A small sphere of light appeared out of the blue. Emma spun around to see Ethan, holding a pocket Maglite out in front of him. It was attached to his key ring. He handed it to her. “We should keep the lights off,” he whispered. “We don’t want anyone to see us from the street. I’ll check the living room and Dr. Banerjee’s office. You take her bedroom. Meet back here in five minutes?”
“Okay,” Emma said, leaning up to kiss his cheek. Then she turned and slipped into the hall, sending the flashlight’s beam ahead of her.
Motes of dust swirled in the pale light. The pictures along the hall seemed to leer at her, grotesque in the dark. She flinched as she stepped on a squeaky floorboard, the low squeal sounding as loud as an alarm in the thick silence. What if Garrett chose this moment to rebreak into the house? What if he arrived only to find that she and Ethan had beat him to the punch? She shuddered at the thought of what he might do.
At Nisha’s bedroom door she paused. Even though she’d already searched this room once, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the evidence was here. She knew from her years as a foster kid that the only safe hiding place was somewhere personal, close to you.
Her heart thudding against her ribs, Emma paused in the doorway, sending the orb of light slowly over Nisha’s things but carefully avoiding the window. Everything was just as it had been the last time she visited. Crystalline vials of perfume sat on top of Nisha’s dresser, next to a small collection of tennis trophies. The creased spines of books faced out from the shelf, neat and alphabetized, and the bedspread was smooth and unruffled. Next to the Compaq laptop on the desk lay a DVD case for the BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries—Nisha must have been watching it before she died.
Nothing seemed out of place. Emma hit her fists against her thighs in frustration, her nails digging into her palms. Nisha had found something important—and it was still here. Emma could feel it in her gut. But where would she have hidden something that important?
The thought came to her slowly, like a lens coming gradually into focus. Emma had hidden plenty of things herself—she’d spent her childhood protecting her scant treasures from nosy foster parents and kleptomaniacal roommates. She inhaled sharply. It seemed too much of a long shot, too simple an answer. But it was worth a try. Creeping on the balls of her feet, she pushed the door to Nisha’s bathroom open. A small night-light flashed on from the outlet by the mirror. She knelt down by the cabinet and started opening drawers.
There, in the gloom beneath the sink, was an enormous, Costco-sized carton of Tampax.
She froze, almost afraid to move. Afraid her last decent hope would be quashed. Boxes of tampons had been her go-to hiding place for years. But Nisha couldn’t possibly have had the same secret spot . . . could she?
Slowly, she pulled out the box. Her heart felt still in her chest. She groped inside the carton, past the rows of individual boxes, and at the bottom her fingers closed on something that felt like a tube.
It was a plain manila folder, rolled into a tight spiral and rubber-banded several times. Emma’s head spun as she peeled away the rubber bands and smoothed the folder flat on the ground. Paper-clipped to the outside of the folder was a piece of pink Hello Kitty notepaper. She recognized Nisha’s neat handwriting right away.
Sutton, I’m so sorry. I had a bad feeling about this after we talked, and I had to check. You need to know the truth.
Holding her breath, she flipped the folder open.
On the top page, the words UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA MEDICAL CENTER RECORDS were typed in a large bold font. Under “department” someone had scrawled the word psychiatric in black pen.
When I saw the name written on the form next to PATIENT, it didn’t register at first. The letters were like hieroglyphics, strange and illegible. But then the world snapped into a painful, horrifying clarity.
The name sparked something in my memory, and with a deafening roar began pulling me back to that night in the canyon. And I knew with sickening certainty that finally, finally, I was going to relive the last moments of my life.
29
THE LAST MEMORY
I can’t breathe. The shirt collar digs into my throat, crushing my windpipe. I kick my legs furiously, but already I’m seeing spots, and Garrett is much too strong for me. Far below my feet the wind rushes through the ravine with a lost, lonely howl. Garrett’s face is inches from mine, twisted into a mask of fury that’s almost unrecognizable in the moonlight. I dimly register that my shirt is tearing as he shakes me back and forth. I’m going to die here, in this canyon where I used to go camping with my dad, where Thayer and I stole some of our first kisses, where Laurel and I used to tell ghost stories.
Finally Garrett lets go, and a scream erupts from the depths of my ragged lungs, echoing off the walls of the canyon.
But I don’t fall far.
I land in a heap on the ground, crumpled at Garrett’s feet. Inches behind me I can feel the ravine yawning wide. My heart roars in my ears, adrenaline singing in my blood. I’m alive. My fingers curl through the dirt, raw and stinging. My face feels wet, and I realize that I’m crying.
Garrett looms over me, shuddering violently as if the force of his rage might literally tear him apart. Then he turns his face to me, and it’s as red and tear-streaked as my own. He’s crying, too.
I stare up at him, suddenly unable to move, my heart aching. We stay like this for a few minutes: me sitting motionless on the brink of the cliff, Garrett standing there, bruised and broken by his own anger. And in spite of everything that’s happened, I feel sorry for him.