Page 17 of In the Dark of the Past

“You okay?” Nivea asked, glancing my way.

I shook my head. “I’m fine.” I hesitated. “I just didn’t think being back would be this…loud, you know? I thought I was ready. But seeing Finn again⁠—”

“Hits harder than you expected,” she finished.

I gave a dry laugh. “That obvious?”

“Only if you have eyes,” Myra said.

Libby had asked if she could share things with the club after what had gone down at my first meeting. I told her she could. Neither Finn nor I was going anywhere, and we were all in this cold-case business together. Besides, it wasn’t like it was a secret. And the more people knew, the less awkward it would be. Hopefully.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Nivea added, “unless you want to, of course. But for what it’s worth, it doesn’t look like he hates you.”

“Us hating each other isn’t the problem,” I said quietly.

They didn’t push.

“He ever try to reach out?” Myra asked after a beat. “I mean, while you were gone?”

“No. And I didn’t expect him to. We both said things we can’t take back.”

“Still,” Nivea said, “the way he looked at you at the meeting… I’d bet good money there’s still something there.”

“You’d lose that bet,” I said, brushing a leaf from my shoulder. “And even if there are remnants, what’s left isn’t worth digging up.”

We started walking again, the woods pressing in on either side.

“Changing the subject,” Myra said, “I went through Eleanor’s personnel file again this morning. Something’s definitely off. And I don’t just mean the stuff that’s missing. Her evaluations were spotless. Like, almost too spotless. Practically templated. I’m not sure that’s exactly normal.”

“So…what? She was being protected? Set up somehow?” Nivea said. “Either way, someone wanted a paper trail that looked clean and was just confusing enough to throw someone off.”

I nodded. “You think Autumn might have more? Maybe something in the older board meeting notes?”

“She said she’s looking,” Myra said. “Told me she’d flag anything that felt out of place.”

“Good.” I nodded. “We need something to go on.”

We were about halfway down the Birchwood Loop when Myra finally said, “It’s kinda weird being here, right? Knowing this is where her car was found.”

That pulled me out of my thoughts. “Yeah. I was thinking the same thing. How many people passed by it that day or the days after and didn’t even realize? It’s like that case in Wisconsin. Where the woman’s car was found in that guy’s back forty behind his auto salvage or whatever. That one took way too long to discover, too.”

The trail was quiet once again, aside from the crunch of gravel and the snap of twigs under our boots and the whisper of breeze through the trees. It was peaceful in that way only the woods could be. But now, layered over it all, was a sense of something unfinished. Like the forest itself remembered what had happened here.

“How does someone just disappear?” Myra murmured. “It’s like erasure.”

Nivea let out a low whistle. “Poetic and chilling. I like it.”

I gave her a look, but she just shrugged. “Hey. I host a true-crime podcast. I appreciate that shit,” she said.

We kept walking. I’d always liked this part of the loop, where the trees opened up to a slight overlook, the hills rolling in the distance. It should’ve been a good memory, but today, the air felt heavier. Like something unspoken was pressing against all of us.

“What do you guys think happened to her? Really?” I asked finally.

Myra glanced at me. “You want the narrative that follows the quote-unquote official story? Or what I actually think?”

“Both.”

She stopped and turned to face me, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek. “Officially—and I use the term lightly—she was apparently under a lot of stress. The board said she’d been reprimanded, but as we just discussed, there doesn’t seem to be a record of that anywhere, so who knows if it’s true? There were also rumors of emotional instability, but none of the people close to her who were interviewed afterward actually corroborated that. That report she supposedly filed is also suspiciously missing. Word was that maybe she had a breakdown. Maybe she ran.”