I remember when we stopped getting emails and letters from the Malloy sisters. It was the summer after my 6th grade year. The emails, phone calls and letters had become less frequent as time passed, though. The Malloys hadn't visited because of their dad's busy coaching schedule and Dad didn't get many holidays as a mail carrier. We were always busy with the Bensons and various other things.

Jake, Steve and Tony were all involved in sports and they didn't have time to write letters to girls that were becoming nothing more than an amusing memory. The three of them joined everything together. Hockey in the fall, baseball in the spring. Josh wasn't really into sports and stuck with his art. Along the way he picked up photography and graphic design, getting a job at the school newspaper and on the yearbook.

Bill, Danny and I did our own things, too, though not always together. Bill liked swimming and joined the swim team. Danny didn't join any sports, deciding it wasn't for him, so he went with the yearbook, like Josh. I felt left out, especially when Peter and Doug both joined cross country together in middle school. I still didn't have anything to call mine until the coach at the high school convinced me to try out for football in 9th grade.

For some reason, I made the team. I didn't think I was that good, but the coach said he "saw potential" in me. So I, Wally Hatford, played sports on an organized team for the first time in my life. At first, I felt like an idiot. I didn't care a whole lot about winning, and I knew that wasn't what I was supposed to think. All the other guys certainly cared, but it was nice to be a part of something as a group. I practiced hard and at first, I didn't get put into games that much, but I didn't really expect to be. No one else in my family was in football, so it was something I had that was just mine. None of the Benson's were on the football team, either.

We went about our lives, having fun and playing jokes on each other without any thought to the Malloys until one late spring day, years later.

Out of the blue, mom brought it up at the dinner table.

We were eating roasted chicken, biscuits and salad when mom suddenly put her fork down and stared at us eating. I think I was the first to notice because she caught me looking at her. My dad was second to notice and then slowly, my brothers noticed. Peter was last to notice, too busy scarfing down mac n' cheese to realize that mom was going to say something important. I elbowed him in the side.

"Huh?" Peter looked up, bewildered. Everyone had paused in their eating because mom wasn't talking about work at the hardware store or the other things she was involved in around Buckman.

"This is going to sound so silly. I was organizing some old scrap wallpaper at the hardware store and it got me thinking. Do you guys ever remember what happened to those Malloy girls?" she asked.

I hadn't thought about them in years.

"They stopped replying to emails and letters years ago and we were so busy with other things that we both just stopped talking to each other," I explained. Mom looked disappointed.

"What about calling them?" she asked. Jake and Josh looked at each other and then at Peter and I.

"I haven't tried calling them in years, not since they stopped responding to emails. I don't even remember their number," Josh said with a shrug.

"I tried to call them once about a year ago, using the number that they gave us," Peter said. Everyone turned to look at him.

"Well?" Jake wondered expectantly.

"It said the number was no longer in service," Peter said. Mom sighed.

"Well, perhaps you boys could do me a favor and try to locate them. I know you have ways of doing that," she said. I could tell by the silence that my brothers and I were all thinking the same thing. Jake decided to voice it out loud.

"Why now?"

Our mom shrugged and smiled.

"I haven't spoken to Mrs. Malloy in years and I regret losing contact with her. I want to see how they're all doing. Shirley Benson and I were talking and we both agreed that we could have made more of an effort to stay in contact with the Malloys. I mean, Edith Ann is Jake and Josh's age, which means she's about to graduate from high school and that's an important milestone in life. We should at least send her something, a card or a gift."

Dad nodded.

"It would be nice to see how the Coach is doing. I wonder if they're still in Ohio," he said.

After dinner, we gathered in Jake and Josh's room. Josh handed me his laptop.

"You're the expert at finding things, so have at it."

I went to Google and typed, "Coach George Malloy" and "Ohio" into the search bar. It wasn't that difficult, but since I had a memory for details, I always ended up doing the legwork.

"Well? Did you find anything?" Jake asked.

The first search result confused me. It was an article published by an Ohio news agency three years ago.

"Yeah, hold on; let me read through it a little," I said, clicking on the article. The headline read, "Popular College Football Coach and Wife Killed in Double Homicide; Daughter Hospitalized."

I scanned through the article to make sure it was about the same Coach Malloy and that it wasn't some kind of horrible coincidence.

"So, are they still in Ohio?" Peter asked eagerly.

"Uh…well, I suppose you could say that," I said, realizing that the article detailed the story quite vividly and that it was talking about the same Coach Malloy that had lived in Buckman. I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jake demanded, moving closer.

