Guilty by Proximity

Chapter 2— The Mill

The police came fast for a town like Cedar Hollow, which meant it was still almost twenty minutes before the first cruiser's lights swept red and blue across the gravel lot. Hazel spent every one of those minutes standing three feet from Liam, neither of them saying much, both of them staring at the same patch of dark like looking away might make it worse somehow.

"You should sit down," Liam said eventually, not looking at her.

"You should sit down."

"I found him. I'm not the one who's shaking."

She hadn't realized she was. She wrapped her arms around herself and didn't argue.

By the time the paramedics arrived, it wasn't really an emergency anymore, just a formality nobody wanted to say out loud. Hazel watched two officers string tape between the trees while a third one talked low into his radio, and somewhere in the space between one breath and the next, the whole night stopped feeling real.

This was the kind of thing that happened in the town over, or the one after that. Not here. Not to somebody she'd known since she was old enough to know anybody.

An officer with a notepad asked her name, her age, and what she was doing there. She answered each question automatically, barely hearing herself, while over his shoulder, two more officers walked Liam toward a cruiser—not in cuffs, not yet, just a hand at his elbow and a stream of careful, measured questions.

"Is he a suspect?" she asked, before she could stop herself.

The officer didn't answer that.

Which was its own kind of answer.

It was after one in the morning when Hazel let herself in the front door, and Ethan was awake, sitting at the kitchen table with his phone in his hand like he'd been holding it that way for a while.

"I got the sheriff's office call," he said. "You're okay. Tell me you're okay."

"I'm okay." She wasn't sure that was true, but it was the version he needed to hear right now, and some old habit in her reached for it automatically.

He looked at her for a long moment, the kind of look that used to make her feel about six years old, then pulled her into a hug that she let happen without pulling away, which was rare enough that he noticed. He didn't say anything about that. He just held on a second longer than usual.

"Milo and Desa asleep?" she asked into his shoulder.

"Out cold. Didn't hear a thing." He pulled back, studying her face like he was checking for damage he couldn't see. "You want to talk about it?"

"Not tonight."

"Okay." He didn't push. That was the thing about her dad. He never pushed, not because he didn't care, but because he'd learned a long time ago that Hazel talked when she was ready and not one second before, and pushing just made the door close faster. "Go to bed. I'll be right here if you need anything."

She went to bed. She didn't sleep, not really, just lay there running the flashlight beam and the shape on the gravel and Liam's cracked voice over and over until the sky outside her window went gray.

By the time she got to school the next morning, everyone already knew.

That was the thing about Cedar Hollow. A secret had maybe a six-hour half-life before it stopped being a secret at all. Hazel walked into a building that felt fundamentally different than it had felt yesterday, hallways thick with the particular hush of a school that had lost someone, punctuated by clusters of kids whispering the same three words over and over:

Mr. Holloway. Murdered. Liam.

She heard his name attached to it before first period even started. Not "the person who found him." Just his name, flat and accusing, passed along like it was already decided.

"They're saying he did it," a girl from her chem class said to no one in particular, loud enough for half the hallway to hear. "Because of the mill vote. Because Holloway was going to vote against his dad's deal or something."

Hazel didn't correct her. She didn't have anything to correct her with. She didn't know what Holloway had planned to vote, didn't know anything except a shape on the gravel and a boy's shaking hands, and even that she didn't fully trust herself to have gotten right in the dark, in the panic, at eleven-something at night with her whole body running on adrenaline and grief she hadn't earned the right to yet.

Liam wasn't at school. She noticed that first thing, the empty seat two rows over in AP Gov where he usually sat looking entirely too pleased with himself, and it felt wrong in a way she wasn't prepared for. She'd spent years wanting that seat empty, wanting one single day without him in it.

Now that it was, she just felt sick.

Someone had already started a group chat. She saw it flash across three different phones by lunch: screenshots, half-true rumors, somebody's older cousin who supposedly worked in the sheriff's office claiming Liam had been "brought in for questioning," which wasn't the same as being arrested, but nobody in that group chat seemed interested in the difference.

She sat alone at lunch, which wasn't unusual, except today it felt less like a choice and more like the only option, everyone else's conversation orbiting a topic she couldn't stomach being part of.

* * *

At home that evening, Milo tossed a bag of chips onto the counter and studied her for a second too long.

"You've got the face," he said.

"What face?"

"The one where you're thinking so loud I can hear it from the hallway." He popped a chip in his mouth, watching her. "You want to talk about it, or you want me to keep making fun of your hair until you forget you're upset?"

"The second one."

"Cool. Also, your hair looks like you lost a fight with a static generator."

It wasn't much. It wasn't supposed to be. But something in her chest loosened half a degree anyway, the specific relief of being around someone who didn't need her to explain herself in order to understand her.

Her aunt called that evening, right as Hazel was helping Desa with a puzzle that was missing at least four pieces, judging by the size of the gap where the barn was supposed to go.

"Hey, kiddo." Dana's voice had that careful, professional warmth to it, the one she used when she was talking to Hazel as a sheriff first and an aunt second, which didn't happen often, and which always made something in Hazel's stomach go tight. "You doing okay? I know last night was a lot."

"I'm fine."

The word again, worn smooth from overuse.

"I believe you're saying that. I don't necessarily believe it's true." A pause, the sound of Dana shifting something on her end, maybe leaning back in a chair. "I've got a few questions, if you're up for it. Nothing you haven't already answered for the officer last night. I just like to hear things myself."

"Okay."

"You said you were out there taking pictures. For the blog."

"For the mill demolition piece. The vote's Thursday." Hazel picked up a puzzle piece, turned it over twice, set it back down without finding where it went. "Was Thursday. I don't know if that's still happening."

"Probably not, given everything." Another pause, longer this time, the kind that meant Dana was choosing her next words deliberately. "Hazel, this is important, and I need you to think before you answer. Do you still have your camera from last night?"

"It's in my bag. Why?"

"Because if you were shooting the mill before you found him, there's a chance you caught something on it. Time-stamped photos, maybe something in the background you didn't even notice you were getting. That could matter a lot right now, for figuring out what actually happened, and for Liam, if it turns out he needs it."

Hazel sat very still, the puzzle piece forgotten in her hand.

"Good. I'll need you to bring it by the station tomorrow, or I can swing by after your dad gets home, whichever's easier." Dana's voice softened, just slightly, the aunt bleeding back through the sheriff for a second. "You did good last night, kid. Calling it in. Staying with him. I know that couldn't have been easy."

Hazel didn't answer that.

Her camera had been running the entire time. She'd never turned it off, not when she found him, not when she called 911, not through any of it. It had been slung around her neck this whole day, sitting in her bag right now, untouched, its memory card holding whatever it had seen in those last minutes before everything fell apart.

She hadn't looked at a single frame.