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I couldn’t look at her things too closely. Everything on her dresser was so her. A speaker for music on the thrift shop dresser. A tray full of colorful but cheap jewelry that she could add to any outfit. A Hello Kitty sweatshirt tossed haphazardly onto the end of the neatly made bed. Eve picked it up and clutched it to her chest.
I went to Fawn’s built-in closet and smiled at the array of pretty dresses. It didn’t even matter which one I picked. They were all adorable and would be perfect for Zeph’s family party. I rifled through each one, trying to remember Fawn’s face and her smile and her voice when I’d last seen her wearing each item.
I hated that her voice in my head was starting to fade. I dug my fingers into a yellow-and-pink sundress and forced myself to think harder, but it didn’t help. I took the dress out, hanger and all, and laid it out on the bed.
Eve glanced over at it. “That’s a good choice. She had shoes that match. You should get those too.”
I nodded numbly, squatting to retrieve the cork heels that had a pale-pink and yellow stripe painted across the wedge. I pulled each shoe out, gathering them into my arms, brushing off a bit of dust that had collected. Behind them sat a shoebox covered in cut-up photos, and I smiled, recognizing a younger version of Fawn in a lot of them.
“Look at this,” I called to Eve. I straightened with the box clutched in one hand, the shoes in my other. “Check out baby Fawn with dark hair.”
I passed the keepsake box over to Eve, and she grinned down at it, turning it over to see each of the glued-on images. “She was so cute. The dark suited her. I actually like it better than the blond.”
I did too. Eve perched on the edge of Fawn’s mattress, and I sat beside her as the toilet flushed across the hall.
“Augie! Come look at these,” Eve called to him.
He leaned on the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest. His eyes were red-rimmed and glassy, but neither Eve nor I mentioned it. She lifted the lid on the box and took out the photo on top.
I snatched it from her fingers. “Oh my, who is that?”
Eve peered at the photo with me. “Did she ever tell you she had a brother? That’s gotta be a brother, right? He’s so much like her.”
“If he’s her brother she’s been holding out on us. He’s hot.” I pointed to the other woman in the picture. “This must be a sister, then.”
Eve shrugged. “Or cousins, I suppose. She never told me about her siblings. Just that she wasn’t in contact with her family and wanted it keep it that way.”
In typical Augie fashion, he snatched the photo from my fingers without asking. I rolled my eyes but bit my tongue from commenting on his manners. Or lack thereof.
He glanced down at the photo, tracing a finger over a younger Fawn’s image, and then his head jerked up, his eyes wide.
Eve reached for the old photo. “What? What is it?”
He turned it around, pointing at the woman standing beside Fawn. At the time, she was several inches taller than Fawn, with a womanly look about her in comparison to Fawn’s gangly mid-teen self. The woman could have been mid-twenties, with the man at maybe twenty-one or twenty-two.
Augie’s finger trembled slightly. “I know her.”
I leaned in and stared at the photo again. The woman did seem familiar, but I was sure I’d never met her before. “Are you sure? She looks an awful lot like Fawn. Maybe that’s why.”
“I saw her on the subway, just the other day. I literally sat next to her. Fuck! We even talked about Fawn.” Augie tugged at his hair. “What does that mean? She never said anything about knowing her. Just let me go on and on about her being missing.”
A rising sense of dread crept up my spine. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m fucking sure, Lyric! You can see how much she’s like Fawn! I chased her through the fucking subway because I thought shewasher.”
“There’s a lot of people on the subway, Aug,” Eve said gently. “And you’re grieving—”
“It was her,” he growled.
Eve held her hands up in mock surrender. “Okay, okay. So, what? Are we assuming this woman is her sister? Her aunt? A cousin?”
I swallowed thickly, the uncomfortable feeling refusing to subside. “I don’t know, but if Fawn was running from her family, the fact they’re here in Saint View can’t be for anything good.”
25
LYRIC
Zeph’s parents’ place was in the richest part of Providence, where the houses had long, winding driveways, perfectly tended-to gardens, and expensive cars parked in the drive. I stared out the window as we pulled up behind a sleek silver Tesla and then gawked up at the house. “You grew up here?”
