He pulls his cap lower. “Uh, no.”
“You look familiar.” The woman slides off the cooler and draws nearer, running her nails along the pegboard shelving in aclick-click-clickthat sets Shea’s teeth on edge. “I’m sure I’ve seen you before. I wouldn’t forget a pretty face like that. What about Paris? Are you one of his? A mercenary, maybe?”
“No. Sorry.” With a nudge, Asher propels Shea toward the door. “Let’s go.”
The bell rings as they slip back out into the parking lot. The sun has burned off the remaining clouds and the day is bright. The puddles shine gold against the asphalt. There’s no chance of being followed. At least not yet. Shea rounds on Asher the moment they’re out of earshot, puddle water seeping into her socks.
“That woman recognized you.”
“She must have been confused.” His eyes are on the sky, scanning the trees. “Get back in the camper.”
Uneasy, Shea complies. She keeps watch in the window while Asher fills up at the pump, and then they’re back on the road. Lys appears as Asher coaxes the camper to its limit, bracing himself in the doorway.
“What’s the rush?”
“They recognized him,” says Shea as Asher merges onto the highway.
Lys’s eyes narrow. He’s looking at Asher too keenly. “Did they?”
“I’ll bet you anything we pick up a tail as soon as it’s dark,” she adds.
“It’s fine,” says Asher. “It was a mistake.”
Lys is quiet for too long. Shea can practically hear the gears turning in his head. She doesn’t like the way he’s looking at Asher—with a wariness that makes her skin crawl.
“We should get off the road,” he finally says. “While it’s still light.”
•••
In the end, they leave the woods behind entirely, snaking down the mountain roads and driving until they hit the sea. They camp on the beach, parking the RV beneath a patch of old oaks dripping with moss. The sky is distended with rain-swollen clouds, their bottoms emblazoned with every possible color. The road nearby is buried behind a row of flowering loquat, trunks fringed in bitter panicum. Shea sits in the shade of a palmetto and watches the tide rush out. Poppy sits beside her, wiggling her toes in the sand.
“I feel like I’m betraying Ellie,” she says, after a long while. “Being here, I mean. Without her. She always used to talk about going to the beach. Do you remember when she found that old coastal living magazine on the book rack at Brer’s? She brought it home and cut out all the pages. She made it into a scrapbook, I think.”
“It was a vision board,” says Shea.
She’d made one, too, cutting and gluing everything that caught her eye. She remembers lying on her stomach in the Thorleys’ living room, her legs swishing through the air, scraps of paper fluttering every which way. She hadn’t looked up until she’d felt a presence behind her. It was Asher, his mouth thin as he quietly surveyed her work. The moment he noticed her looking, he averted his attention to his sister:You’re getting paper everywhere. Dad’s going to lose his mind.
Camellia ignored him, propping herself up to see what Shea had managed to cobble together.We’re supposed to be manifesting, Shea.
I am manifesting.
You’re not. That’s just the Gravewood, and it’s depressing.
Shea swallows the sharp wedge of grief in her throat. Out at sea, a lone gull swoops low over the water. She watches it snatch a fish from the surf and take off with a screech.
“Do you think she’s still out there? Ellie?”
“I do.” Poppy tips her head into the wind. “I have to. The alternative hurts too much.”
Shea thinks of sitting on the cellar steps and waiting for her mother. The way hanging on felt better than letting go. The way hope was a lifeline—something to cling to as she treaded water.
“I canhearyou thinking.” Poppy’s smile is dreamy, her eyes shut. The wind teases at her curls. “I get it. I know it’s not logical. And I know it’s not likely. But I have to believe she’s okay.”
The problem with treading water, Shea’s learned, is that you can’t do it forever.
Eventually, you sink.
“And what if she’s not? What if we’re too late? What if I’m the reason she’s—”
