“If so, that’s really fucked up,” I muttered.
I faced forward again and noticed Roland’s grip had tightened around the steering wheel.
“I’m sorry, Ro,” Dylan murmured.
“Don’t. Let’s just figure this shit out and be done with it. I’m tired of her fucking up everyone’s lives.”
Roland killed the engine and climbed out of the car. I got out too, Dylan followed suit, and Roland led the way up the driveway to get to the door. He didn’t press the doorbell like a person with manners would have done. Instead, he banged on the door with one of his fists.
“Roland, calm down,” I whispered.
He side-eyed me, shoulders hunched, slowly sliding his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.
We stood there a minute. When a few more seconds passed, Roland pressed the doorbell. “I don’t think he’s home,” he said.
I walked around the house to one of the windows and looked through it. It was dark inside, the house vacant. I noticed a wired fence at the back of the house and went toward it.
“Samira!” Roland hissed. “What are you doing? He’s not here!”
“Maybe we’ll find something.” I kept going to the fence and heard Roland groan and Dylan hiss the words “What the fuck?” but they followed me anyway.
I lifted the rusted latch and pushed the gate open, and as soon as I did, something growled and huffed.
“Oh shit!” Dylan howled.
Calvin’s dog was running toward me, galloping like a horse. I gasped and wanted to run, but I couldn’t. My legs locked, every instinct telling me to be still and remain calm.
The dog huffed, bringing its paws up and planting them on my thighs. He started sniffing me and then let out a small bark.
“Good boy,” I said shakily. He remembered me. “Shh . . . good boy. Cannon, is it?” He whimpered then, and I rubbed the top of his head and stroked behind his ears like I saw Calvin do to him. He dropped to his paws again and immediately looked back at Roland and Dylan, snarling at them.
“No, it’s okay.” I bent down to rub his body. “They’re with me. It’s okay.” I stood again, going to the fence and guiding Roland and Dylan ahead. Cannon rushed forward to sniff at them and then he snuffled and turned away, trotting back to the plastic doghouse. Calvin didn’t have much in his backyard. There was a folding chair and a man-made fire pit, and just past the doghouse was a small storage shed.
My eyes swung over to the back door, and it was cracked open.
“Guys.” I pointed at the door.
“No—Samira.” Roland caught my hand just as I was about to grab the doorknob. “We are not about to get charged with breaking and entering.”
“What if there’s something in there that helps us?”
“I don’t care, Samira. We’ll wait for him to come back and get permission to go in. We can’t just go into his house.”
“He’s right, Samira,” Dylan said.
“Let’s just go back to the car and wait,” Roland insisted.
“What if he doesn’t return? What if Melanie is in there hiding right now?”
Roland frowned, then stepped back with a sigh. “This is fucking crazy.”
“I know.” I reached for the doorknob again and pulled it open. The door creaked on its hinges and I walked inside.
“Samira!” Roland hissed again, but he didn’t stop me this time. “Fuck.”
I was in the kitchen. It was small. The countertops were green. It was clean but the faucet was leaky. The walls were white and bland, the floors black and green linoleum.
I went deeper into the house and found myself in the living room, where I’d been last time with Shelia and Ben. Not much was in here but the desk, and I’d already looked through that, so I turned toward the hallway. There were two doors across from each other at the end of the hall. I took the one on the right first. It was a bathroom. I opened the mirror cabinet and there wasn’t much inside it. A razor, some aspirin, soap, shaving cream.
I checked the drawers, hoping to find something that may have screamed it was Melanie’s and that she’d been around recently, but nothing was there. It was all his stuff.
I went across the hall to the other door. This was his bedroom. A single mattress was on top of a metal bed frame. A handmade-looking dresser was against the wall. A closet was across from the bed and I went to open it. There were gray uniforms inside with the name Calvin stitched on the chest. They looked like janitorial uniforms.
A white container was on the floor and I bent down to slide it out. Taking off the lid, I went through the box; it contained files in a file holder, documents, and even his birth certificate.
I dug deeper and came across a photo of Calvin standing with a middle-aged woman. Her features were similar to Melanie and Miley’s. This had to have been their mother, Pauline. I examined the photo closer and there was a chain around Pauline’s neck, a dove hanging on the end.