They walked back up to the house. Billy unlocked the back door and let them into the kitchen. It was a large, bright room the color of cantaloupe rind. There was a small island with a double sink and a dishwasher. Billy gestured toward a wooden kitchen table by the window.

“Recognize it?”

Gibson looked at the table. The picture of Bear had washed it out, but it was the same table.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“That’s it. It was against that wall back then. Suze was sitting right there. That chair,” Billy said. “That exact chair. I took the picture the night we got here. She didn’t want me to. She was so tired, man. But relieved too, you know? She hadn’t been eating real well the last few weeks. She was so thin I couldn’t believe it. Considering. But she was still so beautiful. I was just happy she was here, you know? We were together at last.”

Gibson heard the ache in Billy’s voice and tried to reconstruct the moment in his head. Bear sitting there. Exhausted. Billy excited, like a puppy dog, snapping her picture. He tested the image to see if he believed it. Had sixteen-year-old Billy Casper engineered one of the most famous disappearances in American history? Was it as simple as a couple of kids hiding out at a lake house?

“How long was she here?”

“Six months, two weeks, and a day,” Billy said. “We played a lot of Settlers of Catan.”

“Settlers of what?”

“Catan, man. You’ve never played Settlers? It’s a board game. It’s awesome. She loved it. She was so much better than me, though. Always kicked my butt.”

It defied belief. Two kids hiding out, playing board games, while the FBI tore the country apart looking for them. But then law enforcement had made all the wrong assumptions and gone looking in all the wrong places. One thing was for certain: if Billy’s story weren’t true, then he was either a world-class liar or a world-class lunatic. But try as he might, Gibson couldn’t pick up on a single false note.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“Mr. Musgrove’s sister repainted,” Billy said, “but that’s about it. She packed all Mr. Musgrove’s personal stuff, all the family things, and stored it up in the attic. That’s why it’s so creepy coming here. I mean, it’s the same furniture and everything, just other people’s pictures. Like their lives were just a coat of dust, and someone took a cloth and wiped it away. But that’s how life is, right? You think a place belongs to you, but it doesn’t. You’re just biding time. And time comes someone will box up your stuff too, like you were never here. Man, I hate coming out here.”

“So why do you? You could quit.”