If Anyone Asks

Nate

At 2:17 in the morning, there are only three reasons to be driving down Old Mill Road. You’re lost, you’re looking for somewhere nobody will find you, or you’re leaving somewhere you never should have been in the first place.

Unfortunately for me, it’s the third one.

I keep one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting against my thigh, trying not to think about the dull ache spreading across my knuckles. The skin over two of them is split badly enough that I can feel the cuts pulling whenever I flex my fingers. Most of the blood has dried by now, dark in the creases of my skin and beneath my thumbnail, with another streak smeared across the cuff of my shirt where I must have wiped my hand without realizing it. I noticed it about ten minutes ago and immediately decided not to look again. There are certain things that become more real once you start examining them, and tonight I have reached my limit on things I need to be real.

My headlights stretch across the empty road ahead, illuminating cracked pavement, dense trees, and the occasional mailbox before everything disappears into darkness again. There aren’t any streetlights this far outside Briarwood. There aren’t many houses, either. Mostly old farmland, woods, and sprawling properties hidden behind iron gates and private drives, the kind of places people buy when they have enough money to make privacy feel like something they’re entitled to. I should have taken Route 16. It would have added twelve minutes, but it would have kept me on the highway, where there are gas stations and cameras and other cars. Normal things. Things that make a person look like he has nothing to hide.

Instead, I chose Old Mill Road because there are fewer cameras.

At the time, that felt intelligent.

Now it feels like the kind of decision somebody might ask me to explain later.

My phone vibrates in the cupholder. I don’t need to look at the screen to know who it is. It stops after several seconds, only to start again almost immediately. When I finally glance down, Dad is glowing across the screen for the fourth time in less than twenty minutes. I let it ring until the screen goes black. My father and I have spent years perfecting the art of disappointing each other, but tonight feels different. There’s an urgency to these calls that wasn’t there when I left. The first one came eight minutes after I got into my car. The second came four minutes later. Then the texts started.

Call me.

Where are you?

Nate. Answer your fucking phone.

I haven’t. Not because I’m afraid of what Richard Hawthorne will say, but because I already know exactly how the conversation will go. He’ll tell me what I should have done differently. He’ll tell me what happens next. He’ll remind me that one impulsive decision can destroy a person’s life while conveniently ignoring the fact that Hawthorne money has spent decades ensuring consequences are mostly something that happens to other families. My father doesn’t panic. He strategizes. He makes calls. He moves pieces around until whatever problem exists no longer exists, or at least can’t be traced back to us. If Richard Hawthorne is calling me repeatedly at two in the morning, something has gone wrong enough that even he hasn’t figured out how to control it yet.

I turn the phone facedown and press harder on the accelerator. The engine responds immediately, seventy-five becoming eighty as the trees on either side blur into one continuous wall of black. I should slow down, but my head is too loud and speed helps. It forces me to concentrate on the curve ahead instead of the last hour. On keeping the car between the faded yellow lines instead of the sound that keeps replaying in my head. On anything other than the expression on—

No.

I tighten my fingers around the steering wheel until my knuckles throb.

There are things I am not going to think about until I’m somewhere with a locked door and enough bourbon to make remembering optional.

The road bends sharply to the right. My headlights sweep across the tree line, and something moves at the edge of the pavement.

I slam on the brakes.

The tires scream against the road. My seat belt locks violently across my chest as the back end of the car jerks sideways before catching again. Adrenaline tears through me so fast that for a second I don’t understand what I’m looking at. My first thought is deer. There are enough of them out here that hitting one isn’t exactly unusual.

Then the shape turns around.

It’s a girl.

She’s standing maybe fifteen feet in front of my car, caught directly in the headlights with one arm wrapped tightly around her stomach and the other hanging strangely at her side. Long brown hair covers part of her face. She’s wearing some kind of pale dress, and there’s something wrong with the way she’s standing, her shoulders curved inward and her weight shifted awkwardly onto one leg as though remaining upright requires conscious effort.

