I shook my head and winced. “No. No, where’s Tate? I think I need to tell him something. He needs to come and see.”
“He left for the police station a few minutes ago. Just rest. Everything will be fine.”
It won’t be fine, because Charlie is gone.
“It’s not Bobby.”
She shushed me and pushed on my shoulder to lie back down again. “I’m very sorry about your friend. Tate told me you’ve had a rough go of it. I know how much he wanted to do right for you, and for your Charlie.”
“No,” I said with more force, heaving my body into a sitting position. I was so tired.“No. I’m not in denial.It’s not Bobby.Please,” I said. “I need to show Tate something. I can’t—I can’t explain it. I just need to show him.”
She sighed and handed me a glass of water. I gulped it down gratefully, ashamed I’d turned my nose up at her hospitality before.
“That was far more intense than I imagined,” she said. “You need to rest. Your Dad will be here soon to pick you up, and then you can talk to Tate.”
That buzzing, itchy feeling under my skin grew nearly unbearable. “I can’t wait,” I said, nudging her away to stand. My head went fuzzy, and my vision blacked out for a moment. I braced myself against the back of the sofa until the feeling passed.
“Where are you going?” she asked, voice raised. “You can’t drive!”
“I’m sorry,” I said before stumbling out the front door.
Later, I’d be ashamed I’d driven home in my delirious state and endangered myself and others, but I had to get back to the cabin before Dad.
I had to see. I had to know.
Charlie’s gone.
After skidding into the circular drive, I stumbled up the steps and fumbled with the keys before I found the right one.
The cabin looked like a stranger; unwelcoming and cold in a way it’d never been before. As if it sensed I knew the secrets it kept, and would no longer allow me entry.
Behind me, the trees leaned in and whispered to each other, trapping me here.
He knows. He knows. He finally sees.
I was clearly fucking delusional.
Crashing through the front door, I yanked open drawers and threw the contents all over the floor. Pictures, pamphlets, instruction manuals, old notebooks, scribbled recipes, and work schedules fluttered through the air.
What I actually searched for among the clutter, I had no idea.
I paused and sucked in several deep breaths to steady the throbbing in my skull. Looking up, I saw the picture that’d caught Charlie’s attention earlier.
Charlie’s gone.
Taken when they’d brought me home from the hospital after being born, Mom held me in her arms while she and Dad beamed in front of a 1986 blue and white Chevy Silverado.
The very same truck he’d sold to Bobby.
Hey, I remember that truck.
Charlie hadn’t been up in the lookout with me when I spotted Bobby driving down the service road; he’d been searching for dinner scraps in the outbuilding just before Tate arrived.
Charlie remembered that truck from when it wasnew,not from forty years later.
He knew it from when it belonged to Dad.
What if Bobby hadn’t been driving the truck, after all? What if it’d been someone else—someone who’d merely borrowed it from him, instead?
