“I think someone’s a little lost,” he says, chuckling.
“Get over here,” I say, snatching Mae by the arm and pulling her away from him. “What were you thinking? Can’t you read, idiot? That section’s for grown-ups,” I say, pointing to theAdults Onlysign.
“I didn’t know,” she says, on the verge of tears, so that I almost feel bad for calling her an idiot. Almost. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be. You scared the shit out of me. Do you have any idea what could have happened to you?” Mae shakes her head, tears in her eyes, because she doesn’t know, because she can’t imagine the creeps that live in this world and the things they do to little girls like her, and I’m not going to be the one to tell her.
“Did you find something?” I ask. In her hands isThe Parent Trap, which she holds out to me. “Give me that,” I say, yanking it from her so I can pay and we can leave.
“If you’re not careful,” I say to Mae on the way out, as we pass by the poster of that missing girl again, “whatever happened to her is going to happen to you.”
I watch as Mae stares back over her shoulder at it, scared. Good, I think. She should be. Then maybe she won’t wander off like that again.
“Are you going to tell Mom?” she asks later, as we make our way back to the cottage, following the same worn-down path through the woods.
“Definitely not,” I say because it wouldn’t be Mae’s fault. Mae can do no wrong in Emily’s and Nolan’s minds. It would be mine for not keeping a better eye on her.
“Yeah well, I might,” Wyatt says.
“You better not,” I tell him.
“If you want me to keep quiet, it’s going to cost you.”
“You’re such a jerk. Besides, I have two actual dollars,” I say, reaching a hand into my pocket for the cash, which I try handing to him. “Here. You can have it if you want.”
But he doesn’t take it. “You have Venmo,” he says, but there’s no way I’m letting my little fourteen-year-old brother blackmail me again. Wyatt is a shark. The time he caught me breaking curfew cost me twenty bucks. The time he caught me leaving the house with a bottle of Nolan’s Tito’s in my bag cost more.
“Screw you, Wyatt. I’m not giving you shit.”
We get back to the cottage. Aunt Courtney and Uncle Elliott are there now, along with my little cousin Cass. The adults have been drinking, which I know because Emily’s voice is high as fuck and her skin is red like it gets when she’s lit up. There’s an Old Fashioned in her hands too—her favorite and probably not her first. No, definitely not her first. Nolan stands just behind her, his hand on her shoulder like they actually like each other, though I know it’s a front for company’s sake. Aunt Courtney sits on the sofa with Cass. Uncle Elliott plays bartender, standing in the kitchen with a bottle of bourbon, and I know that if I ask nice later, when no one is looking, he might just give me some.
“There you are!” Emily exclaims, setting her glass down and coming to us. “How did it go? Did you find something?” she asks, leaning down to see what movie Mae picked out.
Wyatt’s eyes come to mine, looking down because, despite being three years younger, he has inches on me. “You want to tell her, or should I?” he asks.
“Tell me what?” Emily asks, standing up. I think how it would go if Wyatt told her I lost Mae, that I let her wander into the porn section alone, that I let her wander into the porn sectionat all, and that she saw things that would make any normal person want to bleach their eyes.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just that you owe me a dollar for the movie.”
As Emily goes for her wallet, I pull up Venmo on my phone and pay Wyatt his hush money, knowing it won’t be the last time I pay him to keep my secrets quiet.
Courtney
“Fishing,” I tell the detective, feeling my throat tighten, knowing that Elliott is still out on the lake, unaware of what’s happened. He never replied to my text, which means, as far as I know, he never saw it. “My husband is fishing.” I think of what the girls and I have been through this morning and how he’s completely clueless. He’ll come back, celebrating his catch. It’s not his fault. There is no way for him to know what’s happened, and yet I feel resentful that he’s not here and that I’m going through this alone.
“When did he leave?”
“Early this morning.”
“What time?”
“Five o’clock.”
“You were awake when he left?” the detective asks.
“No.”
“But you heard him leave?”