She’s barefoot.

I put the car in park and stare through the windshield. There is something inherently unsettling about seeing another person alone on a road like this at this hour. The nearest gas station is at least six miles away. There are no sidewalks, no businesses, no reasonable explanation for someone to be walking here. I look automatically for a disabled car, headlights, anything that would explain how she got here, but the road behind her is completely empty.

Then she lifts her face.

And I recognize her.

“Avery.”

Her name leaves my mouth quietly even though the windows are closed and there’s no chance she can hear me.

Avery Ellis.

I know her in the vague way you know people after spending three years on the same college campus. We’ve been at the same parties. I think we had a class together sophomore year, although I couldn’t tell you which one. I know she works somewhere downtown and lives off campus with two other girls. I know she dated a lacrosse player last year because I remember seeing them together, though I don’t remember his name. I know she’s pretty, because I’ve noticed that more than once, but Avery has never seemed particularly interested in being noticed. She isn’t the girl dancing on tables at fraternity parties or collecting athletes’ phone numbers. She has her own friends, her own life, the kind that has never intersected with mine for longer than a passing glance.

Until now.

I open the driver’s door, and cold air rushes into the car. “Avery.”

Her entire body jerks.

I step onto the road slowly. “It’s Nate.”

“I know.”

Her voice is so quiet I almost don’t hear it.

I shut the door and take two steps toward her. She immediately moves backward, and I stop. For the first time, I get a clear look at her expression. She isn’t relieved to see someone she recognizes. She isn’t embarrassed that a guy from college caught her wandering down an empty road barefoot in the middle of the night.

She’s terrified.

Not startled. Not nervous.

Terrified.

And that’s when I see the blood.

For a second, my brain refuses to understand what my eyes are showing me. Her dress is cream or white beneath the glare of my headlights, and the stains covering the front are dark enough that they initially look black. There’s a large smear down one side of the skirt, another across her waist, and smaller marks along the front. Then she shifts slightly and red catches beneath the headlights.

My stomach drops.

There is blood all over her.

Not a scraped-hand amount. Not something that could reasonably be explained by a bloody nose or a fall. Enough that whatever happened before I found her wasn’t small.

“What happened?”

Avery looks down at herself, and the fact that she seems almost surprised by what she sees is worse than the blood itself. I move toward her without thinking, but she recoils so quickly that I stop.

“Don’t.”

“Okay.” I keep my distance. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

The answer comes too fast.

I look at her more carefully. Dirt streaks one side of her face. A bruise is beginning to darken beneath her cheekbone, partially hidden by strands of hair stuck to her skin. Her right knee is scraped badly enough that dried blood runs halfway down her shin, but that doesn’t explain the amount covering the dress. Her bare feet are filthy, tiny pieces of gravel stuck to the damp skin around her toes, and there’s a shallow cut along one heel.

“Do you need a hospital?”

“No.”

“Avery.”

“I don’t need a hospital.”

Something about the wording makes me stop. She doesn’t say she’s fine. She doesn’t say she isn’t hurt. She says she doesn’t need a hospital, and there is a difference between those things.

I glance past her toward the road. Nothing moves beyond the reach of my headlights. The pavement disappears around the bend behind her, and beyond that are several miles of woods, a handful of enormous private properties, and eventually the old quarry road. My eyes return to Avery.

“Where’s your phone?”

Her hand immediately moves toward the side of her dress as if she’s checking for it. “I don’t have it.”

“What happened to it?”

“I lost it.”

She looks away when she says it.

I know a lie when I hear one. I’ve spent most of my life surrounded by people who are very good at them.

Avery isn’t.

“Where’s your car?”

“I don’t have one.”

I look at her feet again. “How long have you been walking?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where did you come from?”

Silence.

The question changes something. Her shoulders stiffen and her eyes lift to mine, and for a second I see something beneath the fear. Calculation. She’s trying to figure out why I’m asking. More importantly, she’s trying to figure out what I already know.

