Page 15 of A Light in the Darkness
“Dastardly.” I say with false accusation, because Elaine looks so guilty over taking a sick girl soup that I can’t meet it with anything other than sarcasm. But she doesn’t rise to my bait, stuck in whatever horror she’s constructed for herself.
“The senator was having a party, and I’d been warned to stay away. I was in the house even though I wasn’t supposed to be, and that’s how I ended up seeing Lauren for the first time in weeks… the first time since her boyfriend left. She was dating Ally’s brother, you see. She was a regular in their house, and even though I didn’t talk to her much, I remember her face… she had an angel’s face.”
I can sense now that something bad must have happened that night, so I’ve abandoned my sarcasm and simply nod to let her know I’m listening. “I took the soup up to Ally while she was in the restroom, and I figured maybe she’d caught the same thing. She was in there so long, and I could hear splashing, crying… like she was throwing up.” Elaine sighs. “And when I asked if she needed anything, she opened the door with a dry face and smiled and told me everything was fine. But I saw the pregnancy test on the counter behind her. I wasn’t close enough to read the results, but I’m sure she was pregnant.”
“She said she was fine, and Ally fell asleep, and I wasn’t supposed to be there, so I left. I never saw Lauren again.”
I blink, trying to process the abrupt end to that random story. “You think she was… what, taken by Davos to be used as a sex slave just because you never saw her again after you heard her throwing up?” I try not to laugh, but that is quite a leap. It makes sense, with her apparently guilty conscience, that our earlier conversation made her think of a repressed memory. And as pervasive as human trade is, it’s not impossible that that reallyiswhat happened to her. But there are a million other possibilities for why a young, possibly pregnant girl may have disappeared.
“No.” Elaine drums her fingers against her mouth like she’s working through something in her head.
“How much do you know about this girl? I mean, she could have been scared to have a baby so she got an abortion and then couldn’t face up to it. She could have decided to run off and start a life in another state. Maybe her parents sent her away so she wouldn’t bring shame to them or something with her pregnancy.”
“No. She didn’t have parents. She was an orphan herself, raised by an aunt that worked for them before me. When her aunt died, she became a ward of the state or something. Ally was worried from the jump that something had happened to her—she didn’t answer any of her calls, she never sent her an e-mail or left her a note. She didn’t send her boyfriend any kind of letter. He found out she was missing from talking to his sister. I don’t know what ever happened to the investigation, because just a week after that party, the senator pinned me against his counter and tried to…” She clears her throat, letting me use my imagination. “He tried to coerce me into things that weren’t in my job description. I got away because Ally walked in, but if she hadn’t…”
She shudders, and anger unfurls in the pit of my stomach at the idea of another woman I care for being victimized.
“I never went back, but a gracious friend put in a recommendation with your mother, and when she called me, I started working for your family. I recognized your father’s driver from the night I wasn’t supposed to be there, and I knew from that moment that your family was wrapped up in something cruel. But I needed the work, and no one ever bothered me, so I stayed in blissful ignorance all this time. I never thought about Lauren again until six months ago.” Her voice breaks on a sob, and I watch as she tries to shove it back inside by clamping her hand over her mouth.
I blink, waiting for her story to make sense. But it doesn’t. None of it makes sense… until Elaine taps on the phone she’s been clutching for dear life. The screen comes alive, and she stares at it with heartbreak in her eyes for a moment before she slides it across the desk to me.
My eyes rove the photo, taking it in all at once. It’s a yearbook photo, a grid of pictures not unlike the ones sitting on my kitchen counter right now with numbers beneath the pictures. This one doesn’t have numbers, though. It has names on the left of the page… names that I can see despite the zoomed in photo of the girl who disappeared that night.
Lauren Marshall.
I know that’s who it is because she’s the first photo on the page, her name the first one on the top of the list. But I’d have known what Elaine was getting at even if she hadn’t already told me the girl’s name. It’s impossible to miss.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I’m looking at a photo of Claire Monroe.
Chapter ten
Claire
Eli looks like he’d much rather be back at my apartment fucking Rhea, but he was at least nice enough to take one for the team. I’ll have to tell her to reward him extra generously tonight, because he is gloriously discreet as he moves around the room, never letting me completely out of his sight, but also never crowding me out of my own skin.
I’ve been out all night, and I made good on my promise to Remy to drink. I’ve drank a lot… enough to warm my veins as much as they can be without physical touch. We tailgated but thankfully didn’t stick around to watch the game. That, we’re doing on a big screen set up on the side of the house with a projector pointed at it and surround sound blasting out the commentator’s remarks. It’s a nice setup, particularly because I’m on Austin’s shoulders in the pool, wearing nothing but the strings that hardly pass as panties and his button-down. I’m pretty sure the water floating around it has pushed the top out enough to offer a view of my ass to anyone looking up from the bottom of the pool, but I’m still somehow one of the most clothed girls here.
Rhea and I loved parties like this our freshman and sophomore year. It was outside of my comfort zone at first, but when I’d realized my life was actually kind of stable for the first time, I started to enjoy the chaos of a good party. When I dated a loser with an inferiority complex, I’d stopped coming to stuff like this, and Rhea realized she didn’t need a party to find someone willing to hook up with her.
Maybe it’s the drinks talking or the water that always seems to calm me, but I actually feel at peace in the middle of this chaos, pretending like I have any idea what’s happening on the screen and high fiving everyone in the immediate vicinity when something good happens. It’s why, when Austin grabs my thigh to demand my attention so he can tell me he’s going to get us some more drinks, I don’t even bother getting out of the pool. I sit on its edge with my legs dangling and maintain the conversation I’ve been having with a girl named Jess who is telling me all about her Physics professor. I feel stupid in her presence as she talks about laws of the universe and how she’s dying to graduate so that she can fuck her professor without anyone giving her shit for it.
“What about you, Claire?” She smiles brightly. “You going to hook up with any of your professors after graduation?”
“No,” I laugh. I’m not in a position to judge any of her kinks given what I’ve done, but I also have no interest in any of my professors like that. Maybe I would have at one point, but not now. I can’t imagine that hooking up with anyone will satisfy the need I feel, but I’m not opposed to trying. That’s why, when Austin comes back with two drinks and leans down to ask if I want to go dry off in his room, I don’t object. I’ve had him between my legs all night, and as I chug more of the latest concoction he brought me, I’m certain I want more than just his neck there.
The inside of the house is somehow louder than the outside. People crowd every bit of surface area the place has to offer. There’s a game of beer pong in the dining room, flip cup in the kitchen, and a keg stand happening on the stairs, which looks both sketchy and fun as we pass them on our way up. Nobody says anything about the water dripping from my hair and the flannel as I let Austin pull me with him.
It’s so loud I can’t even hear my laughter over the other laughs, the cries and cheers, the sound of the game blaring outside and echoing through the open windows, and the music thumping downstairs. Thankfully, the further up the stairs we get, the moreI can hear myself think. Or, the more I would be able to, if I was thinking.
I’m not, though. Tonight, I’m not thinking. I’mdoing.
When we get to the second floor, he pulls me to the left, into a hallway lined with doors, and down to the last one. There’s a shiny silver lock fitted on the outside, and for a split second, I think that maybe this is a bad idea. I don’t really know a ton about Austin. For all I know, he’s going to slit my neck and stuff me with newspaper so he can keep me in his room forever. And then, as quickly as that lovely thought was born, I laugh it off.
Of course they have locks on the outside of their doors. Frat houses are just like small dorms that smell more of corn chips and beer.
As he punches the code into the keypad, he doesn’t shift to hide it from view, and I make out the sequence, stashing it away in case I need it.
3167.
