Nathan knew Jane’s parents suspected he had something to do with Jane’s disappearance. The look in their eyes as they sat across from him at the dining table told him as much. Clearly they saw him as some abomination who had done something terrible to his daughter. At the very least, they were convinced he knew what happened to her and, of course, they weren’t wrong about that.
“We were in the woods, like I said,” Nathan told them and the sheriff, who was scribbling all Nathan said in his little pad. “We saw a light. I swear to God, that’s what happened. It was a light.”
“Like the light we saw a couple of weeks ago?” Nathan’s dad asked him.
“It was blinding. I covered my eyes. Next thing I knew, I woke up in my bed.” This was just as Nathan had rehearsed. He had this down. The lie made his stomach churn with guilt and nerves.
“All you saw was this light?” the sheriff asked. “There were no people there?”
Nathan shook his head. Jane’s mother choked back tears and her father looked like he wanted to reach across the table and backhand Nathan. Everyone looked at him, silently urging him to say more. Give them anything that would let them know what happened to Jane. He knew he couldn’t.
That night, Nathan looked out his bedroom window at the woods. He knew he should search for her. Archie’s voice startled him from his doorway.
“They took Jane, didn’t they?”
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