The realization makes something uncomfortable settle beneath my ribs.

I glance down the road behind her again. There aren’t many places she could have come from. That thought arrives quietly, and I shove it away before I can follow it anywhere.

“Whose blood is that?”

Avery goes completely still.

I know immediately that I shouldn’t have asked.

Her face empties in a way that’s somehow more disturbing than panic would have been. The fear doesn’t disappear exactly. It retreats somewhere deeper, somewhere I can’t reach.

“I don’t know.”

I stare at her.

She wraps her arms tighter around herself. “I don’t know,” she repeats, and this time her voice shakes.

There are moments when another person’s lie feels insulting. This isn’t one of them. This feels like a warning.

My phone begins vibrating inside the car, and Avery flinches at the sound. We both look toward it. The screen glows through the windshield.

Dad.

Again.

I don’t move.

Avery looks at me. “You should answer.”

“I know.”

The phone continues ringing until eventually it stops, leaving us in silence again.

There is an obvious thing I should do next. Call the police. There is a barefoot girl covered in blood standing on an isolated road at two in the morning. She has no phone, no transportation, and no explanation for how she got here. This is exactly the kind of situation that requires police officers and paramedics and people whose job it is to ask the questions Avery refuses to answer.

Except the thought of police arriving here makes every muscle in my body tighten.

They would ask Avery questions.

Then they would ask me questions.

Where were you coming from?

Why are your knuckles bleeding?

Why did you take Old Mill Road?

Why didn’t you call anyone sooner?

Maybe the fact that those questions matter to me makes me a bad person.

It wouldn’t exactly be new information.

I reach into the car and pick up my phone.

Avery’s face drains of color.

“No.”

I look at her.

“Please don’t call anyone.”

Her voice breaks slightly on the last word. It’s the first time she has sounded less defensive than desperate, and something about it stops me.

“I’m not calling anyone.”

She watches my face carefully.

I put the phone back down.

Her shoulders loosen by less than an inch.

“Do the police need to be involved in whatever happened to you tonight?”

“No.”

Too quick.

“Did somebody hurt you?”

She looks away.

“Avery.”

“I want to go home.”

The words are quiet, and for the first time since I stopped, she sounds tired rather than frightened. Completely exhausted. Whatever adrenaline got her this far is beginning to wear off, and I can see what it’s leaving behind. Her body trembles in small, involuntary movements she keeps trying to control.

I know that feeling too.

“Let me take you home.”

Her eyes return to mine. “No.”

“You can’t walk.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

I look at the darkness behind her. “From here?”

She says nothing.

I don’t know Avery well enough to know whether she’s stubborn normally or whether tonight has reduced her world to refusing every option presented to her. Either way, arguing isn’t going to get me anywhere. I walk back toward the car instead.

She watches me the entire way.

I open the driver’s door, lean inside, and unlock the passenger side. The mechanical click carries through the silence. Then I get behind the wheel and leave my door open.

I don’t tell her to get in.

I don’t need to.

The engine idles softly while I wait. Thirty seconds pass, then a minute. Avery remains beneath the headlights, arms wrapped around herself, looking from me to the road behind her. The second time she looks over her shoulder, something changes in her expression.

Fear.

Not of me.

Of whatever is back there.

Avery starts walking toward the car.

Slowly at first, then faster.

She circles the hood and reaches the passenger door, but she doesn’t open it immediately. Her hand closes around the handle while she looks through the car at me.

“If I get in, you don’t call anyone.”

“I won’t.”

“You don’t take me to a hospital.”

“Okay.”

“And you don’t take me to the police.”

I hold her gaze for several seconds before nodding. “Okay.”

She opens the door, but still doesn’t climb inside.

“And you don’t ask me what happened.”

