Page 103 of People Like Us

I swallowed. Because everyone in Woodland blamed themselves for the dead girls eventually.

“They sent her to the camp where she was murdered.”

“That’s awful,” he said quietly. “Were you friends with her?”

I shook my head. “We went to the same church, but I didn’t know her that well. Emily did.”

He turned toward me slightly. “Wait. You mean the camp Emily—”

“Yes.” I cut him off before he could say the rest.

His mouth closed immediately. “Oh.” Then after a second, another: “Oh.”

That second one carried the full weight of realization. I could practically feel the pieces clicking together in his head. He’d never pushed me much about it. About any of it, really. My husband had always possessed the rare ability to recognize when someone was carrying something fragile and jagged inside themselves.

He rested his arm back against the window. “Do you think you’ll go see Emily while we’re here?”

Cornfields blurred endlessly around us. I kept my eyes on the road.

“It’s a few hours away from Woodland.”

“Yeah,” he said gently. “But she’s your best friend. And it’s not like she can come to us,” he added carefully. “If you want to take a day, I don’t mind sightseeing with Mrs. Hayward.”

I gripped the wheel tighter. “I’ll think about it.” He nodded like that was enough.

The tiny town finally appeared almost without warning. A tiny scattering of buildings interrupted the sea of cornfields, most of them looking smaller than I remembered. I barked out a startled laugh.

“What?” my husband asked.

“There’s a Dollar General now.”

The bright yellow sign sat obnoxiously against the rural backdrop like someone had pasted modern civilization onto the edge of nowhere. And beside it—

“No fucking way,” I muttered. A BP gas station.

My husband laughed softly. “Looks like Woodland joined society while you were gone.”

“Barely.” But something loosened in me at the sight of it. Some tiny irrational comfort in knowing the town had changed at least a little. That it hadn’t sat perfectly preserved all these years waiting for me to return to it.

Mrs. Hayward’s house appeared at the end of a gravel drive lined with drooping willow trees. My chest tightened all over again.

The white paint looked fresher than I remembered. The porch had new railings. Wind chimes clinked softly beneath the awning. And standing outside waiting for us was Mrs. Hayward herself. She waved both arms the second she saw the car.

“Oh thank God,” I whispered, laughing under my breath as I parked. “She’s exactly the same.”

Mrs. Hayward hurried down the porch steps before I’d even gotten the engine off, her floral skirt whipping around her ankles in the wind. Beside her stood a tall gray-haired man I vaguely recognized from Christmas cards and Facebook photos.

Her boyfriend, Greg. The realization still felt strange.

Mr. Hayward had died in 2020 during the pandemic. A cruel lonely death in a hospital room none of us had been allowed into. I’d been eight months pregnant at the time, terrified and swollen and trapped halfway across the country while the funeral happened without me.

The second I stepped out of the car, Mrs. Hayward crushed me into her arms. “Oh sweetheart,” she breathed. “Look at you.” Her boney fingers cupped my face, as she stared bright eyed and cheery at me for a long second.

Then she was opening the backdoor. “And this must be my grandbaby.”

Before I could protest, she’d already lifted my sleepy son into her arms like he truly belonged to her. He blinked at her with heavy confused eyes while she kissed his forehead repeatedly.

“Well hello there, handsome.”