone to illuminate the space, looking for any evidence that someone else had been inside.

It was obvious my parents had used it for storage since I’d moved out.

File boxes now lined the near wall, lids closed, labeled by time.

The first said: ’ 80s–’90s . I tipped the lid and saw a collection of baby books, report cards in manila envelopes, school artwork.

The next box was labeled 2000s . My college years.

When I opened it, a pile of old photos were scattered on top from my parents’ various trips and house gatherings.

Things that hadn’t made it into an album.

I shifted aside the top layer of photos, and there I was, in the backyard during their annual Labor Day barbecue.

There was a mixture of faculty and friends milling about and, in the lawn chair beside mine, Adalyn.

She sat with her feet up on a folding table, knees bent, head tilted toward me, peace sign thrown up at the camera.

Even in jean shorts at a backyard barbecue, she wore pearls layered over a ribbed tank.

A reminder of who she was, lest anyone forget.

Since my freshman year, my parents had grown accustomed to her presence at our home.

My mother tolerated her but didn’t quite take to her—as if she were holding space for Maggie’s return.

My father was ambivalent, like he was with most of my friends—as if he knew everything from that period of my life was just a precursor; that none of this was permanent.

But Adalyn took strongly to them.

Adalyn even took my mother’s class, told me it was her favorite, that my mother was a genius, though wondered aloud whether she had just managed to hypnotize the class.

She fawned over my mother at the dinner table, asked her about her research, her papers, like she was trying to crack the surface of her in a way my mother wasn’t accustomed to—most students never dared to get so familiar.

It made me smile. Made me feel I had an ally—a second line of defense.

But after the fire, my mother would tell people: That girl was always a problem. Grew up being handed everything she ever wanted. And still always looking for something more…

In her professional and personal opinion, as both Adalyn’s professor and the mother of her best friend, she was a dangerous narcissist.

I didn’t know if I agreed. I thought Adalyn was provocative, yes, but for a different reason: She didn’t want to be in this small mountain town.

She had no interest in college, or dorms, or a degree.

She wanted to travel the world, maybe document her trips, write a guide.

But I was drawn to the very thing that made my mother wary—Adalyn was exciting.

Someone who raised the stakes in any room.

In another generation, I thought later, she would’ve made a great travel influencer, posting aspirational photos, seeing what she could convince people to give her for free.

She was at Wyatt College only in a financial agreement with her parents. Perhaps I should have asked more questions about this contingency and what had inspired it. But she’d told me that the very first day we met. Everything I knew of her grew from this place.

And when she circled my bedroom, dragged her fingers along the wall and whispered, Like looking straight into the heart of you —it felt like that was something she’d been searching for all along.

I dropped the photos back in the box, closed the lid. Left the past to the past, where it belonged.

I shone the light around the rest of the attic space. There was a pile of old blankets in the far corner, in need of disposal. My parents were lucky another animal hadn’t taken up residence.

And beside the discarded linens, another set of boxes, unlabeled, stacked into a careful pyramid. One of the upper boxes was missing a lid, so I could see delicate objects cushioned with newspaper and bubble wrap.

These must’ve been the valuables my parents had decided needed to be hidden away for safekeeping. There was no sign someone else had disturbed the space.

I stepped backward, toward the entrance. And then I froze.

A sound from somewhere below.

A creaking door. The thud of it latching shut. I tried to orient myself: the back of the house.

Someone coming in the back door? Someone who had a key. Delilah—

I stepped once, then paused, not wanting to spook her any more than she already might be. I imagined her perspective: Someone upstairs, in an empty house, where there was writing on the wall —

I listened, waiting for her to move deeper into the house.

There were a lot of things that I knew by heart: The way she could float through a room, light on her toes, like she was in the middle of a performance. Or the quick flutter of her steps upstairs when I called her name, late for school.

Which was why a chill washed over me, standing in the warm and stagnant attic space.

The footsteps below kept moving through the house, but they were slow, deliberate. Heavier than I thought hers should be.

Or maybe it was the acoustics up here, distorting everything.

A cabinet door fell shut—the kitchen, then. More footsteps, crossing the room.

I’d left my bag out on the kitchen table. Delilah would recognize it. She’d know it was mine. She’d know I was here .

The footsteps paused. Whoever was down there did not call out to me. Not Delilah.

Someone else was downstairs. Someone who had a key, who’d let themselves into my parents’ house. Who’d written threatening messages along the perimeter of my bedroom wall.

And I’d cornered myself inside the attic.

I held my breath, terrified to make a sound. Waiting for the inevitable moment when the footsteps started upstairs, looking for me.

But they didn’t. They slowly retreated, moving with the same deliberate speed, until they were at the back of the house again. Another creaking door. A thud as the door latched shut.

It took me a handful of seconds to rush out of the attic, back to my room, where I strained at the window to see down into the backyard. But all I could see was the gate hanging slightly ajar, and the mountains rising up in the distance beyond.

I hurried down the steps, threw open the front door, racing into the middle of the street, looking up and down the stretch of pavement, searching for any sign of movement. Someone slipping into one of the cars parked along the curb, maybe. Or someone cutting through another yard.

Nothing.

And then, at the very end of the street, I saw a figure. Someone standing at the intersection of College Lane, facing the empty, gaping plot.

Half a block away, and I knew him by the hair blowing over his shoulders. By the way he tilted his head and then turned slowly, as if he could sense me.

Cliff Simmons stared back, waiting for me.