Chapter 49
Jess
Jess makes the call the moment her gaze hits the map. Standing in the center of the cabin, she is transfixed by the vastness of it. The trails and routes Matthieu has carefully staked out, the intersections, the research. She feels for Tom’s hand, whimpers when his fingers close around hers.
“No . . .”
she breathes. They both stare at the map silently, barely moving. The sheer scale of the mountains, of the danger, eclipses everything and brings her right back to her teenage self. When she and Carrie were as close as sisters, when she couldn’t imagine a space or time in her life that wasn’t inhabited by Carrie. The past decade of silence between them vanishes in her mind as her heart focuses like an arrow. None of that matters now.
“She—she’s out there, she could be anywhere—”
“We’ll find her,”
Tom says, even as his voice shakes.
Jess can’t even nod, can’t articulate the landslide of fear that holds her in its grip. She doesn’t know this time. She doesn’t know. She shifts her eyes away from the map, to the sofa, the kitchen, the door leading to the back room . . . it’s all so ordinary. There’s no imprint of a life here, no clutter to indicate the history of a person. She drifts over to the kitchen, opens a cupboard at random, and finds four plates, four bowls, four mugs neatly stacked. She bites her lip, a prickle rising along her hairline, trickling down the back of her neck. This man Carrie is searching for . . . was he ever really here? She hasn’t heard his name mentioned around Woodsmoke. Hasn’t seen a stranger in the supermarket or wandering the market square. Usually there would be gossip, threads of whispers surrounding a newcomer. But she hasn’t heard a thing.
She doesn’t want to voice that kind of fear aloud, not here. Not when the mountains are listening. She glances around, hoping for some sign of life, a used coffee cup, a crumpled crisp packet, anything—
Then she sees it.
A carelessly discarded old envelope, one corner folded down, as though rubbed with a frantic thumb. An image floats before her eyes, summoning a memory. Carrie used to do that. As the chemistry teacher droned on about something obtuse, she looked over at Carrie and saw that she was folding the corner of the page on her notebook and then smoothing it out, folding it over, creating a tiny triangle, and then smoothing it out, over and over. Jess snaps back, blinking quickly. The note had been left on the kitchen counter. Abandoned. Or . . .
She rushes for the envelope and snatches it up, and her heart bursts when she sees the writing scrawled across it. “It—it’s Carrie’s handwriting! Oh God, she was here, you were right.”
She gulps, forcing back the tears, focusing her mind like a needle. “She’s gone looking for him—for this Matthieu. Says she’ll take the trail across to the three peaks—”
“Shit . . .”
Jess swallows, passes the note to Tom. She looks at him, the agony on his features reflecting her own. Neither of them says it yet. That they are partly to blame, that they should have been the people she could turn to when she returned. Her people. Instead of pushing her, shoving her away—
Jess blows out a breath and holds up her phone. “I’m going to find signal. I bet she couldn’t; I bet she’s not on the right network anymore.”
Jess gathers herself, creating a mental bullet list, the salient points she’ll relay on the call. “Search for anything else, any clue—I don’t want to go the wrong way. I don’t want to give search-and-rescue the wrong information to find her.”
Tom only nods as Jess steps outside, already punching a number into her phone. She cradles it to her ear, praying for the tinny dial tone, almost passing out with relief when someone answers at the other end. She rattles it all off, where the cabin is, who has gone missing. And finally, she confesses, in her clipped, librarian tone, her worst fear. That no one has seen her since the night before.
The wait for search-and-rescue is the darkest hour of Jess’s life. She scans the skies, as though search-and-rescue will suddenly appear, as she paces back and forth, bile curling and writhing in her stomach.
“You should sit down, Jess. You should drink some water—”
“Don’t. Just please . . . don’t.”
Tom blinks steadily. “Okay, fair enough. But all the same.”
“You literally walked out last night, and I didn’t have a clue where you’d gone. So no. You do not get to tell me to sit down.”
Tom blanches. “All right, point taken.”
She stifles a scream, stalks back inside, and sits on the sofa. For a moment, the nausea wanes, leaving her temporarily suspended in the hope that it won’t return. But then it comes shuddering back, slamming into her middle, the back of her throat, like a fist. She groans, placing her hands on her stomach. “It’s like I’m in a car—or on a boat, and it’s moving too fast, and my body can never keep up.”
Tom sinks down next to her, rubbing a hand up and down her arm. “It’s shit, I know.”
