Page 148

Unfortunately, the same condition appears to be affecting me.

Given the available evidence, the situation seems less like a bizarre coincidence and more like a collective lapse in judgment.

Torin lets out a breath. “This is gonna make things weird.”

Briggs snorts. “Gonna?”

Nobody speaks for a while.

Rain thickens outside.

The old drive-in screen looms pale through the darkness, while inside the truck all three of us sit, equally wrecked by the same woman.

Beneath the shock, a more complicated feeling starts settling into place inside me.

I’m angry. Not at Laurel. At them, maybe a little. At myself, definitely. At the entire impossible situation.

But underneath that lies another truth I can’t ignore.

When Briggs talked about Lucy tonight, his whole expression changed.

When Torin carried her upstairs yesterday, he was careful in the same way Ben used to be around injured animals.

And when I think about it, every time either of them looks at Laurel lately, I recognize the exact same thing currently destroying my internal stability.

Briggs breaks the silence first. “Well,” he says. “That complicates the group chat.”

“We don’t have a group chat,” Torin mutters.

“We probably should. Feels operationally necessary now.”

I rub one hand across my mouth.

This cannot possibly be my life.

“I need everybody to understand something,” I say finally. Both men look toward me. “I’m not treating this casually.”

The humor leaves Briggs’s face immediately.

Torin sits slightly straighter.

“I know who she is,” I continue. “I know what Ben meant to all of us. I know Laurel’s overwhelmed, grieving, and trying to keep herself together for Lucy while Maggie’s missing. I’m aware of every reason this is a terrible idea.”

“But?” Torin asks softly.

“But I still look for her first in every room.”

Silence follows, because there’s no taking words back once they exist.

Briggs stares out toward the trees for several seconds before speaking. “Yeah,” he says roughly. “Same.”

Torin lets out a humorless laugh. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

I think about Laurel sitting cross-legged on her hallway floor surrounded by papers and grief and stubborn determination. About her laughing and singing the frog song in my SUV. About the way she instinctively moves closer to all of us now without noticing herself doing it.

Then I think about Ben.

Ben, who would probably laugh himself unconscious if he could see us right now.