Page 47 of Trapper Road

She throws up her hands, clearly upset. “I don’t know. I can’t think of anything I ever did to her to cause that. She was my best friend — I was closer to her than I was with Mandy.”

“How did you find out?”

She squirms a little and averts her eyes. “I saw some of the texts between the two of them.” Again I can tell she’s holding something back, but I don’t press. I’m not surprised she wouldn’t want to confess to reading her friend’s private texts.

I think about this new information and what it means to the investigation. This isn’t some small, trivial detail; this is big. This could make a difference. “I’m sorry, Willa, but I think you need to tell the cops about this.”

Her expression turns horrified. She grabs at my hand, clutching it. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Isn’t it obvious? If they find out that she and I had a fight the day she disappeared, they might start to consider me a suspect.”

I laugh at the thought of Willa as a suspect. “I doubt that.”

She looks hurt by my response, and I realize she was being serious. She actually thinks she might be considered a suspect. And like an asshole, I completely dismissed her concern.

“Would you be willing to take that risk if it were you? Would you admit to something that could incriminate you?”

I immediately go cold as I remember the details of the shooting that I failed to share with the cops out of fear of how it would reflect on me. But our situations are different. Willa seems like the kind of girl who doesn’t have a violent bone in her body, while I’m the son of a serial killer. She’ll get the benefit of the doubt. I won’t.

“It wouldn’t make you a suspect,” I assure her. “It would turn their sights on someone else — the guy she was texting would become a suspect.”

“That’s why I told them about the car that pulled over when we were walking back into town. The guy inside — he has to be the guy she was texting with, right? So the cops already know about it. They’re already looking for him. Me saying anything about our fight that afternoon won’t help.”

What she’s saying makes some sense, I guess. Still, it doesn’t sit right with me. “Do you know anything more about this guy? Anything that could help the cops find him?”

She shakes her head sadly. “I wish I did. I thought me and Juliette were best friends, but you don’t keep those kinds of secrets from your best friend. Sometimes I think that maybe I didn’t lose her when she drove off in the car with that guy, but long before that when she started keeping secrets from me.”

She sounds so sad that it makes my own chest ache. “I’m sorry,” I tell her.

Her eyes are huge and her expression vulnerable as she looks up at me. She seems even more petite and defenseless in that moment, and I feel an urge to put my arms around her and protect her.

“You don’t think I’m a terrible person, do you?” she asks.

I want laugh at the absurdity of the question, but I don’t, fearful that she’ll take it the wrong way. Instead I tell her the truth. “Never.”

“How can you be so sure?”

I struggle to find a way to explain without giving away too much of my own past. “I don’t think it’s fair to judge someone so completely based on only a subset of their actions.” Like my father, I want to add but don’t. He was a monster. But he was also my dad, and he loved me. Neither of those things can negate the other.

She looks at me for a long moment before smiling. It’s like the sun breaking free of the clouds after a drenching storm. “I think I like you, Connor Proctor from Knoxville, TN with a sister named Lanny and a pilot for a father.”

The declaration causes my head to spin with giddiness. “I think I like you too, Willa Devlin from Gardenia, NC who I know far too little about.”

“Well,” She wraps her arm around mine, turning me to continue our walk in the woods. “Why don’t we rectify that then?”

* * *

I return to the motel more than two hours later after a long meandering stroll through the woods with Willa. We say good-bye in the parking lot, and there’s a moment where I wonder if I should try to kiss her. Before I can make a move, however, she leans close and brushes her lips against my cheek.

The touch is soft and light and over before I barely even register it. She pulls away with a nervous giggle. Then she smiles and gives a wave and without saying a word spins and jogs toward the road, the hem of her dress floating dangerously high around the tops of her thighs.

I want to call after her and ask when I’ll see her again. I don’t even have her cell phone number or have any way to get in contact with her. I realize as she darts out of the parking lot, that I may never see her again. It causes a jittery sort of panic to take root in my stomach.

I almost run after her, but I worry that will be too much — be too aggressive. I have no idea what the right thing to do here is, or what she expects from me. Ultimately I stand frozen in place, watching her disappear.

The only thing I know for sure is that I want to see her again, desperately so. There has to be a way I can make it happen.

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