Sophie kneels on the edge of the crag, noticing the rain sliding down her nose. She takes in the panorama before her: lakes of wildflowers and forests spotted with tennis-ball-green aspens.
The snippets she remembers from that night fifteen years ago with Tanner are blurry—ironically, like they were taken with a bad-quality camera. But they also linger in the way that a bad dream lingers. The smell of the duvet. Musty, like it had sat in the washer for days. The flash of the camera in the dark room. As soon as he got near her last night, his breath sulfuric on her face, she wanted to gouge his eyes out, but that didn’t happen. It couldn’t, not with fingernails as chewed-down as hers.
She tries to pull her thoughts out of that hallway. Tries not to think about the abject revulsion on Marissa’s face, tries not to think about his jeans and the way they pressed against the back of her hand. Suddenly, a violent longing makes her miss Talia. No call from her yesterday at all. Sophie tried again this morning, but it went straight to voicemail. And for some reason she hasn’t responded to her texts. Worry has coiled around Sophie’s logical thinking, squeezing the air out of it. Afterthe fourth unread message, she started to spiral, and the worst-case scenarios emerged. An out-of-control fever from an unknown virus. Emergency room. A nose cannula pumping oxygen just to keep her baby alive. It took twenty minutes and a solid talking down from her dad to snap Sophie out of it.
If Talia needs me, she will call.This is what she has to keep reminding herself, though she can still feel the electrode prod of anxiety all over her body. It’s satisfying to know in a small sardonic way that even after Elena’s baseless accusations and her own explosive cruelty, after her conversation with Marissa, and even after her run-in with Tanner McGrath, that her anxiety is still centered around her family. Right now, all she wants is to see her little girl’s face and to wrap herself in her wife’s arms.
The journal is butterflied open before her knees. There are even more pages with handwriting now, as if more appeared overnight. She knows now that no one has been sneaking in, thank god. She kept the journal cradled to her chest all night as she cried herself to sleep.
Most of what’s here is a hurried and nonsensical stream of consciousness that Sophie will have to decipher later. She is scanning it frantically, looking for Tanner’s name, because since she woke up this morning, she has been wondering something. Quinn knew how upset Sophie was, how traumatized. What if she didn’t make light of the pictures? What if she did do something about them? Quinn could have done a summoning spell on her own to get the pictures from Tanner’s phone. She shouldn’t have done magic alone, but maybe she did. If the pictures were really that bad, maybe they drove Quinn to do something stupid. She could have gone to Tanner’s, like Marissa said, but not to play matchmaker. Maybe she went there to warn him to stay away from Sophie.
Sophie can’t seem to marry the two versions of Quinn. There’s the Quinn who kept the incriminating photos of her and lied to Elenaabout being in a secret relationship with her. Then there’s this version of Quinn, the one who Sophie realizes now might have threatened Tanner on her behalf. She wants to believe in that version, the loyal friend. She really wants to. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t be difficult. But now, she doesn’t know. Sophie naturally turns toward the positive like a plant leaning toward the sun. But believing that Quinn stood up for her means believing something else too—something unthinkable. Tanner, fresh from being threatened by Quinn, would have been angry, so angry that he retaliated. Years of being the target of his obsessive bullying meant Sophie knew him. And he hated to be told what to do. He liked to be in control. He wouldn’t have taken Quinn’s threat lightly, and he had already proved his capacity to do real harm.
Did he push her? The theory reverberates through her as if she’s a Tibetan singing bowl, growing louder and suddenly becoming the only possible explanation.
Sophie gets to her feet, still clutching the journal. She leans forward, just slightly. Enough that she can see what’s below her. The creek is there—a milky yellow, thanks to the ore sediment leached from the ground—and the rocks. Years have washed away any trace of a death here, and yet it feels as raw as if it happened yesterday.
Cradling the journal in one hand, she forces herself to resume skimming for Tanner’s name. She doesn’t get far before a new page catches her eye, and she trails a finger over the words.
I asked my mom ifThe Book of Aspensis hiding something. She said yes, lots of things. She told me a story about the women who were initiated with her. She said this very question fractured their friendship. It drove the four of them apart. She told me to let it go, that it can only lead to greed. But I know she’s wrong…because I unlocked them. I unlocked the rest of the spells.
Behind Sophie, footsteps. She holds her breath and listens. The steps grow louder, closer. Someone is coming, and the idea sends allher thoughts fluttering away completely. Fear grows roots beneath her. Is it Tanner? Is he following her?
