Page 9 of The Whisper Place
“She went somewhere a few weeks ago. Gone the whole day, which was out of her routine. Apparently most days she either worked or spent with him. Didn’t tell him where she was going. When she came back, he noticed a box of Milk Duds in her bag. It had a heart drawn on it with the word Kate inside the heart.”
Jonah drained his beer and chucked the can onto the grass. “Our source is stale caramel?”
“He said she kept the box for a few days, even though it was empty. Unlike her to keep trash around.”
“Does he still have anything of hers?”
“Unclear.”
Jonah nodded, staring at the flames. “Then we make a house call.”
Jonah
Charlie Ashlock’s house was about what you’d expect from a thirty-something single guy on a hobby farm in central Iowa. The driveway was dirt and potholes, the lawn overgrown, and the side of the house looked like a landfill specializing in broken lawn furniture. I parked my Lancer Evolution, a bright blue rally spec car with racing harnesses and a rear fin, next to Charlie’s rusted Chevy pickup and killed the engine.
A row of pines created a windbreak from the road, and a few outbuildings were scattered behind the garage. None looked in use. I didn’t see any animals or farm equipment, no obnoxious ATV collection or any other reason he’d be living out here by himself. It was a half hour from Iowa City. The only signs of life for the last ten miles were an animal sanctuary and a cluster of wind turbines on the horizon.
“Pretty isolated.” Max echoed my thoughts.
The cloud of dust the Evolution had kicked up was still settling as we walked across the weedy yard to the house.
“You okay?” Max asked.
“Fifty-fifty, remember?”
“I know. You just seemed out of it on the way here.” Max knocked on the door and stood back. “A dream?”
Hardly. I’d barely slept last night. Normally, living Max’s insomniac life would be a reprieve. No terror or pain leaking into my mind from the lost people of the world, their silent, displaced screams shaking me awake without knowing who or where I was. I wouldn’t have to spend the morning huddled over my recorded sleep talking, sweating and nauseous as I hunted for clues to bring the lost people back. To find them.
Instead, I’d spent most of last night tossing and turning in bed, wrecking the sheets before giving up and pacing the house in the dark.
Because Eve and I were dating.
Eve wanted to dateme.
The rotting drainpipes, the people I couldn’t save, they all sat on the sidelines eating popcorn while the idea of the two of us together, for real, made my brain explode. I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t focus. I’d spent more than two years telling myself we were just friends, that she felt close to me because of all we’d been through together, and there was no chance in any reality that someone like Eve would want someone like me. Yet somehow she did.
I barely noticed the road on the way here, let alone Max. I pictured her sleeping off the jet lag and wondered how soon I could text her this morning, what the rules were, and what I could say without scaring her off before we’d even started.
There was no getting into any of that now, because Charlie Ashlock opened the door to his house looking like shit and feeling—from the punch of nerves and misery—a hundred times worse. I could relate.
He invited us in and Max took the lead, introducing me and explaining we were looking for any clues to Kate’s actual identity.
“I told you she didn’t keep much stuff here.” He ran a hand over his beard and pointed somewhere toward the back of the house. “I mean, you can look around, but you should check her place in Iowa City.”
“We will,” I said, moving through the living room, careful not to touch anything. “But this was the last place she was seen.” The last place any traces of her energy might still be lingering.
Charlie gave us a tour of the house, which didn’t take long. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, a living room, and an eat-in kitchen straight out of the seventies. There was garbage everywhere. Beer cans, snack wrappers, piles of clothes, a TV remote in the toothbrush cup in the bathroom. Charlie Ashlock wasn’t fine.
The tour ended in the main bedroom, where a mangle of blankets and pillows reminded me of my own barely-slept-in bed.
“Is any of this hers?” I nodded at the closets and Charlie brought over a small, gray duffel bag.
“This is her overnight bag.”
I braced myself. Objects carried impressions of the people who collected them. Not always, and not usually in any helpful way when it came to finding people, but Max liked to be thorough. He wanted as much information as possible, claiming you never knew what could be important.
Kate’s duffel bag had a dull hum, a well-used and comfortably faded feeling. She’d owned it a while. A pair of jeans with fifty dollars in the pocket and a few shirts were tossed inside, unfolded. A toiletries bag held the basics—toothbrush, lotion, some mascara, and an almost-empty lip gloss. She liked the lip gloss. The feelingstruck me as I unscrewed the cap and held up the applicator. It was brighter than she’d worn before. A happy pink. Maybe she could be brighter here, too.
