Page 49 of The Vacancy In Room 10

We check the area closely and make sure we leave nothing behind, then I pour what’s left in a gallon jug of water over my muddy hands and wash out some of the open blisters. Neither of us acknowledge how foolish we were to overlook this and that we now have evidence on both of our torn-up hands, but we both silently know it.

There is a thin line of orange glowing along the horizon, and it’s time to go. On our drive back, we go back over our story—every detail. Where we were Friday night—corroborate the story Callum told Anna, who knows he was in the office for hours, and say I was crying over Reid, which is backed up by my insane behavior the next night. Have stories for where we were tonight. Our phones will show us at home. I was binging a Netflix show—which I actually left on at my apartment just in case they can look at that sort of thing—and Callum was grading papers and watching a ball game on TV. We weren’t seen. This will work.

But then, when I pick up my purse to dig for a Band-Aid I hope I might somehow have lost in there some long time ago and could really use right now, my cell phone falls out and onto the floor of the car.

“What was that?” Callum asks at the thump, and when I pick it up with a look of horror on my face, I realize my terrible mistake.

“Oh, my God,” he says.

But I already know. I know if we are ever looked at or under investigation because of some piece of DNA we don’t yet know we stupidly left behind, my phone records will now forever show me out in the desert for hours right after the disappearance...and if the body is found because of the tracing of those records, my life is over.

19

ANNA

The next afternoon, I meet Monica for brunch as promised after I ran out on her, and I explain what I found. I decide to finally say it—to tell her that Henry was having an affair. When I tell her about the high school girl, and Cass and Rosa, and how I just don’t know who it could be or if it’s connected to his death—that she still believes was a suicide—she insists we spend the afternoon at The Sycamore’s pool scoping out the women there.

I feel like if I were going to tell anyone about Henry’s death not being suicide, it would first be my parents and then Monica, but I don’t know why I can’t do it. I think they would interfere. They would tell me to let the police do their jobs and to get out of this place, and they would probably be right. I’m certain they would assure me that I’m not a suspect, but I know I am. If this all happened here and the affair the police don’t know about is connected, I can find more answers being close to this place and these people than they can.

Maybe it’s insane for me not to have shared with the police what I found in Henry’s journal, but I’m not ready. And if they really have me on their list somewhere as a suspect, there is a lot they aren’t sharing with me, too, so before I get further questioned or maybe even accused of being involved, I plan to get to the bottom of it myself.

So Monica and I buy some canned margaritas and a Styrofoam cooler. We put on swimsuits and floppy hats and, for the first time since I’ve arrived, go down to the pool and lie under a weathered sun umbrella on plastic deck chairs with the others. Monica lays down too many towels with a disgusted look on her face, as if everything is sticky and beneath her standards. Which in all fairness, it is, but she could make less of a scene.

Some of the pool girls begin to peer over when she starts spraying a never-ending hiss of sunscreen until she’s lost in a cloud of it. Then she finally sits, adjusts herself comfortably, picks up her watermelon margarita can, and peers around over her giant sunglasses. “Okay, now what?” she asks, and I hand her a piece of paper and sit at the edge of my lawn chair sipping my margarita from a straw.

“It’s a map of the apartments, kinda. The mailboxes are all in a block by the front office, so I wrote everyone’s names and which unit, then I googled most of them to try to get any background information that might be helpful.”

“Jesus,” she says, looking at it with raised eyebrows. “Most people are crossed off.”

“Yeah,” I say. “After you get rid of all the men, face-tattoo guy, David with the cats, Leonard, Gordon, Barry...we got a few others that are no’s, like a couple elderly women. Mary in 109, Sylvie in 108, and her.” I nod toward Babs who’s gliding in the pool on a unicorn floatie and sipping a martini. They’ve already met.

“Right. So why not these other women—Crystal, Gwen, Tina, and Letty?” Monica asks.

“Crystal is blond, Tina and Gwen... I’d give mousy-brown at best, not dark hair...and Letty. She chain-smokes on her balcony almost constantly. She lights one off the other, and I can’t see a world where Henry would have anything to do with that. So we have my top three. Cass, Rosa, and Jackie,” I say, speaking in a hushed voice.

“Okay, who’s who then?” she asks.

I nod to Jackie first.

“The girl with liquid eyeliner and a Harley-Davidson shirt on,” Monica says matter-of-factly.

“She’s not on the top of the list,” I reply and then point out Rosa. “She is,” I say, and Monica stifles a laugh.

“The one who looks like she’s heading to a church potluck?”

“She’s quiet, pretty, like in that natural way where you can see it, but you wish you could fix her hair and take her shopping sort of way. She’s sweet. And she’s trapped in an abusive relationship. I could see Henry trying to help her and then connecting. I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore,” I say, and Monica squeezes my hand.

“Okay, who is Cass? She’s in your top three.”

I look across the pool deck to the grassy area with the picnic table and see Cass there. She’s trying to unravel a garden hose, then after a moment, she’s given up and is kicking it, swearing at it, and then she stomps into the front office. “She said something that makes me think it can’t be her, so I don’t know, but I’m keeping my eye on her,” I say. “This is stupid. It could be anyone. I just feel like it’s tied to this place.”

Monica sighs and hands me back my penciled map of the building, and we both watch one of the kids dump a pack of Ritz Bits into the pool. Babs laughs hysterically at this, and Crystal hollers at the kid and fishes it out with a pool net.

“I don’t get it,” Monica says, shaking her head. “Oh, maybe I do get it. Who’s that?” she asks, perking up and adjusting her boobs in her bikini top. She’s looking across to Callum sitting in front of his door in shorts and a T-shirt and drinking a beer. His feet are propped up on a planter with a dead cactus wilted and gray inside of it, and he’s scrolling through his phone. Monica being married doesn’t stop her from requiring all the male attention she can procure.

“Callum. He knew Henry, kinda,” is all I share with her. Of course I don’t say that we have being widowed in common and he’s somehow helping me keep my head above water even though I don’t know him well—just that that deep understanding and unspoken connection has been something for me to hold on to.

Callum stands, shoves his phone in his pocket, and starts walking toward the office.

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