Page 40 of The Lake of Lost Girls

Her words came down like a hammer. Lieutenant Higgins had admitted they weren’t looking for girls who were still alive. They were looking for bodies. And she expected Jessica’s to be one of them. And the person who took her from us was most likely someone she knew.

“Oh my god. Ben, are you hearing this?” Mom whimpered.

Dad finally looked up, his eyes hollow, as if his soul had been sucked out of him. “Yes, I’m listening.” His voice was devoid of emotion.

“You think they’re all out there at the lake? Including my Jessica? That’s what I told that detective back then. I knew my baby was there.” Mom was getting worked up again.

Lieutenant Higgins put a hand on my mom’s shoulder and it had an instant, soothing effect. “I want you to know,Mrs. Fadley, that finding Tammy has allowed the department to put resources into these cases for the first time in decades. It’s no longer a cold case. It’s been moved to active status. This is good news.”

Dad had gone deathly pale. “You think you can solve this?” he asked, his voice cracking.

Lieutenant Higgins gave him a kind but firm look. “I don’tthink, Mr. Fadley, Iknow.”

Stan James spoke briefly to my mom, handing her a card, and telling her to call him if she needed anything. Then the two police officers walked to the door, Lieutenant Higgins opening it. A waft of cold night air blew in and I shivered.

Lieutenant Higgins looked first at me, then my mother, before her eyes settled on Dad. “As soon as I know more, I’ll be in touch but, I promise you, Iwillfind out what happened to your daughter.”

Later, after my parents had gone to bed, I found myself standing outside my sister’s bedroom.

I had promised Ryan I would go through the boxes of her stuff to see if there was anything that might have been missed. But I didn’t want to take anything to him. Not yet anyway. The image of his eager demeanor when he asked if he could see Jess’s things had stuck with me. And not in a good way.

So, I crept into Jess’s room and pulled three large boxes from her closet. I knew, from what I overheard my parents say years ago, that the police had taken possession of the stuff in her dorm room right after her disappearance. They obviously didn’t think there was anything of note and so had quickly released the effects to my parents. But given how poorly they managed the case, I knew I needed to look for myself because it would only be a matter of time before Lieutenant Higgins would want them.

It felt strange being in her room. Everything was as it had been left all those years ago. Her stuffed toys were still on herbed, her clothes still hung in the closet, now out of fashion and moth-eaten. Her books were still lined up on the shelf waiting for someone to read them again. Everything remained, and would remain, untouched.

Given how obsessed I had always been with the sister I barely remembered, it would have been so easy to cross the hall and enter her sanctum in order to learn everything I yearned to know. Yet I had only ever dared a handful of times. It felt wrong to invade her space when she was no longer around to allow or deny it. It felt like wandering into a sacred space, not to be disrupted. As if the room were sleeping, on the verge of waking up. And there was a presence there that never went away. It disturbed me.

I went in, stopping once I reached the middle of the room, almost too frightened to move.

Panic unfurled in my gut and I felt a cold breeze on my bare arms even though the windows were closed.

There was rustling from somewhere followed by what sounded like something moving around in the closet. What was it? A mouse? Somehow the idea of a rodent was more appealing than the alternative.

And what was the alternative? That my sister’s room was haunted?

I wanted to laugh at the ludicrousness of the idea, but I couldn’t. Because right then, I swore I caught the cloying scent of jasmine in the air.

A gasp caught in my throat as the door slammed shut behind me and I jumped. I rushed over and pulled it back open, not wanting to be shut inside.

Wide-eyed with dread, I stood on the threshold, staring out into the silent hallway, willing myself to calm down. I was being ridiculous.

Taking a steadying breath, I turned and faced Jess’s room once again, giving myself a mental pep talk. I crossed the floor and turned on the bedside lamp. The filtered hazy pink light from the lamp shade made the shadows even deeper, but I didn’t dare turn on the ceiling light for fear of waking my parents up.

I forced myself to focus on what I came in here for and got to work. After a while, I realized searching through Jess’s things was futile. I hadn’t found anything that seemed to hold a clue as to what happened to her.

I was about ready to give up when I discovered a small photo album at the bottom of the last box. Given how scarce pictures of my sister were, I pounced on it immediately.

I sat down on her bed, flipping through the pages of the small, fabric-bound book, seeing pictures of Jess posing with women I presumed were from Southern State. Blurry photos of dim dorm rooms and the sunlit quad in the middle of campus. Pictures of a group of laughing girls laid out on the grass.

There was a photograph of Jess in a short cocktail dress, her dark hair layered around her face. Her arm was slung around a pretty girl with beautiful bronze blonde hair.

I didn’t quite know how to feel seeing proof of my sister’s life. My eyes stung and I blinked away tears, feeling incredibly emotional. Jess looked happy, though at times, I noticed, her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. And there was a tension about her features that was at odds with the laid-back nature of the friends beside her.

Toward the back, there were other photographs. Ones of our family. These were pictures I had never seen before. There were several of me as a little girl, staring up at my big sister with wide, adoring eyes. I struggled to breathe around the lump that had formed in my throat. It was clear that Jess and I loved each other. No one could doubt that by seeing how she held me close and how I hugged her tight. I wished so much that I could remember her better.

I turned the pages, finding photos of random things that must have mattered to Jess. There was a teddy bear on a swing, a tree, a flower. Then there was a close-up of my dad. It was so close I could see the tiny flecks in his brown eyes.

There were so many pictures of my dad.

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