Absent Alice

Chapter 3: Brand New Eyes

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The room starts to rotate around a wobbling axis, like a slowly turning globe. For so long I've assumed that Ethan was hurt and taken, just like Alice. I even wrote that into my book, he helped her stage the crime scene so that she could disappear easily. He drove her to Indiana where she met up with Kate, a girl who also had powers and took Alice under her wing, literally. Now the fact that he could be the person who hurt my sister is unbearable. Flashes of them dancing together at Mike's still play across my memory. How close together they were, how their hands were always interlocked. How at night even though he was supposed to sleep on our couch downstairs, he'd sneak into Alice's room. How they'd giggle like little kids as he shut the door behind him.

"He had another identity online, an identity who had many unsent emails detailing his plan to kidnap your sister."

"What do you, what do you mean?"

"Ethan must have known that when he and Alice went missing, we would look through both of their computers and online profiles." Detective Hines rubs his chin. "But recently our facial recognition software discovered an email account with a picture of him as the profile under a different name. We thought it might point us to his whereabouts as well as Alice's."

I bite my lip until blood burns my tongue.

Detective Hines clears his throat, taking a sip of water from one of our glasses sitting on the table. How long as he been here? "That was until we went through his drafts. He had been writing about your sister Alice. He talked about them meeting that summer in Florida, and how they started a relationship. It read almost like a diary at first. We assume he didn't have any intention of sending them, he wanted to be able to go back and read them without leaving a trail. Any Word files would be stored on his computer and he knew we would find them."

My dad stands up from the table and curses before storming out of the room, the china cabinet rattling. "Joshua." Mom calls after him, but he doesn't even acknowledge her voice. "Jayce I'll be right back. Excuse me Detective." She follows after my dad, down into the basement.

I fidget uncomfortably in my seat. If my parents already know what Detective Hines is going to say, it has to be pretty horrible for my dad to completely leave; he's distant, not rude.

"May I go on? Or would you rather wait for your parents?" Detective Hines clears the air.

"No, you can go ahead. Might as well get it over with." I attempt to talk above a whisper.

"Jayce like I already said, this is going to be hard to hear. Things you might've been telling yourself for quite some time, those things may not be true anymore okay?"

I nod. I really respect the way that he talks to me, like I'm actually an adult and not a fragile toddler with glass for skin.

"The emails started to change tones during the time that he and your sister were apart. It was mostly him saying how much he missed her and him detailing the effects of his depression. At one point he even said that he wanted to kill himself because he couldn't be with her."

I remember Alice telling me how clingy he was. She liked that an older guy did the chasing. "He texts me all the time, says how he can't live without me. Isn't that just romantic?" At the time I thought it was, I was even occasionally jealous.

"These entries took place after your family left Florida and before he came up here for the rest of the summer."

"But when he stayed with us, he seemed fine."