That one is harder. Not because I’m entitled to know, but because suddenly I want to. I want to know why Avery Ellis is standing on Old Mill Road covered in somebody’s blood. I want to know where she came from. And I especially want to know why a possibility I haven’t allowed myself to examine keeps forming in the back of my mind.

I push it away.

“Okay.”

She gets in.

The passenger door closes.

It’s an ordinary sound, soft and mechanical, one I’ve heard thousands of times.

Tonight it feels strangely final.

I put the car in drive and pull away.

For the first several minutes, neither of us speaks. Avery presses herself against the passenger door and watches the trees pass outside. Her hands are folded tightly in her lap, but they won’t stop shaking. Every so often, her fingers move toward her waist before she seems to catch herself and pulls them back again. I turn the heat higher without mentioning it. She glances toward the controls, then toward me.

“Thank you.”

I nod.

Silence returns, but it isn’t uncomfortable. Maybe because neither of us wants to talk. Maybe because whatever Avery is hiding has created an invisible boundary between us, and I have no right to cross it when I’ve spent the entire drive from that house doing exactly the same thing.

“Where do you live?”

She gives me the address.

I know the building. It’s across town, almost twenty-five minutes away, and I turn at the next intersection without telling her how far we’ve gone in the wrong direction.

As we drive, Avery starts rubbing at a dark stain near her wrist. At first I think it’s dirt, but then I realize it’s dried blood. She scrapes at it with her thumbnail until the skin beneath turns pink.

“Avery.”

She stops immediately.

I don’t tell her what I was going to say.

I’m not sure what it was anyway.

My phone vibrates twice in the cupholder. I ignore it. A few miles later, Avery finally speaks.

“Why were you out here?”

The question catches me off guard. I glance at her, but she’s staring through the windshield.

“You said no questions.”

“I said you couldn’t ask what happened to me.”

I almost point out the convenient distinction, but don’t. I consider telling her something easy. A party. A girl. Couldn’t sleep. Went for a drive. Any of those would probably satisfy her.

Instead, I say, “I had somewhere to be.”

Her head turns slightly. “Out there?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

I don’t answer.

The silence stretches between us.

Eventually, Avery looks away.

She understands.

Maybe that’s the first thing we actually learn about each other tonight. There are questions neither of us is willing to answer, and neither of us is in a position to demand honesty.

The rest of the drive passes mostly in silence. When we reach Briarwood, the streets are nearly empty. The bars closed more than an hour ago, leaving abandoned cars along the curbs and plastic cups crushed in gutters. Campus sits dark several blocks away, stone buildings rising behind trees that have only begun to lose their leaves. Everything looks normal. Quiet. Safe. It feels strangely distant from the road we just left.

At a red light, I look at Avery.

Her eyes are closed, but she isn’t sleeping. I can tell from the tension in her jaw. There’s a faint smear of blood along the side of her neck that I didn’t notice earlier, and another tiny mark close to her hairline.

Something happened to her.

The thought sends an unexpected surge of anger through me.

I don’t know why.

I don’t know her well enough to feel protective of her, and I certainly don’t know enough about tonight to decide who deserves my anger. For all I know, the blood covering her belongs to someone she hurt.

Maybe someone she killed.

The possibility should make me want to get her out of my car.

Instead, I find myself wondering what someone did to make her do it.

That thought bothers me enough that I look away.

The light changes.

I drive.

When we reach her apartment building, I pull into the small lot behind it. Only six cars are parked outside, and most of the windows are dark. Avery reaches for the handle immediately.

“Wait.”

Her hand stops.

I take off my jacket and hold it toward her. “You can’t walk inside like that.”

She looks down at herself.

For a moment, she seems to have forgotten again.

That unsettles me more than I want it to.

She takes the jacket and slips it on. It’s far too large, the sleeves swallowing her hands and the hem reaching almost to her knees, but that’s useful. The dark fabric covers most of the blood.

“Thank you.”

Her voice is quieter now.

She reaches for the door again.

Then her eyes drop to my hand.

I follow her gaze.

Shit.