"Well, this is why we didn't hear from them," I said, turning the computer around so that they could read the headline for themselves. The three of them leaned forward and read the headline.

"Homicide? As in murder?" Jake hissed.

Josh and Peter's eyes grew huge but they remained silent.

"What does it say?" Josh asked quietly.

I turned the computer around and read the article out loud. It talked about a young college student who had fallen into meth and other drugs. He failed his drug test and was kicked off Coach Malloy's football team. After that he lost his scholarship and could no longer afford to go to school. He was put on academic probation, was convicted of selling drugs and then kicked out altogether.

"Is he the one that…killed them?" Peter whispered, as if that was even necessary.

"Yes," I answered, before continuing to read the article out loud.

Then it described the night of the murder. It was summer, in July. Coach Malloy and his wife, Jean, were home with their youngest daughter, Caroline, age 11. Their other daughters, Bethany and Edith Ann, ages 13 and 14, were not at home when the attack occurred.

"Beth and Eddie weren't home?" Josh breathed, sounding almost relieved.

"It says Beth was spending the night at a friend's house and Eddie was at a sports camp."

"What happened to Caroline?" Peter wondered.

"I haven't gotten that far yet," I replied, the creeping sensation of dread getting worse the more I read about it.

The rest of the article detailed the rest of the night. The guy broke into the house and went into the master bedroom. Coach Malloy woke up and ran to get the phone, but the football player shot him through the chest with a shotgun at close range. I saw Jake and Josh wince.

I described how Mrs. Malloy had woken up when her husband got up and tried to make a getaway as well. Her husband's body blocked the door and the former football player shot her too, also in the chest.

"And Caroline?" Peter prompted. I swallowed the lump in my throat.

I explained how Caroline woke up at the sound of the first shot. She didn't leave her bedroom and then there was the second shot. According to her court testimony, she waited until she heard the intruder go downstairs and into another room before she left her bedroom and discovered her parent's bodies.

"Oh, God…" I muttered out loud, leaning back in my chair as I scanned the rest.

"What?" Jake and Josh asked at the same time.

I closed my eyes and sighed. I opened my eyes and read the description of what happened, all the way up until the 911 call ended.

"Did she live?" Josh demanded.

"Yes, but with a lot of injuries. The article didn't go into specific details about them."

"Does it say where they are now?" Peter wondered.

"No, it just says they went to live with a relative out of state," I replied, scrolling to the bottom of the article. I froze when I saw an audio clip button. I hovered over it and the title popped up; it said 911 Call.

"What? What else?" Josh asked, seeing my face.

"They have an audio clip of Caroline's 911 call," I hissed. We sat there silently for a minute, staring at each other again. Is this something I want to listen to?

"Play it," Jake ordered.

I frowned. "I don't know if we should be listening to this, I mean, it's personal! It's morbid."

"Yeah, but it's on the internet and 911 calls are a matter of public record in cases like this," Jake replied. He took the laptop away and clicked play. I sat there, frozen in place, while he turned the sound up.

We listened to the operator, a man, talk to Caroline. Her voice was easily recognizable and you could tell that she was crying on the phone. The call wasn't long, just long enough for her to reveal her address, which they bleeped out, and the fact that the intruder had killed her parents and was still in the house.

"Where are you now?" The operator asked her.

"In my parent's bathroom, hiding in the tub," Caroline answered, her voice shaking. Then there's a blast in the background and Caroline screaming.

"He shot through the door! He's coming in here!" She shrieked and it sounded like she was trying to stand up in the tub. There was another blast and more screaming.

A male voice that didn't belong to the dispatcher said, "You're dead," and then another scream from Caroline before it sounded like the phone was dropped into the tub. She screamed a second time, then a sickening crunch noise. The operator called out for her for several seconds before the recording itself ended. I immediately got up and left the room, retreating to the solitude of my own bedroom. I closed the door and laid on my bed, staring at the wall. After a few minutes of lying there, I heard a knock.

"Come in," I muttered. The door opened and Peter stood there, looking shame-faced.

"Sorry," he said.

"You didn't push play, you don't need to apologize," I said quietly, sitting up.

"Yeah, but I didn't try to make them stop, either. I didn't leave the room. Could you please come back?"

