“No, it’s fine.” Elena swallows, longing for a shower to clean the lingering shame off her.
“It’s just…” He flicks his eyes toward the staircase. “Well, it’s probably not my place, but there are some people I wouldn’t trust with things that are personal to you. I would hate for your pain to become someone else’s next big film, if you know what I mean. Just saying, it’s happened before.”
Elena’s insides curdle as she follows his gaze upstairs. Another reason she shouldn’t have said anything. What kind of a person exploits their friend’s death mere hours after seeing evidence that she was actually murdered? Elena has no idea where her loyalties lie.
“Thanks for the heads-up.” She swallows down a spasm of nausea.
“Anytime,” he says. A self-conscious laugh escapes.
There’s a sound from upstairs, a door opening. The last thing she wants is any awkward morning-after conversation with Phillip Granger. She checks her phone. Joey is on her way to the coffee shop. Sophie has asked if Elena is good to meet there in an hour. “I have to go,” she says. “It was nice meeting you.”
“You’re taking an Uber though, right?”
She shakes her head. “Walking.”
He juts his chin out in shock. “I’m more than happy to give you a ride.”
She glances again toward the stairs, considering his offer. But no, she just needs to get out of here. “Truthfully, I would rather walk.”
He puts up two palms in resignation. “See you on set then.” Elena hesitates, a little surprised that he remembered she’s a background actor in the film. She thinks about asking him if he has any idea which day they’ll need her on set, but she says nothing. Hunger, and a desire to see Gael, drive her out the door and down the hill.
One foot then the other, over a branch, avoiding a rock to the right, to the left, taking care not to twist an ankle in these shoes. She estimates it will take her forty-five minutes to get home, though she really doesn’t know. That will be just enough time to punish herself properly. Amazing how one night can make you feel so fucking low.
25Joey
Joey is half-dressed, leaning her elbows on the foot of the bed, hovering over her phone.
River comes in with two mugs of coffee. His hair is still wet, and he smells like shampoo. Joey clicks off her screen and turns, taking one of the mugs from him.
They’re both up with the sun, Joey to get to Aspect before the rush and River to get out to the trails to before the first hikers. They move around the room, pulling socks out of drawers, sliding past each other with hands on each other’s hips.
“How are the girls?” River asks. She’s too distracted to reply. Her mind tries to pick one thing to focus on, but she thinks about all of it—the ring that looked like Quinn’s, the bloody sweatshirt, and Tom Winter’s creepy shrine.
“You okay?” River asks as he slips on his shoes.
“They’re good. We’re meeting up this morning.”
“Tell them I say hi,” he says, taking a sip of his coffee. “If they’re staying for the weekend, maybe we can grab a drink or something. Itwould be great to see them.” He watches her check her phone again and then slip it into her back pocket.
“Maybe,” she says absentmindedly. “I’m not sure how long they’re staying.”
He waits a beat before leaving, even though it’s past seven and he doesn’t like to be late—they’re a good fit in that way, she has to admit, but punctuality does not a relationship make. He says he’s okay not talking about their discussion the other night, but it’s still there, lingering between them. Joey wishes it wasn’t, but she can’t give him an answer right now. She turns away a few degrees. Instead of taking the hint, he slips her mug from her hand and puts it on top of the dresser, then he rests his forearms on her shoulders and digs his fingers into her scalp, massaging. She resists slightly, even though she can feel the scratch of his sweater and the shape of his chest underneath. He’s warm. She wants to sink into him because he knows she turns to butter when he does that to her head, but she doesn’t let herself. He must sense her reticence because he lets her go and pecks the top of her head. With a distinct air of disappointment, he leaves. Soon she hears the faint jingle of Walter’s leash and the click of the back door.
She closes her eyes, wondering, not for the first time, what the hell she’s doing.
Then, she pulls her phone from her back pocket and opens her text messages. She taps one of the pictures Elena sent from yesterday. It’s overexposed and slightly out of focus. Quinn’s pink sweatshirt lies flat and lifeless on the floor, creasing unnaturally at the elbows. Why would a father want to keep the clothes his daughter died in, especially if they’re covered in her blood? It’s morbid. In the blurred background is the shrine. Picture frames, Quinn’s disembodied face, a dangling rosary, one dirty shoelace.
A massive coffee-black stain and seven similarly sized slashes paintthe front of Quinn’s sweatshirt. The best theory Joey has come up with so far is that Tom followed her out there, they argued, and he pushed her. But these seven knife-blade-sized holes, the bloodstain—they point to another cause of death altogether. Seven stab wounds on her abdomen. Joey does not remember seeing these the day she found her. The raincoat, she guesses, is the only explanation.
She pads to the spare room in her socks and pulls a pile of pillowcases off the closet shelf. Underneath is a file folder. This is something she’s not supposed to have. She only has it because River’s dad worked the case, and River somehow managed to swipe it for Joey long before they started sleeping together, before his parents moved away. It’s something she knows River still feels guilty about, even though he accepts that her obsession with Quinn’s death is just a part of her, and even though his dad is long retired and has likely forgotten this case file even exists. No one at the police force has come looking for it, in any case.
She has no idea how it has been so easy for everyone to just move on when it feels like she never will. She tucks the file into her backpack, pulls on some clothes, and heads out the door.
26Elena
They wait as Joey puts in a couple of hours at the coffee shop.
Gael is quizzing them with a 1998 edition of Trivial Pursuit, and Sophie is being polite, though neither of them pays much attention. A couple of low-level crafties run in and out with drink orders for the movie cast and crew. Locals pile in like fruit flies, hoping—she can tell by their craning necks—to catch sight of one of the actors. She wonders what state Phillip Granger is in today. She scratches the pad of her thumb with the sharp corner of a trivia card as she debates the intelligence of sleeping with him.
