The world feels suddenly so vast and, in it, Reese so small. I feel scared for her, but then, in the next breath, I think of the girl in that picture on Elliott’s iPad, the gritty, unafraid look on her face, flicking Elliott off, and wonder if I should feel scared for her, or if I should feel afraid for everyone else.
I hate you. I wish you’d die.
I see the answer on Elliott’s face when he comes back to the cottage an hour or so later. “They all say they’ve been booked for months,” he tells me, looking chastened—as if it’s somehow his fault that there isn’t vacancy in the other resorts—tossing the car keys onto the kitchen counter with a clang.
“There was nothing?”
“No,” he says. “Not quite nothing. There was one place. A motel. It had vacancy, but it looked like a rathole, Court. I don’t think you want to stay there. We may just have to make do here.”
“How much longer do we have to stay?” Cass asks, hearing him, her voice whiny in a way that gets under my skin. “I want to go home.”
Wyatt looks up from his phone with such suddenness that I hold my breath, worrying about what he might say or do to Cass. I speak first, before he can. “We all want to go home, honey. As soon as we find Reese, we can.”
“Then why aren’t we looking for her?” she whines. Beside her, Mae is quiet, her face puffy from another night of crying herself to sleep.
“The police are, Cass. They’re looking for her.”
I glance around the room. This cottage is small, musty. Now that the windows are always closed and locked, the air suffocates me until all I can think about is the dank, stale smell, knowing there must be mold in here somewhere. The cottage is seven or eight hundred square feet at best with a single bathroom; it was on the small side when we first checked in, but now there are five people living in it, and nothing about it is homey or inviting anymore. It’s our prison.
I reach for my coffee, which has no doubt gone from lukewarm to cold, but is still caffeine. I lift it to my lips, but before I can sip, I see the fly from before, dead and floating in it, its black body bobbing on the surface like a buoy.
My stomach roils. I set the mug down, feeling physically ill at the idea of staying here in this cottage any longer. But we can’t leave, and there’s nowhere to go, not until we find Reese and the police find Nolan and Emily’s killer.
I curl my fist around the car keys lying on the countertop. “I’m going to run out for a few things.”
“Where?” Elliott asks, looking sharply up, surprise in his eyes. “For what?”
I hold his eye. “I used up the last of the cereal and milk this morning for the kids. I’m going to run to the store and stock up on a few things.”
I don’t like lying to him. But if he knew where I was going, he wouldn’t want me to go.
Reese
That night after everyone’s asleep, I sneak into the cottage from the porch and then out the front door, Venmoing Wyatt twenty bucks in advance to keep quiet.
I move through the woods alone. When I step out of the trees, I find Daniel’s dreamy, out-of-focus face hazy against the backdrop of the night sky, which is spotted with a million tiny stars.
Tonight, he stands on the end of the pier, as promised, waiting for me.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” I say back. I step onto the pier. As I do, it sways and I hesitate, afraid and wondering if it can hold us both.
“You’re okay. I won’t let you fall,” Daniel says, reaching for me. I go to him, feeling anchored and safe in his arms.
Once there, I tell him, “I found the gift you left me.”
“What gift?” Daniel asks, smiling, giving himself away.
When we came back from the pool today, there was a flower waiting for me on my bed, which meant only one thing: that when we were gone, Daniel was there, inside the cottage, that he let himself in with his key, that he was still thinking about me. It made me happy. For the rest of the day, I found myself grinning at nothing. Mae asked what I was smiling for. I told her Iwasn’t, and then, when she wouldn’t shut up about it, I asked,What? Am I not allowed to smile?
She giggled and said,I thought you weren’t smiling.
“That wasn’t from you? Oh,” I say, giving him a gentle shove, knowing I’ve never done anything like this before, I’ve never flirted with a guy like him in my life. I feel different, like I’m not me, but someone better, someone new. I grin and say, “Must’ve been from one of the other guys I’ve been sneaking out at night to see.”
He wraps his hands around my wrists and whispers into my ear, “You better tell all those other guys to get lost, ’cause you’re mine,” and I feel a rush of adrenaline as he says it, thinking of all the boys from back home that never liked me. If only they could see me now.
Daniel and I lower ourselves to the end of the pier, where we sit with our legs dangling over the edge. The night is clear, though the lake itself is so dark I almost don’t know it’s there.