I stared at Peter. Everyone says we look similar in shape, all except for his eyes and hair. Like Jake and Josh, Peter has light brown hair. In the summer, it gets lighter when he spends time outside. His eyes are hazel, just like the twins; a mix of dark green and light brown. Jake and Josh are tall, both over six feet, and fairly thin. Peter and I shared the same build, unusually tall for our ages but broad in the shoulders. That's why the football coach made me a linebacker and not a running back or quarterback. I was the only one in the family who had dark brown hair, like my dad, and blue eyes like my mom.

"Fine," I said, getting up and following him back to the bedroom. Josh looked sorry, but Jake had that blank, impassive stare he gets when he's absorbed in something else. He didn't even realize or think about how upsetting it was to hear all that.

"What else did you find on the sisters?" I asked, hoping that we could find out about the girls and not just more about the murder.

"I don't know, I typed Eddie's name in, but I'm getting a lot of random stuff," Jake muttered.

"Try Edith Ann Malloy instead," I suggested.

He must have got something because he grinned.

"Found it!"

We gathered around and stared at a page that Jake pulled up for a private school in New Orleans. They had a roster listed for their varsity girls' basketball team and "Edith Ann Malloy" was listed as the captain. There was a team photo posted and we found her easily among the group.

Eddie was one of the tallest members of the team, her blonde hair pulled into a ponytail behind her. She wore the basketball uniform and smiled casually. She was a lot taller.

"She looks like a supermodel," Peter said. Jake was silent, studying the image carefully. We stared at her for a moment.

"Beth's here too, look!" Josh said suddenly, pointing down the page. A student council page was opened and there was a picture of Beth, smiling in the middle of a group of girls, listed as student council president. She was taller, her hair was longer and slightly darker and she wore makeup.

"She's pretty," Josh said softly and Jake smirked, elbowing him in the side.

"Of course she is, but Ruth wouldn't appreciate that," Jake reminded him. Josh sighed. Ruth was his long-time girlfriend; she was really into art, too.

"Click on the theater page for Caroline," I suggested.

Jake clicked on the menu and found the school's theater arts department. On the front page they were advertising a play performed in conjunction with a private school for boys. Each cast member's name was listed and Caroline's was near the top of the list. Clicking on the names lead to a page detailing that student's previous involvements and skills, along with pictures, and after clicking through several random student's pages, Jake went to Caroline's.

The page loaded quickly and a professional looking photo of Caroline was at the top. My heart dropped a little when I saw it. Caroline was beautiful and mysterious looking; she still had her long dark hair and large dark eyes.

"Wow…" I said out loud, before I could stop myself. My brothers all turned and looked at me and I felt my cheeks and ears get warm.

"What are we going to tell mom and dad?" Peter asked.

"The truth," I said immediately.

We argued about who would do it and in the end we decided to tell them together. So we went downstairs and showed them the article I'd found about the murder. Mom was horrified and dad looked sad.

"We have to call them, find out who they're staying with. We should have made an effort to stay in touch! Oh, those poor girls!"

I had a nightmare that night, of Caroline running into my room, her hands covered in blood, begging me to help her. A tall, shadow figure with a shotgun burst into the room and aimed at her. I tried to protect her, to put myself in front of her, but somehow the shadow snatched her and dragged her away, screaming. I woke covered in sweat, angry at Jake all over again. I would have that nightmare several times.

We did more research and I found the name of the relative that the Malloys were staying with and her contact information. I gave my mom her name and number and let her do the talking.

In the days that followed, I searched for Caroline on my own. She had an Instagram, so I looked at all of her pictures, most of which were taken backstage at various performances she'd done at school. She was in costume and makeup in most of them. She had a lot of friends who left nice comments. There was one of her dressed as Snow White that I found myself staring at for a long time, studying her fair skin, large eyes and blood red mouth. I wanted to contact her, but I had no idea what to say. I had my own account, but it was filled with ridiculous pictures of my brothers and my friends. Most of the pictures didn't even have me in them.

I went about school as I normally did without mentioning the Malloys. I didn't hear my brother's mention them to anyone else, either. It wasn't like we were keeping it a secret, really, but I just got the feeling that it was something we would keep to ourselves. At the end of the week, mom sat us all down at the dinner table to talk.

"I want you to know that if I had known about any of this involving the Malloys, I wouldn't have had you search for it and find out in that way."

Peter lowered his eyes and Josh nodded solemnly. Jake sat silently, his arms folded.

