Page 52 of Home Is Where the Bodies Are

“Why else would Mom keep these?” I glance up at my younger brother but he’s not looking back, so I direct my attention to my sister. “What do you think, Beth?”

She’s seated beside me, biting her thumbnail down to a nub, staring at the cut-up newspapers from decades before. She looks dazed, and I’m not sure she’s even reading them.

“Christie ran away, or at least that’s what everyone thought,” she explains. “I don’t know, maybe Mom was paranoid and believed Dad had something to do with it.”

“Beth’s probably right,” Michael says.

“Or maybe Mom knew something no one else did.” I tilt my head.

“Or she was paranoid, like Beth said. I mean she helped Dad get rid of Emma’s body. She couldn’t have been the same after that.” Michael raises a brow.

“She wasn’t,” Beth says.

“How would you know?” I ask.

She lets out a sigh. “I watched another tape, one from November 1999. It was different from the others.”

Michael’s brows shove together. “How was it different?”

“Just the way she filmed it. It was like she was analyzing us, not capturing a family memory.”

“Like she was paranoid,” he says, and I can’t tell if it’s a question or not.

I get what Beth’s saying. I noticed it too in Mom’s journals. Her point of view changed after Emma’s disappearance. She was removed, writing aboutafamily rather than aboutherfamily, like a scientist watching lab rats try to navigate through a maze.

“Or like she knew more than anyone else,” I argue.

“So, you think because Mom kept these newspaper clippings”—Michael gestures to the floor—“and because she filmed us differently, that means Dad had something to do with Christie’s disappearance?”

“I’m not saying he did. I’m just saying Mom changed after Emma went missing, and the tapes she filmed after the fact are proof of that,” Beth says.

“And Mom also kept everything on Emma Harper, and we know they had something to do with her death,” I argue.

“You both really want to destroy Mom and Dad’s memory, don’t you?”

Beth folds her arms in front of her chest. “No, Michael. We just want to know what happened.”

The truth won’t change anything, but that doesn’t mean it should never be exposed.

“And we agreed if we found something, we’d tell someone,” I say.

When neither of us speak, Michael takes a closer look at the newspaper clippings detailing Christie Roberts’s disappearance, carefully scanning over each one.

“The police said Christie was a runaway. It says so right here.” He points to one of the articles.

“It says theythoughtshe was.”

“Well, they must have had a solid reason to think that,” Michael says.

“Yeah, probably because of her parents. I would have run away, too, if I were her.” Beth shrugs.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

Beth stares off, as though she’s bringing up memories that had been stored away in the deepest corners of her brain. “Christie’s parents were strange. They were overbearing, kept her sheltered, didn’t let her go to school or anything. She was my age but always seemed much younger. I remember it being difficult to just talk to her. She took more than a beat to respond to anything, and she’d stare at you with those enormous brown eyes. It was unnerving because you couldn’t tell what she was thinking.”

I raise a brow. “But weren’t you friends with her?”

“No, not really.” Beth shakes her head. “Christie wanted to be my friend. I think she wanted any friend. She’d show up at our house and ask to hang out, or sometimes follow me when I was on a run. Mom told me to be nice to her, so I always was, but I didn’t go out of my way to be her friend.” She looks down guiltily at her lap and fiddles with her fingers.

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