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for the last year, at least. Everything resettling. Realigning.
    I felt the memories doing the same. Falling back into place. The investigation. All I’d left behind, neatly boxed away for ten years.
    I looked around my room and saw the rectangles of discolored paint. I closed my eyes and saw the pictures that had hung in each spot.
    My stomach churned, unsettled. Corinne had been in every one.
    A coincidence, I thought. Corinne was so wrapped up in my childhood, I could probably find her shadow in anything here if I went looking for it.
    I needed to find out what thought had surged and then faltered, driving Dad to a sheet of paper and an envelope with my name. What memory had been flickering from the dying portion of his brain, begging for attention before it faded away for good. Corinne. Alive. But when? I had to find out.
    Everything was stuck here. Waiting for someone to step in and reorder the evidence, the stories, the events—until they came together in a way that made sense.
    In that way, Dad was right. About time. About the past being alive.
    I walked down the wooden steps into the kitchen, the linoleum shrinking away from the corners. And imagined, for a moment,catching sight of a girl with long bronze hair, her laughter echoing through the night as she skipped up the steps of the back porch—
    Tick-tock, Nic.
    I had to focus, make sense of this house, and get out. Before the past started creeping out from the walls, whispering from the grates. Before it unpacked itself from that box, layer after layer, all the way back to the start.

PART 2
    Going Back
    It is quite true what philosophy says; that life must be understood backwards.
    â€”SØREN KIERKEGAARD

Two Weeks Later

DAY 15
    I f I kept my eyes closed, I could almost imagine that we were driving back to Philadelphia. Everett in the driver’s seat and the backseat full of luggage and Cooley Ridge fading away in the rearview mirror—no missing girls; no unmarked cars circling town; nothing at all to fear.
    â€œYou okay?” he asked.
    Just one more moment. I wanted more time. Another minute to pretend this wasn’t happening.
    Not here in Cooley Ridge. Not again.
    Not another girl fading away in these woods in the middle of the night, disappearing without a trace. Not another missing poster stapled to the trees, hung in the storefront windows—another innocent face, asking to be found. Please, not like this.
    But the back of my neck prickled as the world shifted into focus, and there she was, inescapable, her huge blue eyes staring out from under the red MISSING letters of the poster on the telephone pole: Annaleise Carter. Gone.
    â€œNic?” Everett said. God, a few days in this place, and apparently, he’s calling me Nic, too. It got its claws in him already.
    â€œYeah,” I said, still looking out the window.
    My eyes caught hers again at the next stoplight, her face under the white painted letters of Julie’s Boutique, right next to a display of handmade jewelry and a green silk scarf. Annaleise Carter, whose property backed to my own, who had been dating my ex-boyfriend the night she disappeared. Annaleise Carter, gone and missing for two weeks.
    â€œHey.” Everett’s hand hovered over my shoulder before he pressed down and squeezed. “You with me?”
    â€œSorry, I’m fine.” I turned toward Everett, but I felt her gaze on the back of my neck, like she was trying to tell me something. Look. Look closer. Do you see?
    â€œI’m not leaving until I know you’re okay.” His hand rested on my shoulder, his silver watch—steel, he’d told me—peeking out from his long-sleeved button-down. How was he not sweltering?
    â€œI thought that was the purpose of the appointment.” I raised the paper prescription bag at Everett. “I’ll take two and call you in the morning.” I mustered a smile, but his expression tightened as his eyes settled on my