CHAPTER 144

DARLENE

My mouth felt dry when the static of memory dropped into my head, like the flash of a camera lens going off in the darkroom of my mind and the restive blindness that followed.

We had been sixteen, fresh out of high school and setting our sights on world domination when Laura’s birthday rolled around.

I'd first seen it at the dollar store, the trench coat. Brown leather that shone through the blue-tinted glass. Laura was instantly in love with it, I could tell by the teary glimmer in her doe eyes, and the sag in her shoulders when we pulled our puffy faces from the squeaky clean window.

And later, the way her eyes lit up when I’d hurled it at her head by the cozy fireplace of my father’s cottage house.

The same brown trench coat the figure standing quietly in the shadows was wearing now as the beat of silence stretched between us.

“L-Laura? I-is that you?” I croaked, willing the shake in my hands to still as the flashlight dropped from my hands to the grass wordlessly, the fluo