The overhead light from the parking lot makes everything easier to see. The split skin. The dried blood. The bruising already spreading across my knuckles.

Avery stares.

I curl my fingers instinctively.

Too late.

“What happened to your hand?”

For the first time tonight, our positions have reversed. She’s the one asking questions, and I’m the one calculating how much truth I can afford.

“It’s nothing.”

Her gaze stays on my hand. “That’s blood.”

“It’s mine.”

Mostly.

Avery’s eyes lift slowly to my face.

I don’t know what she sees there, but whatever it is makes her stop asking.

She opens the passenger door and puts one foot outside.

“Avery.”

Her shoulders tense.

I shouldn’t ask.

I promised I wouldn’t.

But the question has been sitting between us since I saw her beneath my headlights, and now that she’s about to disappear into her apartment, I can’t stop myself.

“Whose blood is on your dress?”

Her back goes rigid.

For several seconds, she remains facing away from me. Then she slowly turns her head.

There is something different in her expression now. The fear is still there, but underneath it is something heavier.

Guilt.

“I don’t know.”

The same answer.

Except this time, something about the way she says it makes me wonder whether she might actually mean it.

She climbs out of the car.

I watch her cross the parking lot. My jacket reaches almost to her knees. She walks carefully, favoring one foot, and doesn’t look back until she reaches the entrance. For one second, our eyes meet through the windshield.

Then she disappears inside.

I remain parked there.

Thirty seconds.

A minute.

I don’t know what I’m waiting for.

Eventually, a light turns on in a second-floor apartment.

Only then do I pull away.

My phone starts ringing before I’ve made it two blocks.

Dad.

This time, I answer.

“What?”

There is silence on the other end. I can hear him breathing.

Then my father says, “Where are you?”

“Driving.”

“Where?”

“Briarwood.”

Another pause.

“You went back?”

Something cold moves through me.

“I live here.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

I don’t respond.

His voice lowers. “Nate, listen to me carefully. Did anyone see you leave?”

My fingers tighten around the steering wheel.

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

I think of Avery standing beneath my headlights. Bare feet. Blood-soaked dress. Terrified eyes.

“Yes.”

The lie comes easily.

My father exhales, but it doesn’t sound like relief. It sounds like he’s moving on to the next problem.

Then he asks, “Did you pick anyone up?”

Everything inside me goes still.

I don’t answer.

“Nate.”

I look into the rearview mirror, even though Avery’s apartment building disappeared several turns ago.

“Why would you ask me that?”

Another silence.

Long enough that my pulse begins to climb.

When my father finally speaks, his voice has changed.

“Come home.”

“I am going home.”

“No. My house.”

My jaw tightens. “Why?”

“I’ll explain when you get here.”

“Explain now.”

“I said come home.”

I almost hang up.

Then he says something that stops me.

“And don’t stop anywhere else.”

The line goes dead.

I stare at my phone before tossing it back into the cupholder.

For the first time since leaving, I allow myself to think about where I was tonight.

Not what happened.

Not yet.

Just the place.

The long private drive disappearing between the trees. The enormous house at the end of it. The dark windows. The shouting. The sickening sound of something hitting the floor. The blood on my hand.

And the road leading away from it.

Old Mill Road.

The same road where I found Avery Ellis walking barefoot less than an hour later.

I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything. There are dozens of houses out there. Miles of woods. Private drives. Side roads. Avery could have come from anywhere.

At the next red light, my phone lights up.

A text from my father.

Delete your location history.

I stare at the message.

A car behind me honks when the light turns green.

I put the phone facedown and start driving again.

My knuckles have begun bleeding.

I must have been gripping the wheel too tightly because fresh red slips between my fingers and runs slowly across the side of my hand.

I loosen my grip.

For the rest of the drive to my father’s house, I try not to think about Avery.

I try not to think about the road.

Mostly, I try not to think about the possibility that she came from the same place I did.

It doesn’t work.