“My brother is dead too. I saw his body. Someone did this to them,” I say, crying, speaking fast. “Someone killed them.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head, finding it impossible tobelieve. Her eyes go to the man at the bar and then back to me, saying, sputtering, “There must be some mistake. That can’t be right. Are you sure...” But then she stops and asks, “Have you called anyone, honey? The police? Are they on their way?” Her movements are brisk as she steps past me for the door, which she dead-bolts, looking through a window and outside to see if anyone is there, if anyone followed us here. I feel grateful, believing we’re safer inside with the door locked, believing it’s better that we’re not alone, that someone is here with us.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “No. I tried, but I couldn’t get a signal. We came here to see about a landline.”
She nods, spinning back, away from the door. “Yes. Of course,” she says. “I’ll call right now.” She speaks quickly, her words choppy, punctuated, her movements fast. She brushes past me for the office, where she closes the door and I hear nothing, which I’m grateful for because that means the girls can’t hear it either, that they don’t have to listen for a second time as someone says that Emily and Nolan are dead.
“Here,” I say to them, “let’s sit.”
I help them to stools at the bar. At the same time, the man says, “Must’ve been a hell of a thing to see,” while reaching for his beer, and I nod. I look away, but when I look back a minute later, he’s still watching me.
I drop my eyes to my phone. My fingers shake as I text Elliott.Come home. Something’s happened.Because of the Wi-Fi in the lodge, the message sends, but I don’t know if, out on the lake, Elliott receives it.
When Ms. Dahl comes out, she gets us glasses of water from the tap. She says, “They’re on the way. Shouldn’t be too long,” and I see on her face and in her body language that she wants to ask more, toknowmore, but she doesn’t for the girls’ sake. “Does anyone need anything?” she asks instead, her eyes tight. We say no, but still, she gets the girls snacks from the vendingmachine because she’s anxious and can’t stand still, though no one is hungry. No one wants to eat.
The bags of Fritos sit untouched on the bar. I reach for Cass’s and Mae’s barstools, pulling them closer to mine. I ask for a garbage can for Mae, who’s begun to feel sick. I think of all the pancakes and syrup she ate earlier today and know that eventually, they’ll come back up. Ms. Dahl brings us the garbage and a wet rag, which I press to Mae’s face, crooning, “Breathe. Just try to breathe.” It doesn’t work. She begins to vomit into the small plastic can as I lay the rag on the back of her neck to cool her.
“How long did they say?” I ask Ms. Dahl, anxious for the police to come, for them to be here. Bile rises up inside of me at the thought of Reese and Wyatt inside that cottage. Of what might be happening, of what they might be going through. Of me, standing idly by, letting it happen. It crosses my mind to leave Cass and Mae here, to go to the cottage alone, to see if they’re safe or if they’re hurt, but the idea of going back, of leaving Cass and Mae with strangers, is more than I can bear.
Ms. Dahl paces behind the bar. With each pass, her eyes rise to the door, though from where we sit, it’s impossible to see outside. “They didn’t say, honey. Just said they’d send someone.”
I nod, rubbing circles on Mae’s back. Cass, herself, looks green, and I don’t know if it’s from seeing Mae puke, from the smell of the vomit in the trash can, or from everything else that’s happened. I stroke her cheek. “I can’t imagine there are too many emergencies around here,” I say to no one in particular, desperate for the police to arrive, though I imagine too, that in a town this size, there aren’t many police.
The man decides to leave, to go back to his cottage and check on his wife and kids. Ms. Dahl tries to object, saying, “I don’t know if that’s safe, not until the police get here. I think you should wait.” But he goes anyway, Ms. Dahl walking him to the door, where she gazes vigilantly out before unlocking andopening it. Once he’s gone, she flings the door closed, flicking the dead bolt. She comes back to the bar, looking for something to do, for some way to keep busy until the police arrive. She puts the man’s dirty glass in the sink and then starts wiping down the bar with a rag, glancing at us as she does, sweat starting to appear on her upper lip. “You doing okay, honey? Anything you need?” she asks.
I tell her no. No, I don’t need anything. But also no, I’m not okay. My brother and his wife are dead. I don’t know where Reese and Wyatt are, if they’re alive, if they’re dead, and the guilt eats at me. Ms. Dahl moves the bar rag around in aimless circles, and at first I’m lost in thought, staring blindly at her rough, worn and calloused hands and the movement of the rag on the countertop, thinking about the last thing I heard Reese say to Emily last night, until I feel eyes on me and realize that Ms. Dahl is staring at us with a cold, fixed gaze as she wipes down the bar.
Cass notices too, pressing into me, hiding her face against my arm.
Greta Dahl’s staring gets under my skin, until the paranoia sets in and I start to wonder if it’s taking so long for the police to come because, when she went into the office to make the call alone, closing the door behind herself, she never called them.
Reese
“Where are you going?” Emily asks. It’s a few minutes later. She stands in the dumpy kitchen, wiping everything down with Lysol wipes because she won’t let our bags of food touch anything that hasn’t been cleaned, and for once, I don’t disagree. I stare at her for half a second. She’s still sad from what happened with Nolan before. Her eyes are dull and she looks tired, which maybe she is, or maybe she’s just sad. He’s upstairs in the room they’re supposed to share, with the door closed, and I think how lonely it must be being Emily.
“For a walk,” I say, reaching for the door handle.
“I don’t want you going for a walk alone.”
“Why not? What do you think’s going to happen to me?”
“I don’t know, but we just got here. You don’t know your way around yet. You might get lost.”
“I won’t get lost.”
“Take Wyatt and Mae with you then.”
“Why? So we can all get lost?” I sigh when she says nothing. “Do I have to? I just want to be alone for like five minutes.”
“Yes,” she says, “you have to.”
I throw my hands up in the air, calling for Wyatt and Mae. Mae is upstairs, but Wyatt is outside, taking practice swings at nothing with his four-hundred-dollar baseball bat (if I never have to hear about its light weight or alloy barrel again, I’llbe thrilled). They take forever to get ready so that by the time Mae’s shoes are on, Wyatt’s bat is set safely inside and we’re finally ready to leave, there’s no use looking for the boy I saw before because he’s gone.
“Keep an eye on Mae, Reese. Don’t let her wander off,” Emily says as we leave.
“Where do you guys want to go?” I ask them.
Mae doesn’t care, but Wyatt wants to go back to the lodge, which is the place where we checked in to the resort and got our keys, because there were arcade games there that he wants to play. I say fine, whatever. I don’t care, so long as Emily and Nolan aren’t there.
