Page 79 of Hometown Girl

“Told ya.” She slid the door open and led him inside. “It’s a secret room. Isn’t it cool? When I grow up and live here, I’m going to make this my dream room.”

“What would you do with a dream room?”

“I’d dream, you dork.” She had laughed then. “We should get out of here. My parents don’t like it when I play in here.”

He’d looked around and seen nothing important, only boxes, but he’d done as he was told. If Jess’s parents hadn’t wanted them in their secret storage room, he wouldn’t argue.

Now, standing just outside the closet, he wondered if the room was still full of boxes. He knew Harold had obsessed over Jess’s case. There was no sign of that obsession anywhere else in the house, but Drew had a strong suspicion he’d kept it all behind this door.

He switched on the closet light and pushed a hanging row of women’s clothes off to one side, searching for the door Jess had shown him all those years ago.

He found it and slid it open. Inside, a light bulb hung from the ceiling. He pulled the string, and the bulb cast dim yellow light on a wide-planked table built into the wall. Above it, newspaper clippings, articles and random notes were pinned up in haphazard fashion. He recognized so many of the headlines. He’d clipped most of them himself. Unlike Harold, though, he hadn’t put them on display. Instead, he’d shoved them inside a notebook, which he’d stuffed underneath his mattress, then tried to forget about.

He’d done a good job for the most part, especially once Harold’s notes had stopped coming.

But that notebook had found its way to Fairwind with him. He hid it underneath the seat in his truck, not ready to face the fact that maybe this case had the power to unravel him the way it had unraveled Harold.

What if the two of them weren’t all that different, both one newspaper clipping away from crazy?

On the wall, he saw his own name scribbled on a piece of paper, circled with a question mark beside it. Drew took the pin out of the paper, wadded it up and stuffed it in his pocket. Then, he surveyed the board, begging a God he hadn’t talked to in years to give him the miracle of a memory.

But nothing came.

He read familiar headlines on yellowed newsprint, reliving the dreadful days following Jess’s disappearance. He hadn’t been able to speak since he’d woken up on the ground in that barn, bleeding and disoriented. But he could hear the conversation in the next room.

When Drew hadn’t been able to provide them with a single clue, one of the officers coldly suggested, “Maybe the kid was in on it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” someone else said. “He’s a kid.”

“With a huge gash on the back of his head,” said another. “What do you think, he somehow sliced his own head open with a shovel?”

There was a pause before the first officer spoke again. “Maybe he agreed to lure the girl into the barn. Maybe he didn’t know it would get out of hand.”

“That’s insane,” his mother said. “Drew would never, ever do anything to hurt Jess or anyone else.”

Another pause.

“Sonya, you can’t believe this.” His mom sounded afraid. Drew remembered because he wasn’t used to hearing fear in his mother’s voice. “You know Drew.”

“Of course not,” Jess’s mom said. “Of course he wouldn’t.”

The next morning, his parents packed up their things and left Fairwind Farm.

He didn’t say a word the whole way home. So began his pattern of speaking only when he had something to say. And that wasn’t very often. Regret twisted its way into his belly. They had all been counting on him, and he’d let them down.

Harold and Sonya Pendergast had died without an ounce of closure—no closer to finding out what had happened to their daughter than the day she’d gone missing. What made Drew think he was entitled to something they’d never had? He’d been running from that day since he was ten years old; like a soldier gone AWOL, he’d abandoned his post.

And he hated himself for it.

He sat at the little table in the hidden room, poring over the clippings, rereading every article and Harold’s handwritten notes in the margins. He picked up a small photo of Jess, running his finger over the frozen image of her face. She’d tucked a flower behind her ear, and her smile was so full of life. What kind of dreams would she have whispered in the quiet of this room?

“I let you down, Jess,” he said quietly. “I won’t do that again.”

She hadn’t gotten to see a single one of her dreams come true, and someone should pay for that. He should make sure someone paid for that. If it meant spending every night in the little room and every day reliving her disappearance from the old barn, then so be it. Otherwise, it wasn’t right that he was here, playing house in the very place Jess should be living. He didn’t get to think about his future—it wasn’t fair to her.

It had to stop. He had to remember so he could move on with his life. And while he knew he’d never forgive himself, it was time to take action.

He wouldn’t be a coward anymore.

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