“You don’t know.”
“You’re right, I really don’t.”
He cracks a smile, and Jess catches it. Then her mouth lifts too, and suddenly she can’t help herself. They’re both laughing, hysteria clutching their sides.
“We shouldn’t be laughing,”
Jess says, sniffing. “Why the hell are we laughing? Think of something serious!”
“I can’t,”
Tom says, pressing his hands into his face. “I can’t believe any of this is happening. I mean . . . what happened this winter?”
“I know,”
Jess says, then looks over at him. A squeak escapes her, and she’s laughing again, so much so that bile rises up her throat.
After a few minutes, their laughter subsides into silence. The nerves, the adrenaline, have left them cold. Tom wraps his hand around hers and looks over at her. “I’m so sorry, Jess. You cannot believe how sorry I am for leaving last night, for being so cross I couldn’t see how it would look, what you would think . . .”
“It’s all right,”
Jess says, closing her eyes. “It’s all right.”
They sit for a moment in the silence, thicker than fog in the cabin.
“I think it’s a girl again,”
she says. “I feel as sick as a dog, just like last time.”
“When will we . . .”
“Twenty-week scan.”
She sighs. “Not long. If we want to know, that is. We could keep it a surprise.”
“Been a lot of surprises recently, don’t you think?”
Tom says bleakly. “For once, I’d like a heads-up on something.”
“When—when you went to her the other night—”
“You thought I was leaving you. For Carrie.”
“Well, possibly.”
“Jess,”
Tom says, turning to her. “I’m a fool. You’re the love of my life. Always have been, always will be. That I ever made you doubt that, that Carrie coming back ever made you question . . . I’ve been distant since she got back, I know. I’ve just been in my own head, and I should have looked up, noticed more.
“What you did when we were kids, before the wedding? Going to Cora and all of that? I forgive you. I was angry, but my anger was misdirected. It was really about Cora. She’s always meddling, always involved, and I guess I just snapped last night and took it out on you.”
He stops himself, shaking his head. “I would have loved you anyway, I’m sure of it. I would have found my way to you, like it was always supposed to be. Carrie and I wouldn’t have lasted, and it would have done more damage if we’d gotten married. I have a lot to make up for. Starting now. Right this minute.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Tom leans over, kisses her cheek. He lowers his face to her shoulder, breathing in her scent, all vanilla and mint and fresh linen. She’s always smelled like this to him, even when they were young. “Tell me what I should do to make it up to you.”
“Find Carrie. Find her and help me mend it between us. That’s what I want. That’s all I’ve wanted since she left. It’s like there’s been this hole. I love you, and Elodie, and the life we have, but I can’t fill that space with anyone else. Only she can fill it.”
“All right.”
“I’m afraid,”
she says suddenly. “More than anything, I’m afraid it’s too late. That I left it too late and got too caught up in thinking I hated her, when really it was only my guilt and fear I hated.”
“They’ll find her.”
Jess sniffs as her entire being fills with tears, and she curves herself into Tom’s side. “You forgive me, then? For everything? Truly?”
“Of course.”
“But . . . you believe it all, don’t you? The Morgans, the book, the old stories . . .”
Tom is quiet for a minute as he still holds her. He’s been trying to work this out for years, to unravel the threads that bind them all, trying to unpick the real from the imagined. It’s true that the stories can’t be ignored in Woodsmoke, that trying to explain them to anyone from outside of town would be futile. But Jess and Tom and Carrie have all grown up with it. They’ve seen the seemingly magical effects, the unexplained things that happen. As much as he’d like to brush it all aside as superstition, he simply can’t.
“I believe that Carrie and I weren’t meant to be, and we never should have gone along with that wedding. We never should have let it get so far along. And I know, without any doubt, not even a shadow of it, that I love you. That I loved you as soon as I really saw you. And I should have welcomed Carrie home this autumn. I should have talked to her years ago. I should have called the wedding off myself and—and tried to make amends. For your sake.”
Jess breathes out, the air in the deepest part of her lungs expelling as she exhales. “It feels like we’ve all been suspended in that wedding day for a decade. Like we’re all trapped in the wedding that should have been. Not just us, but the whole town.”
“Yeah.”
Jess’s phone rings and she grabs for it, and Tom helps her stand as they both huddle over the bars of signal. When the voice connects on the other end, she cries.
They’ve found her.
She’s still alive.