"I called the girls' aunt in New Orleans and had several very long conversations with her. I explained who I was and that I had lost contact with Mr. and Mrs. Malloy. She told me a little bit about the case. After speaking to one another several times, I suggested that a visit take place between you and the Malloys. I think it will be beneficial for everyone."

Jake and Josh stared at mom with wide eyes. They were about to graduate from high school. I was about to finish 10th grade and Peter was about to finish 8th grade and would be in high school next year. It had been six years since we saw the girls in person and three years since we communicated with any of them.

"When?" Josh wondered.

"This summer, in June. We haven't discussed the details just yet."

Jake and Josh would be starting college this fall, but until then they would be staying at home.

"Are we going there or are they coming here?" I wondered.

"They will be coming here. They'll be renting an extended stay suite at a local bed and breakfast. We have to talk again to figure out which days they'll be here."

My heart pounded wildly in my chest. I felt like I needed to tell Bill and Danny about it all. My mom must have been thinking the same thing.

"Shirley is talking to her boys about all of this, too. She's breaking the news about the Malloy girls' parents and their upcoming visit as we speak. I know it's been a while since you've seen them and when you were kids, you were mean to one another. This should go without saying, but just in case it hasn't occurred to all of you, I'll say it. I expect the four of you, and the Bensons, to be kind and polite to those girls. They've been through a lot in the last several years and they don't need a bunch of ridiculous teenage boys antagonizing them."

I sat up quickly.

"We won't do anything mean to them. Will we?" I stared at Jake mostly, who lifted a shoulder in a shrug.

"We'll be nice," he said.

The next day at school, Danny and Bill confronted me about the Malloys.

"Did you know about this?" Bill asked, before our first period class.

"Yeah, our mom wanted us to look for them. Did your mom tell you what happened to their parents?"

"All she would say was that their parents died tragically and that they moved from Ohio to Louisiana," Danny said. I didn't want to tell them the details we'd discovered online, but I figured if they were curious enough, they would just find it for themselves. During lunch, I told them everything I knew.

Danny wanted to listen to the 911 call, but I could tell by the look on Bill's face that he wasn't interested and thought the whole thing was morbid. Danny left to go listen to it himself and Bill glared at me.

"You listened to the 911 call?"

I put down the orange I'd been peeling.

"Only because Jake played it before I had a chance to get away," I muttered. Bill was silent, so I picked the orange back up.

"I searched for her last night, Caroline," Bill said. I stared at him.

"You did?"

"Yeah, I found her Instagram. I've been thinking about sending her a message, but I don't know what I would say that doesn't sound weird. She's really pretty now. I mean, I guess she always was, but I didn't care about all that when we were little," Bill said quietly. I felt a rush of irritation. He didn't even know her, why would he send her a message? What would he even say?

"Did I ever tell you about how Caroline wrote to me not long after they moved out?" Bill wondered. I had never known that or heard this before. Why wouldn't Bill tell me that Caroline had written him a letter?

"It was addressed to all of us, but she put my name on the envelope. Anyway, it was about the pranks and stuff. I still have it someplace. She wrote several more after they were in Ohio, like one letter every few months, but they stopped coming after a couple of years and whenever I replied, they got returned to sender. Guess we know why, now."

We were silent.

I had no idea that Caroline had been sending letters to Bill or that he'd responded. He'd never talked about it at the time, and I assumed that she and her sisters were only sending letters and emails to me and my brothers. Caroline never mentioned that she was communicating with Bill and his brother's at the time too. Or was she only talking to Bill?

"What did she say?" I asked, trying to act casual even though the entire idea of Caroline secretly communicating with Bill made me angry. Had Eddie and Beth written letters to Tony and Steve? Did Jake and Josh know about any of this? Why am I mad?

"Oh, just stuff about what they were doing. She asked about what we were all doing and about different people in Buckman. Do you think I should message her?"

"You should wait until we know that they're aunt has talked to them about all of this so that it doesn't seem entirely random. It might freak her out since she hasn't heard from any of us in years," I said out loud.

Bill nodded agreeably and changed the subject.

For the rest of that day and the next, I struggled with whether or not I should send Caroline a message. I felt a surge of guilt. Would Bill wait to send her one, just because I told him too? I hoped he didn't send her anything and I knew it was because I was afraid she'd like him and ignore me. Part of me thought it was pointless for Bill to try.

I sound jealous. Why would I be jealous? What is there to be jealous about?, I thought.

When I got home that afternoon, I checked my Instagram account and found that someone sent me a message. I clicked on it and saw the username.

It was Caroline.