Slowly, she crouches down, too afraid to look behind her. She carefully tucks the journal away and slides her bag onto her shoulders and starts to think of an escape. She could break into a run through the brush. But, oh god, what is she thinking? She can’t outrun Tanner. She hasn’t exercised properly in years. She could stay low, but how long will that last for her? It’s only a matter of seconds before he sees her here.
Or, she realizes, she could jump. The option blows through her like a cold wind. It’s not really an option, though. Is it?
“Sophie?”
Sophie yelps, and her foot slips an inch. Her shoe catches on a flat part of the crag. It’s drizzling, she realizes with a panic. Slippery. She steadies herself with fingertips against rock and then realizes she recognizes the voice. It’s not Tanner’s, or at least she doesn’t think it is. She stands with a surge of courage and turns to see.
44Joey
Joey’s house feels empty.
She has come to think of River as an extension of this space, she realizes. And the dog. God, she’s going to miss that dog. What Sophie said broke something inside her. Because she was right. Joeyhasn’tlived.
She sorts through day-old mail. Most of it is trash, but there’s one bill for the coffee shop. A second notice with a fee attached. That is not what she wants to think about right now, and apparently it’s something she didn’t want to think about before, either. She leaves it on the counter, promising to finally sort it. She needs to make plans to get that place back in shape. The extra business from the movie shoot will be a huge help, but it needs more than that to become what it used to be. The problem is that Joey just doesn’t care about it like Barbara did. She has tried and tried to muster the enthusiasm for community events, maybe an open-mic night, a teen night, a guest speaker, or live band. She knows what it will take, but she just doesn’t have it in her. She’s not the kind of woman who gathers friends and community members together. She’s the kind of woman who runs alone on mountain trails at night, who hides from herself.
Sophie and Elena coming back has brought her a speck of hope, she realizes. It’s only been a few days, but she somehow feels more herself than she has since Quinn died. They’ve had their disagreements, and they are far from perfect, sure, but she understands now that these are core friends, the kind that form the foundation of a life. They are the kind of people you are lucky to have when they’re with you and who you miss like a limb when they’re gone. What she wouldn’t give to just go back in time and do it all differently. Stay in touch. Stay close.
She sits, staring at her phone. The rush of emptiness in her bones weighs her down into the stiff contours of the couch. Her lock screen is a photo of her own feet that she took during a run a few years ago. There are no texts from Sophie or Elena. Nothing from River. Not even a message from Zach, and she knows he’s this close to quitting. She is truly alone. Joey’s obsession with the truth has poisoned everything. It’s kept her from living, from having friends, from reconnecting. Fifteen years is a lot of time to miss. This thought makes her so fundamentally sad that she finds it hard to breathe properly. Elena and Sophie will leave in a few days, and Joey will be alone all over again. She stands, then, and makes an impulsive decision.
It takes her ten minutes to take down all her pictures and notes and strings from the wall. She doesn’t let herself keep anything except one. She finds an old frame and slips a photo that has all four of them inside it. This, she sets on the dresser. The case file, she tucks back under the sweater in the closet. Then, she opens her laptop. With several click-and-drags, she brings everything involving Quinn to the trash icon in the corner of her home screen. Her mouse hovers over the Empty button. She and Quinn once promised that if they both hadn’t left Whisper Ridge by the time they were thirty, they would leave together. Quinn had laughed.“I’m going to be an inspirational speaker, so I’ll have to leave for all the international speaking engagements.”Joey said she couldn’t wait to go with her, but even as she’d said it, she hada strange fermenting feeling in her gut. She knew, even then, that she would never leave Whisper Ridge, no matter what they promised each other. She couldn’t imagine a life anywhere else. She ignored that little premonition until…well, until she manifested it. She’s thirty-two and alone and still here.
“I’m sorry,” she says aloud to Quinn’s picture. “I’m sorry for that day. I’m sorry for what I did.”
She knows it’s not nearly enough, that she’ll never forgive herself. But she cannot do this. Not anymore.
She clicks Empty.
45Elena
Elena sweeps her arm across her middle as she walks toward the spell circle. “She was right over there,” she says to herself, “waving goodbye to the children.” She pictures the scene. Teacher Number Two. The sheriff watching her, listening to her account. Curious children hovering nearby. Horses braying in the distance. She thinks about her inflection and wonders about her character. At this moment, is she more afraid of the wolves or the sheriff? This woman knew the victim. She was probably friends with her. Her friend was brutally attacked by wolves, and then the sheriff comes asking questions of the townspeople? It would have anyone rattled.
Rattled.That’s the word she needs. That’s what she will try to portray.
She looks up and pulls in a sudden breath. Someone is there, squatting on top of the crag.
