Chapter 6

“Thanks for being here for me, but I don't need a babysitter to come with me to fix my Ilem messes; I got into the eye of the hurricane with Grace, I can only get out"

Her brother's look was determined, he wasn't going to let her go with him, a very small part of her was proud of that gesture, Gabe was already stopping running in circles and was walking like everyone else in a straight line, no more Following Grace's ideas was now facing mistakes and trying to fix them.

"Okay, I'm going to wait for you here in the car, but if more than thirty minutes go by and you're still there, I'll come get you"

Gabe didn't say anything, he just got out of the car without looking back, when Gabe disappeared inside the police station, a car well known to Ilem stopped a few parking spaces away, for a while no one got out, Ilem knew that car It was Ian's mother's but the surprising thing was not to see Ian get out of the car, she assumed that he also came to support his friend, what was truly incredible was to see Amanda Cramer, the supposed officer, get out of the car a second later. passenger seat.

Amanda seemed angry in fact she walked without listening to what Ian was saying, well actually she seemed furious, Ilem couldn't hear her talk but Amanda's gestures were abrupt, she pointed to Ian, to herself and towards the police station, it seemed that Ian was also arguing what she said.

Finally, Amanda slapped him and left with her red hair in the air, she was not wearing an officer's uniform, she realized that Ilem went to see her enter the police station. Ian reluctantly walked to the car he had just gotten out of with the furious redhead, when Ilem finally snapped out of her reverie; she quickly got out of her car and she stepped into the path of Ian's moving car.

"Are you crazy or what's wrong Fuller?! I could have hurt you!"

Ian stormed down and yelled at her, he was so upset that he was yelling like he had never heard at least not with her, and she suspected this wasn't about almost running her over, this had Amanda Cramer written all over it.

"What the hell were you doing with Amanda Cramer getting out of your Martin car?"

"Number one, are you spying on me now? Two, that's none of your business Fuller, how does whoever is with me or not affect you?"

Ilem's eyebrows might have reached her hairline at that moment from what Ian clarified.

"In the abandoned car at my high school.

Ian sighed in exasperation as he realized that she was still thinking wrongly"

“I don't know what you're up to, Ian, but if it affects my brother, stay away. It's enough that your car was at the scene of the disappearance, I don't trust you"

Ian left the good mood that he had just experienced because of Ilem's off-color thoughts, but he didn't say anything, he continued to listen to the little chestnut's claims, like a mother.

“Look silly little girl, my life doesn't revolve around your brother, if I'm here it's because of me and Amanda, Grace and her disappearance you can go fry asparagus; Gabe sooner or later will get over it, he is not the first nor the last to suffer from loving someone who does not love him back"

Now this was serious, the idiot called her little girl as he used to tell her when she was only ten years old and he bothered her with her height.

"So you have issues with Amanda too, right? This isn't supposed to be about Gabe, but you seem to love the crap my brother leaves behind, what's the saying? One man's trash another's treasure"

"Shut up or I swear Ilem that..."

She moved toward him until her chest almost touched his.

"What are you going to do, Martin? you will make me disappear like Grace, she also knew much more than you would like it is not true Ian"

Ian's face paled as much as if it were a ghost.

"How much do you know about anything Ilem?

Ian asked threateningly"

“No, Ian the problem is not what I know, the real problem is what I know that the police don't know yet.

she threatened, maybe it was luck and Ian had made Grace go away from her, maybe he had also had affairs with her, maybe Gabe shouldn't have known that either.

"You should stop watching horror movies Ilem, I'm not trying to hide anything, it's true I don't want Gabe to find out about Amanda and me, mainly because there is no Amanda and me, if in the past there were things, nonsense, but they they were no longer together"

Ilem wasn't at all convinced by Ian's words, rather it seemed like something rehearsed to confuse her.

"You know what… I'm going to tell you what happens with this whole Amanda thing but not here and not now, I'm going to do it not because I care what you think, but because I know that at any moment you are going to point in my direction to the police if you don't have everything clear"

He turned his back on her and walked back to the car, she stepped out of the way without a glance back at Ian, he was her friend too, not just Gabe's but for so long she had only seen him as her brother's best friend, well his shadow rather, Gabe was; therefore also Ian. And she herself had stopped being a friend to him.

There was no excuse she had sponsored that he didn't trust her to tell her things either.

"What are you doing standing there, Ilem?"

She looked at Gabe and pondered her response for a while before telling him anything she might regret later.

"I said that if you were late I would come looking for you, you took a long time in there, so I went out for you"

"Well it was awkward"

Gabe said already on his way to drop her off at school again.

"I thought Amanda was going to take my statements but it was another officer, there wasn't much to tell because before she disappeared I hadn't seen her for a week, she went to Hannah's house for a few days and then I went to that competition on the coast , that Friday we were supposed to meet at the party but she never came"

Gabe's voice broke at the end of that sentence but he didn't stop talking.

"You know; I thought it was fun, sometimes a little depressing, this game of the mouse and the cat that she liked to play, she would leave one day without telling anyone, and a week later she felt like it like nothing... I don't understand it, look at me, I'm even talking about her in the past"

"That's not bad Gabe, you're trying to make sense of a world where she's gone just like all of us, maybe she just went home, haven't you thought about that?"

"I know that she is not in her house, she could not return, she had nowhere to return, rather."

Ilem didn't ask anything else, she didn't want to make her brother talk about Grace anymore and she didn't want to know about what Grace felt, that would make Grace seem like a person and not the crazy evil she imagined, she needed that so as not to feel that maybe it was his fault she wasn't there today.

Get out before mom kills you for skipping a precious day of school.

"You missed your classes too, so don't lecture me.

He laughed looking younger and less lost as he did"

"Yes, but mom is not the director of the university."

"I hate you brother"

She rolled her eyes.

"You know you adore me, darling."

Ilem waved goodbye to him and saw the car move away from the road, but there were still things to solve, there were still pieces missing from the puzzle that Grace Miller had left behind because when she left, she left thousands of pieces. There are people who change you because they arrive, Ilem thought, and there are others who change you because they leave.