Page 68 of Still Missing You

“That’s the interesting part.” He taps the screen, and a video file opens. Images of Coldwater fill the screen—flashes of the snowy woods around the town, the faded, decaying downtown, and the dull gray inn where Linc and I sit right now. Then Matthew starts to speak.

“My mother and her husband vanished when I was still a small child.” His voice-over continues as still images of his mother flit across the screen. “I was so young; if not for photos, I’m not sure I would remember her today. She and my stepfather had gone on a weekend getaway together; they’d rented a beach cabin and left me with family.” A wedding image of his mother and stepfather lights up the screen, and my gaze narrows. The groom looks familiar.

My stomach drops.

It’s him. “They never reached the cabin, and no one saw either of them again.”

“There were theories, of course.” Newspaper articles from around the time of the disappearance, the same ones I’d already read, flash across the screen. “Some people thought they’d been in an accident, or that they ran into someone dangerous, or that they’d run off together, but most people believed they’re both dead. I believed they were dead. I guess that’s why I was shocked to discover my stepfather running a country inn in Coldwater, Vermont.”

The image changes again to a video of Jim out front of the inn shoveling snow from the walk under a hard winter sun. My stomach drops. Cold floods my limbs. The groom is Jim.

I stop the recording and scroll back to the wedding picture. It’s him.

“Holy shit,” I whisper and let the recording play again. Matthew keeps talking. Matthew, who is probably already dead.

“Friends of his stayed at the inn last year,” Linc says. “They took a selfie, posted it online. Jim was in the background, and Matthew recognized him from family photos.” When I just stare, Linc shrugs. “What? I watched ahead.”

“Is it a coincidence? Who is Jim Ellis? What really happened to my mother?” Matthew says on the recording, “And what happened to the men who vanished inexplicably from the area?”

The recording ends, and silence falls over the cluttered parlor. A chill crawls up my spine.

“Jesus,” I murmur. Could Jim have killed Matthew? Killed the men who have vanished from Coldwater for over a decade?

Where is he now? Where is Dylan? Pissed at me or not, he should have been back by now.

Linc points at the screen. “There’s another clip where he theorizes this guy killed his mother, then started over as a schoolteacher.”

“Hold on,” I tell him, grabbing my phone. It’s charged enough for me to check on voicemail notifications and text messages. There are none, and my stomach sinks a little. I dial Dylan’s number again and press my phone to my ear, but the call goes directly to his voicemail.

“Shit,” I whisper, before ending the call. “Something’s wrong.”

Linc leans forward. “That’s putting it mildly. The kid must have confronted him, don’t you think?”

“Maybe,” I say. It tracks, after all. Matthew believed Jim was his stepfather. Believed he murdered his mother. Believed he faked his death to start over. And Matthew came to Coldwater to prove it. “Or Jim figured out what he was doing.” Then Matthew hides his footage and runs. He meets Dylan, works at the café while he plans his next move, but Jim finds him first.

The break-in at our room flashes through my mind. The stolen camera bag. Jim insisted he hadn’t heard or seen anyone.

“Son of a bitch,” I mutter.

“What?” Linc asks.

“Jim broke into our room,” I say. “He must’ve known what Matthew had been doing and worried what kind of proof he had.” And now he wants to know what kind of proof Dylan and I had found.

The pieces start sliding into place.

Matthew comes to town. Starts asking questions. Digging into old records. Maybe even confronting Jim. Jim realizes the past he buried is about to explode. So he shuts Matthew up.

My chest tightens.

“He killed him,” I say.

“Looks that way,” Linc agrees.

“And he tried to get the footage back from us. He did get it. He just doesn’t know I already sent it to you.”

Linc nods slowly. “Which means we should probably not be in this inn.”

“Yeah,” I say grimly.