“What question?”
“What are you looking at?”
My throat tightens. On the screen before me, which, thank God, he can’t see from where he is, Reese’s teasing, sun-kissed face stares back at me.
“Nothing,” I say, turning the iPad off before I have a chance to close out of Facebook or to clear my own search history. “I was just mindlessly scrolling.”
“It didn’t look mindless. It looked pretty intent.”
He holds my eye for longer than is normal.
“No, not intent. Just out of it. I didn’t sleep at all last night,” I tell him again. “Did you say something about coffee?”
“Yeah. Just let me get dressed first, and then I’ll go see what I can find.”
After he’s gone, I get out of bed and pull the curtains back to let the early morning light into the room. I plug my phone in to get at least a few minutes of charge, and then I shake Cass and Mae gently awake, leaned over them, whispering at them to get up and get dressed, that we’re going to go for a ride.
I stare at Wyatt on the floor for a long time, trying to decide whether to take him or to leave him. And then another memory slams into me of Emily and me one night, years ago, sitting too close together on the sofa, an empty bottle of wine on the coffee table before us, having one of those no-holds-barred conversations where we held nothing back. “If anything happens to Nolan and me, you’ll take care of our kids, won’t you?” she’d asked, sloping toward me, her face too close, her eyes wide and watery, and I said yes, of course, asking that she do the same for Cass.
“Of course,” she said. “I’d take care of her like she was my own.”
I shake Wyatt awake. When he comes to, blinking the world into focus, he’s lost. He looks around, remembers where he is, what’s happening, that he’s on the motel room floor.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Can you get up?” I ask, urgency in my voice, though I try not to let the panic in too, and scare the kids. Elliott searched online for the depth of Pearl Lake because he needed to find the deepest part to sink Reese’s body in so she wouldn’t rise back up and be found.
What I don’t understand is why. Why would Elliott do this?
“Why?” Wyatt asks.
“We need to leave.”
“Where are we going?” he asks, his voice tired and testy but, at the same time, compliant. He pushes the blanket back and gets up off the quilt, reaching for his clothes in his bag.
“To talk to the police.”
Quickly, I throw my hair into a bun, slip into a bra, grab my purse, and we go outside.
The parking lot is nearly empty.
Elliott has taken the car.
Reese
There’s a knock at the door. It’s a gentle thumping sound, so that at first I’m not sure if I heard it or not. If it was real or just the wind moving the door.
Still, I flinch, the soft, rhythmic sound moving up my spine.
Knock, knock, knock.
My throat goes tight. My breath is shallow.
Beside me on the sofa, Emily looks up, which means she heard it too. Someoneisreally there. I didn’t imagine it and it isn’t the wind. Emily starts to get up, to make her way toward the door, but I blurt out, “No, don’t,” while grabbing for her hand. “Please don’t open it,” I say, pleading, my eyes wide and locked on hers as she turns back to face me. I take her in in that moment. Her golden blond hair and her soft blue eyes. She squeezes my hand, which is all of a sudden cold, clammy, shaking. Hers, on the other hand, is warm. Her posture is relaxed. She gazes down at me and smiles, pulling her eyebrows together in genuine surprise. “Why not?” she asks, as I feel her pull away again, her hand slipping from mine.
“Just don’t,” I say. “Please don’t open it.”
“Don’t be silly,” she says lightly, taking her first step toward the door. “It’s fine. It’s probably just Mae. She probably forgot something and came back for it or changed her mind and wantsto sleep here,” she says, which wouldn’t be unlike Mae—Mae always,always, forgets things, and she always gets homesick at sleepovers and wants to come home—but that’s not what this is.
