He convinced her to stay the summer instead of returning home. He got her a job in the English Department, filing and doing data input. Oddly, he chose instead to travel throughout Europe that summer and do research for his new novel. But he emailed her every few days, telling her how much he looked forward to seeing her in his class come fall. She remembered how the tone of their exchanges changed that summer, despite the fact that they barely saw each other. It thrilled her to see him when school started up in September, although it also made her slightly uncomfortable.
He encouraged her to take his Advanced Fiction seminar and looked magnificent when he showed up to that first class. Five other students sat around the conference table, all of them seniors, and it was obvious she was way out of her league. Besides, her major was theater arts, not creative writing. Tanned and relaxed, the professor smiled warmly at her when she took a seat across from him.
He asked her out for coffee afterward, and she felt thrilled by the invitation. They ate fancy French pastries, sipped espressos, and she mostly listened to him talk about his adventures in Europe. He lived nearby and wanted to show her some of the things he’d purchased while traveling. She thought it a bit odd at the time, but the way he looked at her made her feel like the most important girl in the world.
Back at his apartment, he gave her a gift, a brown leather jacket purchased in Florence. She protested, claiming that the jacket was way too expensive and that she could not possibly accept such a beautiful gift. But he insisted. Then he asked if she’d try it on for him. He spun her around so that she faced the mirror hanging on his closet door. She had to admit that the jacket looked amazing on her. Suddenly she felt his arms wrapping around her waist.
Isla snapped out of the memory and returned to reality. Why had she just been thinking about that pretentious jerk? She stood and walked over to the desk. Turned on the laptop and punched in Katie’s password. She had put it to memory one night when she had to borrow Katie’s laptop to print out some emergency medical instructions for Raisin. Thankfully, Katie had never thought to reset it.
Whether this would help her or not, she didn’t know. She clicked on an icon, and photographs filled the screen. She started at the beginning of last year and began scrolling through them. Many of the photographs consisted of Katie and Drew, and Katie and Raisin. But then the nearer to the present she scrolled, the more photos she saw of Katie and Willow. At theater practice. The two of them posing after rehearsal, their legs kicked out like those of the Rockettes. The two of them relaxing together backstage. Katie was a pretty girl, but what struck Isla was how beautiful Willow photographed. She could be a fashion model for Vogue. She envisioned Willow posing some day for a Gap commercial or for a Victoria’s Secret ad. Or possibly being on a big screen high up on a building in Times Square.
She scrolled through more of the photos, until she came upon one with Katie and a boy. He stood much taller than her and was very good looking, with strong white teeth and a scruffy beard. His blond hair was swept back until it swirled into a man bun over his crown. He was dressed in casual hipster garb, the kind of fashion one might see young men wearing in LA or Brooklyn. In another photo, he wore a mustard-colored knitted beanie cap. One photo was of all three of them standing arm in arm. In another the boy had his long arms wrapped around the girls’ shoulders. In the next photo he could be seen kissing Willow’s cheek while looking into the camera. In the next he posed while kissing Katie—again looking into the camera.
Katie looked different to her in these most recent photos. It took her a few seconds to realize why. It was because she wore a good deal of makeup in them. And not just makeup that most girls her age wore. It was as if someone with advanced cosmetic knowledge had done her up for a glamorous photo shoot. Dramatic lashes. Heavy pink shade over the eyelids. Rouged cheeks and vampiric lips. In the wrong hands, this makeup would have made her look terrible. But Isla had to admit that Katie looked amazing. Looking as she did in these photos, she, too, could pose for Allure or Seventeen. Of course, since she was five-three, modeling appeared out of the question for Katie.
It became obvious to Isla that Willow Briggs had a powerful hold over her daughter. Possibly more so than she even realized. Willow had changed her daughter from an innocent town girl into someone more cosmopolitan and worldly. It wouldn’t be so unnerving if this transition had happened later in life, but she didn’t want her sweet young daughter corrupted in high school. There’d be plenty of time for that later. She cursed herself for not being a more attentive mother. Maybe she should have put her foot down when it came to Katie hanging out with Willow Briggs.
Something else came to her, and it filled her with dread. Had Katie been dating that boy in the photos? And yet Katie had a longtime boyfriend. As she looked back on things, it seemed easy to imagine Willow being sexually active. She tried to give Willow the benefit of the doubt and not to judge, but the thought of these girls having sex so young haunted her.
Her father, Gil Briggs, had been filming them for his reality pilot, Shepherd’s Bay, and Willow would no doubt be the star of the show. The camera would love her, and she’d love it back. Isla remembered a show called Laguna Beach a few years back, about a clique of beautiful, rich teens fighting with one another, behaving badly, and sleeping around. The show had been a huge ratings success. Could Shepherd’s Bay have that same potential? Would it be trashy and addictive, and set in a coastal Maine town?
Then another thought came to her, and it momentarily lifted her spirits. Maybe this entire ordeal—the two girls having gone missing—had been staged to create drama for the show. And maybe this drama would help it get picked up by a major network. Yes, that was probably what had happened, and Katie had to be in on the plan. It had to be the reason why the girls had not yet contacted anyone.
Isla turned on her daughter’s printer, prayed that there was some ink left in it—she could hardly afford a new ink cartridge right now, and the nearest office supply store was thirty miles from town—and printed out two pictures of the boy. Then she waited for the sheets to inch their way out. She had to discover the identity of the boy in these photos. Maybe he was the key to finding the girls.
KARL
THE CHIEF ORDERED HIM TO GO HOME AND SLEEP, AND HE DIDN’T argue. All the caffeine in his system had been making him more tired than he actually was, if that was possible. So he surrendered to exhaustion and went back to his small apartment.
Where he collapsed in his bed and tossed.
And turned.
And thought about the missing James boy and now the two missing girls.
Then he turned and thought about Sofia and their years together, before she returned to her hometown of San Diego. She had never found comfort in the cold climes of Maine. And truthfully, they had married too early and had never been right for one another. Sofia had blamed him when their daughter chose to attend a small private college in Maine instead of one of the state universities in California. By that time their divorce had been finalized and she’d moved back to San Diego. But Amber’s decision to go to Colby had had nothing to do with being closer to him. She’d traveled the farthest distance possible from San Diego and her mother, but in the process, she’d gotten farther away from both of her parents than ever. Since Sofia had no money, except for the pittance alimony she received from him each month, he ended up paying Colby what he could, which wasn’t much. The remainder Amber had to make up with financial aid and school loans, and because of this, and his financial shortcomings, she seemed to resent him.