All the Missing Girls

On the day before the previous chapter’s events take place, Everett is hungover from having gone to the bar with Nic the night before. She alerts Daniel of Everett’s arrival, and he invites them for dinner later that evening.

In the afternoon, Nic and Everett drink coffee downstairs and chat about dinner plans. The subject of Nic’s father comes up, which leads to a discussion about Corinne. Nic has never mentioned Corinne to Everett before. He says Nic has “neglected to tell [him]” (76). Nic thinks about all the parts of her life hidden from her fiancé. When they first met, during “the summer of being Everett’s girlfriend,” she was always available to him and fit neatly into the mold of his life (77).

Nic tells Everett what happened after Corinne’s disappearance. They had just graduated high school. On the day she’d gone missing, they’d already begun searching for her. The investigation was sloppy, and people began blaming each other and becoming suspicious of their neighbors and friends. By the end of the summer, Nic left, and no news of Corinne had surfaced. The assumption is that it had something to do with her then-boyfriend, Jackson Porter, the bartender. 

Nic isn’t sure she believes this. She thinks their relationship was complicated, and that “the simple truth was that when a girl like Corinne loves you, you don’t ask why. You just hope it doesn’t change” (80). One night at a party, Corinne flung herself at Nic’s boyfriend, Tyler. He lightly pushed her away, and she collided with a nearby parked car, mumbling, “Domestic abuse, asshole” (81). Tyler was not amused with Corinne’s games, and voiced his opinion to Nic when she came over. Later on, when Nic broached the subject with her, Corinne plainly stated that now at least everyone knows Tyler is abusive (which they all know to be a lie). 

Some of this made it into the official police investigation, but most of Nic’s memories of Corinne remain a secret. One time a bird flew into the window, and Corinne bashed it to death on the sidewalk with a shovel, putting it out of its misery. Another time, she asked Nic to soap her back on a camping trip, turning around to reveal long, narrow scars from “spine to shoulder blade” (82). Corinne’s presence in Cooley Ridge was enormous, and only grew after she disappeared. 

At Laura and Daniel’s house later that evening, Laura mentions that the cops had been over earlier while Daniel was away fishing. They were asking about Annaleise. Nic tries to stifle the conversation, as she doesn’t want “this dragged into [her] life with him” (85). While they’re eating, Laura mentions that the police should be investigating Tyler more, proceeding to explain that Tyler is “Nic’s Tyler,” meaning Nic’s ex-boyfriend (88). She apologizes for this blunder to Nic later. She’s anxious and scatterbrained from recent events and from the pregnancy, as well. 

Nic pardons herself momentarily to go slip some money Daniel had loaned her into one of his desk drawers. She spots something shiny in the dark, a set of keys with the initial “A” hanging from them. She pockets them, and tells Everett she doesn’t feel well and needs to go home. 

In the car, they bicker about Tyler. Nic explains how young they were, and Everett cracks a few jokes. He then asks if Nic thinks he could be related to the disappearance of the missing girls. She doesn’t give a direct answer, but internally reflects on all the versions of people that exist at once, “like Russian nesting dolls” (93). Despite Everett’s pleas for Nic to come to bed, she repeats once and again that she’s not tired. She feels the key in her pocket.

Nic searches around after her father tells her, “There [is] something in this house with the skeletons” (97). She empties the contents of his closet, finding heaps of old clothing and nothing else. On the floor are two screws whose faces are painted white, like the ceiling. They are missing from the air-conditioning vent, which Nic then removes from the wall. Large amounts of papers and notebooks are crammed inside, but before she can investigate, the doorbell rings. 

Thinking it’s the police, who can enter with a warrant, she returns everything as she found it and opens the front door. The arrive is actually Everett, who has come to help deal with her father and surprise her. He notices her disheveled appearance, if only for a moment, and she takes him on a quick tour of the house. When he looks out the window, into the woods, she tells him she’s lost the ring. Before she can begin to cry, he comforts her. The ring is insured; they will find it. 

They drive over to Grand Pines, and Everett goes to meet with the director while Nic finds her father playing a card game. The nurse who leads her over mentions how popular Patrick, her father, is today, and Nic learns that Tyler has been visiting. She’s not supposed to know this, her father tells her. She attempts to calm herself in order to deal with the task at hand: to tell him that he must not speak with the police anymore: “The police can’t question you. Do not let anyone question you” (108).

She introduces him to Everett, who has arranged for this all, and it seems her father remembers who he is. On their way out, Nic goes to the bathroom to secretly call Tyler. There is no answer. When she hears Everett questioning the nurse about what Patrick had been saying to the police, she rushes out and asks him if he’s ready to leave. 

This gossip is the “most dangerous part of an investigation” (111). When it was clear that they would not be able to find Corinne, all that was left was to do was to talk. They said that the girls—Nic, Corinne, Bailey—were careless and wild, that they acted out and drank with boys. Nic thinks that perhaps it was the case that “we lived too close [and were] too naïve to our own mortalities” (111).  

Nic and Everett are hungry and stop into Kelly’s Pub. They drink double vodka tonics, poured by Jackson. When Nic sees Tyler walk in, she excuses herself and follows him, demanding to know why he’s been visiting her father. Tyler says, “You left, but he didn’t. I don’t just cut people off when they no longer suit me” (116). He’s angry that she’s brought her fiancé to the bar, and tells her to stay away from him so they can both have what they want. 

Nic goes back to the bar, flustered and upset. Jackson tells her she can have one more drink but needs to go. Nic and Everett stumble out to the car, and as he peers up to Tyler’s window, he notes that they are being watched, that he’s “felt it all day” (117).

Back at home, Everett falls asleep in Nic’s bed. She retrieves the hidden papers from the vent in the closet and sits by the fire, destroying the evidence of her parents’ lives.