I grabbed Kyle’s arm and beelined for Amy’s room. We tumbled inside just as the door to the master bedroom opened.
Kyle eased Amy’s door almost all the way shut, leaving just enough of a gap for us to see a small slice of hallway. He stood behind me, so close that his chest was flush to my back.
“There was no breach.” Ryan Walsh’s voice held an unmistakable threat, a threat that contradicted the calm, quiet man I knew. “Stephen wasn’t behind any leak.”
“Ryan, I really think—”
There was a yelp followed by a thud. “I don’t care what you think.” The voice still belonged to Amy’s father but it was so hard that it was almost unrecognizable. “You gave up the right to an opinion the second you walked out.”
I held my breath and eased the door open another inch. Amy’s father was standing a few feet away, his back to us. Behind him, I could just glimpse a brunette in a curve-hugging red dress. Her back was to the wall, her body pinned in place by Ryan Walsh’s arms.
My stomach rolled. For a horrible moment, I thought he would hit her, but then she pressed her lips to his.
I thought of Amy’s mother and winced. She was downstairs, coordinating a gala in memory of her dead daughter while her husband was kissing another woman just outside their bedroom.
Amy’s father pulled away.
“I want to come back,” said the woman, voice breathless. “Leaving was a mistake. I want to come back.”
“You think it’s that easy? You think things can just go back to the way they were?” Ryan Walsh let out a short, bitter bark of a laugh. “I’m giving you five minutes to leave before I call security and have them toss you out.” Without waiting for a response, Amy’s father turned on his heel and strode away.
Behind me, Kyle tensed as we got our first real glimpse of the woman in the red dress.
A ringing sound filled my ears as she reached up to adjust her glasses.
Though I had only encountered the woman a handful of times, I saw her face behind my closed lids on nights when memories of Thornhill made sleep impossible.
The woman who had signaled out wolves for torture in Thornhill’s detention block.
The woman who had tortured Serena.
13
A GASP ESCAPED MY THROAT BEFORE I COULD STOP IT.
The woman’s brows pulled together as she turned toward Amy’s door. “Is someone there?”
Kyle tried to ease me back, tried to place himself in front of me, but I couldn’t move. Every cell in my body had turned to stone.
The woman took a step forward and only the absence of light in the room kept her from seeing us.
“Excuse me, ma’am.” A deep male voice stopped her as she reached for the doorknob. “I was told to escort you downstairs.”
She frowned and glanced over her shoulder, then looked back at Amy’s door, hesitating as she ran a hand over her glossy brown hair.
“Ma’am?”
“Of course,” she murmured, turning and heading for the stairs as the owner of the voice followed in her wake.
I was pressed so closely to Kyle that I could feel the tension drain out of him as he reached around me and softly shut the door. He stepped back, but I still couldn’t move.
I flashed back to a Saturday, years ago, when Mr. Walsh had helped Amy and me create a diorama of the Globe Theatre for history class. Halfway through the evening, he had ordered a pizza big enough to feed a troupe of actors and rented The Lion King. We ate pizza and worked on the miniature theater, and as we watched the movie, Mr. Walsh explained the ties the story had to Shakespeare. The whole time, I kept thinking, This is what a family is. This is what a father is supposed to be.
Something inside my chest shattered.
It was one thing to believe in the possibility that Amy’s father could have known about Thornhill, but another to have proof—and what else could that woman’s presence here be?
Another thought occurred to me as I replayed their conversation in my head. She had said she wanted to come back, that she had made a mistake by leaving.
“Do you think he was cheating on Amy’s mom?” I asked Kyle softly.
I already knew the answer; his silence just reinforced it.
I thought of Amy’s life and how perfect it had seemed from the outside. How could so much have been wrong beneath the surface?
“Mac? Are you all right?”
I turned to Kyle. The room was so dark that he was just a jumble of shapes.
“I’m fine,” I lied. I tried to pull in a deep breath, but my lungs felt tight. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Kyle caught my hand as I reached for the light switch. “Someone might see the light under the door,” he said, voice low.
I was pretty sure we were the only ones left upstairs, but he was right: someone could come back.
The touch on my hand fell away and I heard the rustle of fabric as he crossed the room and pulled open the heavy drapes.
Moonlight and the glow from the gardens below shone through the window, illuminating the empty space.
I blinked.
“We’re in the wrong room.” But as the words left my lips, my gaze fell on the purple-and-silver fleur-de-lis wallpaper Amy had picked out the last time she redecorated.
“All of her stuff is gone.” My voice was a choked whisper. The tightness in my lungs grew, as though someone had laced them up and was pulling on the strings. There were no posters on the walls. No furniture or pictures or mirrors. My shoes sank into the plush carpet as I walked to the closet and pulled open the double doors. It, too, was empty.
Everything that had made the room Amy’s had been stripped away. For a moment, it felt like losing her all over again.
I hugged myself tightly as I turned back to Kyle. “Stephen told me he was going through her things, but I didn’t think it would be like this. How could they get rid of her stuff? It hasn’t even been a year.”
I couldn’t read the look in Kyle’s eyes, but his expression had slid into something hard and closed. “I don’t know, but we don’t have much time.”
He was right. I allowed myself one last look around the empty room and then forced myself to walk to the window seat. Even the cushions were gone. Amy had always stashed things underneath them—her diary, notes from teachers, pictures of Trey—but that hadn’t been her only hiding place.
If they find that stuff, no one will ever go looking for anything else. That’s what she had told me, once, after I’d pointed out what an obvious hiding spot it was. It’s misdirection, Mac. Let them find the little things so they miss the big stuff.