“What did he say about Reese?”
“That he was into her. But she didn’t reciprocate.”
Except I saw her by that little pool house, and it seemed like she did reciprocate. That shewasvery much into him.
Detective Evans says, “He said something else.”
“What?”
“He said that Reese came after him with a knife. That she stabbed him with it, which is how his blood wound up on her sweatshirt.”
“He’s a liar. He’s making that up.”
“I don’t know. It’s a case of he said, she said, but I can tell you this—there were knife wounds on his hand.”
“Why would Reese do that if not in self-defense?” I ask, remembering what Mae said, how she overheard Reese that night, saying that Daniel was hurting her and how he was scaring her.
“We asked him what happened. He didn’t have much to say,nothing kind, nothing that bears repeating,” he says, and I feel myself get upset, thinking of him trash-talking Reese.
“Are you sure he didn’t hurt her?” I ask, imagining if Reese did eventually turn down Daniel Clarke’s advances and he got mad. If he lost his temper.
But Detective Evans says with confidence, “I’m certain.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“Because by the night she disappeared, he was already gone.”
Reese
There is blood on the floor. I don’t see it until morning, when the sun comes up and I go back onto the porch for the first time since Daniel left. I didn’t sleep on the porch. I didn’t sleep at all. Once Daniel was gone, I closed and locked the front door, and then I lay on the sofa with my eyes wide, staring at the front door, knowing that just because it was locked didn’t mean Daniel didn’t have a key. He does. He has a master key to all the cottages. He can come and go whenever he wants.
There are only a couple drops of blood. They’re on the wood floor. I grab the edge of the rug and pull it over to hide them. The knife was in my hand when Daniel left. There’s blood on it too. After he was gone, I opened the nightstand drawer, slipped it in, knowing I have to get rid of it.
When the sun comes up, Emily finds me lying on the living room sofa with my pillows and a blanket.
“Reese?” she asks, standing above me. “What’s wrong? Why didn’t you sleep on the porch?”
I get to my feet. “I’m not sleeping out there anymore,” I say. “Someone else can sleep there, but not me.”
Emily, for once, doesn’t object. Instead, she watches as I grab my bags from the porch and march upstairs with them and into Mae’s room, where Mae is still sleeping.
“What are you doing?” Mae asks, coming to when I come in, rubbing her eyes, still groggy from sleep.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m sleeping with you, you idiot,” I say as I pull the covers back and lie down beside her in the flat, cramped bed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see Mae smile.
That night, Aunt Courtney, Uncle Elliott and Cass come over for dinner. After what happened last night, I’m anxious. I can’t relax. It’s loud and hot in the cottage, the windows open but no air moving around the room. My clothes are uncomfortable. The sleeves of my shirt chafe.
“What’s wrong?” Emily asks.
“Nothing.”
“Why aren’t you eating?”
“I am,” I say, stabbing at a potato and putting it in my mouth, but it’s hard to move the food around and chew.
After we’re done, I can’t find my phone. I look everywhere. “What are you looking for?” someone asks as I pull pillows from the sofa and search behind them for it.
