“Are you girls okay?” I ask quietly, the words coming out fast, urgent. It’s a stupid question. Of course they’re not okay.None of us will ever be okay again. Still, Cass—always a people pleaser—nods, but Mae says nothing, her body palpitating in my arms. “I need to call for help,” I tell them, finding my phone in the pocket of my robe but seeing that the two bars I had next door have disappeared and I have none.
“Shit.”
Cass looks at me with fear in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“The cell signal,” I say, wishing more than anything that Elliott was here, that he hadn’t gone fishing today of all days, that he would come back home. I don’t know what time he left, though early morning is the best chance to catch fish, and so my guess is he was out on the lake just before dawn. I slept through it. I didn’t hear him get up, I didn’t hear him leave. The sun rises around five or five thirty, which makes me think he slipped from bed sometime before that and was drifting out into the lake in the canoe soon after with a thermos of coffee and his fishing gear, which he brought from home, tucked inside the hull.
“What are you going to do?” Cass asks, her voice trembling.
“I don’t know,” I say, rising up. “Just give me a minute to think.”
I wander around the cottage with my phone in the air, searching for just one crucial bar, which I don’t find. I move toward the window, hoping the signal might be better there than behind a solid wall. I peel the curtain back, pressing my phone to the glass.No service.“Dammit,” I mutter under my breath, looking outside where the day is pristine, the lake and sky bluer than I’ve seen. The cell signal is better up on the hill, by Emily and Nolan’s cottage. Since the day we got here, that’s been the case, because the higher elevation is closer to the cell tower, or so Elliott said. That said, I don’t know that I can get myself to go back up there to make the call. I don’t know what’s happening inside the cottage. I don’t know who is there. I don’t know if when they’re finished there, they’ll come for us.
I let go of the curtain, watching as it swishes closed.
I can’t stay here. I have to get help. I have todo something. Reese and Wyatt might still be alive. I have to save them before it’s too late. I have to save the girls and me.
“I have to go to the lodge for help,” I decide, turning away from the window and looking back at Cass. The lodge is where the rental office is. There is free Wi-Fi there and, even better, a landline where I can call the police. “You girls stay—”
“No,” Cass says, shaking her head and cutting me off, though it’s not as decisive as it sounds; it’s scared, whining before she bursts into tears. “You can’t go,” she begs, shaking her head.
“It will be fine, Cass,” I say, my voice turning buoyant, breezy, trying to convince her, as if suggesting she stay in the car while I run into the convenience store for a gallon of milk. “I’ll run. I’ll go fast. You girls stay here and lock the door behind me. Don’t open it for anyone until I come back. Keep the curtains closed. When I’m back, I’ll let myself in with the key.”
“No.No.You’re not going.”
“There isn’t another option, honey. It will be fine,” I say again, drawing the last word out for emphasis. “I need to get to a phone so I can call for help. I have no signal.”
“You’re not leaving us here.” She reaches for my hand, fastening to it like glue, tugging so hard it hurts. Her eyes are pleading, desperate, and I give in. There is no good option. Maybe it’s better that we stay together. I could never live with myself if I left them behind and then something happened to them.
We leave out the front door, trying to be silent and invisible. I pull the door closed quickly behind us, to prevent the hinges from squeaking, holding on to the handle until the latchis aligned with the plate and it slides noiselessly into place. I ease the screen door closed.
Cass tries to take off immediately, but I grab her by the hand and we stand on the deck, our backs pressed to the weathered wooden siding, searching the trees with our eyes. In the cottages around us, people still sleep with doors closed and curtains drawn, while overhead a flock of loons soars by, landing gracefully on the lake.
I count down on my fingers—3... 2... I mouth the word,Go, before we leave the deck, running. Cass darts ahead, but again, Mae lags behind because her steps are smaller than ours. I tug on her hand, practically dragging her along the path and through the trees. Cass takes the lead, sprinting in the direction of the lodge—she knows the way by heart because of all the times the kids have gone together to play pool or foosball or rent DVDs.
