Page 78 of Missing White Woman

I deflated, surprised at how disappointed I was. Again, I tried to talk through my emotions. “Well, I’m glad they stopped the person. Whoever it was.”

She agreed. A dog barked in the background. “I gotta go, Bree. You’re going to be okay.”

That was still to be decided. “Thank you,” I said. I’d never meant it more.

We hung up and I just sat there, enjoying the quiet. Pretending it meant everything was fine. It was five minutes before the phone went off again. I recognized my mother’s number. The phone was on silent, but it didn’t matter. Somehow it still sounded harsh.

I let it go to voicemail. I couldn’t talk to her now, not after that comforting conversation with Ms. Morgane.

The text came soon after. All caps. BREANNA WHY ARE PEOPLE SAYING YOU KILLED SOME WHITE GIRL?

The news had finally made it from TikTok to the Baltimore suburbs. I was contemplating the best way to respond when Adore came upstairs. She stood in the doorframe like she was afraid to get too close.

“I have an idea, but you have to promise me you won’t say no right away,” she said. “That you’ll take at least an hour to think about it.”

“What is it?” I said, though I didn’t want to even ask.

“You should talk to Billie. She’s honestly more important than the police at this point. We need to get her on our side.”

I shook my head. No way.

Adore finally came in. Sat down beside me on the bed, way more put together than I was. “She’s the best way to let people know you didn’t do it. She’s got a bigger audience than CNN.”

I stared at the text from my mom. Flashed back twelve years, when she came to get me at the police station. Heard the words like she was saying them to me right now. What did you do, Breanna? I wasn’t going to let her say that to me again.

“DM her.”

TWENTY-THREE

Anything from Billie?”

I’d said that phrase a billion times over the past couple of hours. To her credit, Adore didn’t sound annoyed when she responded. “Still just says Sent.”

I leaned back on Adore’s couch. My cell phone was upstairs, where I’d left it after six unanswered texts in a row from my mom. “What are the odds she’ll see it today?”

“Don’t know,” Adore said. “She’s busy doing a tour of—and I quote—‘Janelle’s Jersey City’ while claiming she’s doing all this work for the vigil. So far she’s hit Janelle’s favorite dog park and coffee shop.”

“It’s all so performative. Like she cares about Janelle’s death when it’s really all about getting her own profile up.”

“If it makes you feel better, she tried to go Live from Little Street. Morgane and some uptight—but cute—old white guy ran her off.”

I wondered if that was Rod. I smiled. “Of course you’d notice how attractive the man was.”

“Older men are my weak spot.”

“That was your husband?”

“Fifteen years older than me. And honestly that was too young.”

We laughed and it felt good—both to have a light moment and to hear more about the life of A. Kristine McKinley. But this wasn’t a girls’ trip, as much as I wanted it to be. “Billie mention me in that one?”

“Nope.”

I felt surprise as much as relief—until Adore kept going.

“Folks in the comments, on the other hand… Someone called you and Ty the new Bonnie and Clyde. And the hotel put out a statement on their socials. Let me pull it up so I don’t misquote them.”

She tapped the screen until she found what she was looking for. “‘There’s no guest by the name of Breanna Wright staying at any of our facilities. All of us at the Crown Hotel support the efforts to find #Justice4Janelle.’” She put her phone down. “Translation: ‘Stop clogging our switchboard.’”

---