He Thought I Had Nowhere to Go Until I Disappeared novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Early Walk-In
Keeley comes home early on the day she sells her car and finds her cousin in her chair with her husband's hand over hers. She walks out with twenty-three dollars and a text telling her not to go to her grandmother's.
The day I sold my car, I came home early and found my cousin Alana at my kitchen table with my husband's hand over hers.
Corbin looked up with his usual easy smile and took his hand back to reach for the sugar bowl.
Alana didn't move.
She was sitting in my chair, the one with the cushion I had sewn myself, and she had my good wine glass in front of her.
The dealership folder was still under my arm.
That morning Corbin had kissed me at the front door and told me I was doing the sensible thing.
"One car is plenty, Mar," he'd said. "I'll drive you anywhere you need to go."
Now he stood up and put himself between me and the hallway.
"You're home early," he said.
"The paperwork took twenty minutes. Why is Alana in my kitchen?"
Six years ago, after my mother's funeral, Alana told our family that I had stolen from our grandmother.
After that, nobody on the Engberg side picked up when I called.
That night Corbin sat with me on the bathroom floor and promised Alana would never get near me again.
Alana's phone lit up beside the wine glass.
I could read the screen from the doorway.
It was the home security app Corbin and I used, with our address at the top and a green line under it.
Garage code active: Alana.
"Why does she have a code to our garage?" I asked.
Alana turned the phone facedown.
"Keeley," Corbin said. "Let's sit down and talk like adults."
"I asked you a question."
"I gave her the code for emergencies."
"What emergencies?"
"She visits sometimes. That's all."
"When I'm at work."
He opened his mouth. Alana started to speak, and Corbin talked over her.
"Alana, don't."
"We've been together since April," Alana said anyway.
I thought back.
Six months of Tuesday dinners he said ran late.
Six months of Thursday client appointments that ended after dark.
Six months of Corbin checking his phone in the bathroom with the fan on.
The mail was sitting on the counter, already sorted into two neat piles.
Corbin brought in the mail every day before I got home.
He said he liked to spare me the junk, and I had not opened our mailbox once in six years.
I took out my phone.
"What are you doing?" Corbin asked.
"Opening the app."
There was a tab at the bottom called Access History.
I tapped it.
Alana's code had been used sixty-one times since April, always on Tuesdays and Thursdays, always between one and four in the afternoon.
I took a screenshot of each page.
Then I emailed them all to my work account, where Corbin had never had the password.
"Give me that," Corbin said, and held out his hand.
"No."
"Keeley, I pay for that phone."
"Then you can have it back when I'm done with it."
I turned the dealership folder over and read the receipt.
The buyer had paid by wire.
Seventy-four hundred dollars, sent to an account ending in 4417.
I knew those four digits.
Last week Corbin had asked me to let the dealer send the money straight to the savings, so it would sit with the rest of our money.
"Where is the car money?" I asked.
"In our savings, where it's safe."
"Our savings is in your name."
"It's in my name because I manage it." He said it gently. "I always manage it, Mar. You've never wanted to."
I looked at Alana.
She was staring at the table and would not look at either of us.
"Your car is gone," Corbin said. "Your money is mine to manage and your family hasn't spoken to you in six years. So tell me, where exactly do you think you can go?"
I pulled off my wedding ring.
I set it down next to Alana's wine glass, where it rolled once and stopped.
"I don't know yet," I said.
"Keeley."
"Move."
He didn't.
I walked straight at him with my shoulder lowered and he stepped aside at the last second, because he did not like a scene when anyone could hear it.
The neighbor across the street was raking leaves.
She watched me come down the front steps with my jacket half zipped and no car in the driveway.
So I kept walking.
I had twenty-three dollars in my jacket pocket and a phone that Corbin paid for.
I turned off its location, and I walked the two miles to the bus station.
I was standing at the ticket window, working out where twenty-three dollars could take me, when a text came in from a number I didn't know.
It's Alana. Please read this before you do anything else.
Whatever you do, do not go to Grandma Ardis's.
I hadn't thought of the lake house in six years.
I stared at the screen.
Then I asked the woman behind the glass for a ticket to Russells Point.
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