What Lies Beneath

Sixteen

For the first time in my life, I might have had a friend. A true friend. There was still room for things to go horribly wrong, but so far, Patty hadn't changed her mind about helping me. Even after my confession. Sure, she was on the fence. But that was all. Could I actually consider Patty a friend? Never had one of those. I guess I'd say we were well past getting to know each other. Quite a drastic change in my life, I'd admit.

On the other hand, while I took one major step forward, I still didn't feel any closer to discovering who was behind Emerald's murder. I'd told Patty of the stalker in my visions during lunch at school, which I'd forgotten to mention yesterday. She was keen on us trying to figure out who it was. It wasn't exactly easy though considering I didn't have much to work with in that regard. And so, I figured I'd start small—by digging into Rahim Kumar's profile.

I twirled a piece of string, hanging from the faded jeans that secured my legs, in between my fingers to keep calm, whilst scrolling through Rahim Kumar's Facebook on my phone. My mother and Junior were occupied at the Mcdonald's cash register, and could walk back to the car with our food at any minute now. After spending the last few hours of the evening helping my mother run errands, I was ready to go home, collapse on my bed, and call it a night.

But I insisted on using my time before then to snoop. Honestly, there wasn't much here to snoop through anyways. Rahim appeared to be a clean-cut guy. He was a family man. Had a wife. One son. A dog. Most of his pictures consisted of them together or apart. His son looked to be around my age. Maybe a year or two younger. Apparently, Rahim worked for con edison, and he lived in the next town over; thirty minutes away.

Other than that, he didn't post often. Every once in a while, I'd guess if I had to. The profile hadn't been around for that long either. Not to mention, his posts were very family-friendly. I couldn't even spot a swear word in any of his posts.

Interestingly enough though, there were no traces of Emerald on his profile. No comments from her under any of his posts. No likes from her in any of his photos. I'd suspected he'd been a random add to her friend list, or vice-versa. But why would she have randomly added a married man she didn't know if there wasn't something more going on? I didn't think Emerald was capable of being someone's mistress. Last I saw, she was head-over-heels in love with Michael.

Then again, they were on the verge of breaking up. Or that's how it appeared, at least. The most interesting part of this all was, there were a few likes from Rahim on a few of Emerald's posts. So, they weren't entirely strangers. But again, no comments. There was no telling how they knew each other or how close they were. I was beginning to think this was pointless.

"So weird," I grumbled, clicking into Emerald's friend list again. Then, I scrolled.

The more I learned about Emerald and Iris, the more I realized the mother and daughter pair didn't have any family. It was hard to tell if they even had any distant relatives outside of Lake Bellinor. Judging by Emerald's profile, I'd say it was just the two of them. Has Iris always been a single mother raising Emerald? I didn't want to jump to conclusions but that's how it looked.

"Huh? Two Rahim's?" My finger hovered over the account I paused on. The profile was near the bottom of Emerald's friends list—another Rahim Kumar account.

I frowned.

If that wasn't enough, the profile picture confirmed it was the same man. But his beard wasn't as grown out. His face didn't have as many wrinkles. If I had to guess, he was a lot younger than he was on his new profile. Who the hell was this guy? When I clicked into the profile, I noticed it was outdated. An inactive page? I suppose. No way in hell I could resist snooping again.