The Summer I Disappeared Chapter 07

The Summer I Disappeared Chapter 07

Leo practically flew back to the McCall house. His thumb kept stabbing redial the whole way. Every time, the same dead voice: “The number you have dialed is not in service.”

Behind him, the equally panicked McCalls. And Tally. Looking utterly lost.

He shoved open the front door. The house was dead silent.

“Winter!”

Leo ran for that dim room at the end of the hall. Threw the door open.

No destruction. No mess.

Just a suffocating kind of clean.

The bed was made perfectly. The desk was empty.

Mom rushed in behind him. Yanked open the closet.

A few old hoodies Tally had discarded long ago hung there.

Every personal item that belonged to Winter McCall was gone. Wiped clean.

“Where… where did she go?”

Mom’s voice shook. Her eyes went red.

In that moment, it finally hit her. She might actually have lost her daughter.

Leo stood frozen in front of the desk.

His gaze drifted down. Landed on the trash can beside it.

With trembling hands, he pulled out the unused gauze and ointment.

He dropped to the floor. The tears came. Hard.

The silence shattered. Dad’s phone rang.

“Mr. McCall, I had a friend in the district office check the application system. I wanted to see which Ivy Winter applied to…”

Ms. Green’s voice came through the speaker. Thick with confusion. And shock.

“Turns out she didn’t apply East Coast at all!”

Dad’s grip on the phone tightened. “Then where?!”

“West Coast… she applied to a university on the West Coast. Almost three thousand miles away!”

The phone slid from Dad’s hand. Hit the floor.

Three thousand miles.

“Was it… was it because we told her to struggle on her own out East…”

Mom’s voice dissolved into sobs.

“Is Winter done with us?”