Cass gets there first, but the German shepherd stops her in her tracks. It’s tied to a tree, though it rises up, showing its teeth. Cass cowers, and I have to tell her that she’s fine, that the dog can’t get her because of the rope, and only then does she go on, slipping quickly past, pressing on the lodge door, running inside but stopping so abruptly that Mae and I stumble into her, practically falling.
It’s dim inside the lodge. The lights are wanting. The ceilings are low, the wood paneling dark. It takes a minute for me to orient myself, for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light, but when they do, I see that we’re not alone. That the lodge is not empty, as it should be at just past seven in the morning.
There is a man sitting at the bar alone. I’ve seen him around the resort before. In fact, the other day, I saw him stop and say something to Reese by the pool. I don’t know what he said, but I noticed her reaction from behind: the clenched hands, the nervous laugh. She walked away, and as she did, she stole ahesitant glance back to see if he was still there, and he was, his smile smarmy.
Now he looks up as we come in, one of the only people awake at the resort besides us. He’s on his laptop, presumably working, though he has a beer at 7:00 a.m., which he reaches for, saying nothing as the lodge door clicks closed, taking the sunlight with it.
As it does, Cass backs into me, scared.
A woman comes out from the office, muttering under her breath, “That better be you, Daniel, you little shit. You think you can just waltz into work whenever you want and—”
She stops, pulling back. I stand just inside the door with Mae and Cass beside me, pressed in close, Mae clutching a fistful of my robe in her hand. My heart hammers inside me, and I want to scream at the woman to call the police, but I’m doing everything in my power to stay strong for Cass and Mae, to not fall apart, to not lose control. I hear a noise from behind and I gasp. My eyes dart back, panicked, expecting to see Emily and Nolan’s killer coming into the lodge with us, but it’s not; the sound is from an arcade game. I look back, my mind all over the place, frantic. I can’t stop wondering what happened, who killed them. Was it someone we know or was it random? Did the killer think Emily and Nolan were someone else? Did they go into the wrong cottage and still kill them anyway? I can’t stop thinking about Reese and Wyatt in the cottage now. They’re dead. Of course they’re dead. They have to be. I can’t stand the idea of going back, of seeing their bodies like I did Emily’s and Nolan’s. It would kill me. I wouldn’t survive it.
“Oh,” the woman says, seeing us, taken aback because we’re not who she expected to see, and because of the way we look: pale, tear streaked, breathing hard. She regroups. When she speaks again, her voice is softer, changed. “I’m sorry. Pardon my French. I thought you were someone else.” She pulls hereyebrows together, bends down and leans in toward bloodied Mae. “You need something, honey? Are you hurt?” she asks, smiling, and I think she believes something inconsequential has happened, like that Mae’s fallen and we’ve come for a Band-Aid. She has a kind, gentle face, pear shaped with rolls of skin on her neck. Her name tag reads Greta Dahl. I’ve seen her before. She was here the day we checked in to the resort and got our keys.
I step closer to Ms. Dahl. “There’s been a... a... an accident in cottage number eight. My brother and his wife. They’re... they’re...” I glance back, aware that Cass and Mae are listening. I lean in, quiet my voice, my eyes pooling with tears. “They’re dead.”
But Cass still hears, her voice rising in pitch as she asks, “What?They’redead?” as if only now realizing, and I nod, watching as she cries harder. Beside her, Mae presses her hands to her ears, blocking out the sound of Cass’s sobs.
“What do you mean they’redead?” Ms. Dahl asks, her smile vanishing as she takes a step back, a look of shock and disbelief on her face.
“I... I went this morning to see if everything was okay,” I say, explaining how Mae came to our place, crying and upset. “The front door was open. I went in. It was quiet. I thought at first that they were all asleep. I found my sister-in-law on the screened-in porch. The blood. Oh God,” I say, bringing my hand to my own mouth, pressing hard as tears spill out and over my cheeks, seeing it all over again, the color of Emily’s skin, the way her contorted body was sprawled on the floor, mouth open, eyes wide and opaque like murky lakes, blood everywhere, and the smell—I remember now—something coppery that I couldn’t place at the time. It was the smell of blood.
