Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Harper
I t felt like hours since she’d left Portland in the little rental Toyota. At first, the day was pleasantly warm and sunny. The miles passed with gradually less and less traffic. Harper turned on the radio but quickly switched it off when one of her songs—Isla’s songs—had played, ramming home just how far away she was from her sister.
When she’d left Portland, Harper hadn’t hesitated. King’s words stayed with her. Just one day at a time. She’d deleted every social media app from her phone and turned off email notifications when she’d stopped briefly to grab a coffee. The constant buzzing of her phone had put her on edge.
Now the little rectangle sat silently in her handbag, a reminder of the distance between her and Isla that only grew as the miles passed.
The further she drove, the darker the sky became. As evening approached and Harper neared Cape Wilde, the first drops of rain splattered on the windshield.
Not being the most confident driver in the rain, Harper slowed. It was taking much longer than she had expected to get to West’s house.
According to the map on her phone, she should be almost there, but the rain had poured down, reducing visibility to barely thirty feet. If she hadn’t felt such a press to get to her destination, she would have pulled over and waited for it to clear, but despite her better judgment she’d kept driving.
“Beaver Lane?” she muttered, slowing to read a street sign that was barely visible in the torrent that continued to pour from the sky.
“Nope.” She pressed on.
She’d passed through the little town of Cape Wilde not too long before. A Main Street with closed shops in painted timber and brick. Window boxes decorated the shop windows, making her smile. A bar was still open near the waterfront. The impression of a cozy, quiet coastal town was all she could take in with the downpour.
And now she was almost at her destination. Not much longer and she could rest. The thought was enough to make it worth pushing on.
“Come on. Beaver Lane has to be around here somewhere,” she said to herself, leaning forward to peer through the water running in sheets over the glass as the windshield wipers frantically battled against the downpour.
She caught sight of the word ‘beaver’ on a sign and smacked the steering wheel. “Yes!”
She turned the car a little too sharply for the wet road, the back end sliding. Harper squeaked, and feeling the loss of traction, she tried to correct by turning the wheel in the other direction.
The car straightened, and relief washed over her, but only for an instant as a line of trees loomed straight in front of her. She screamed and slammed her foot on the brake, but it was too late.
The little rental slid off the road, and Harper threw her hands up in front of her face. Screwing her eyes shut, she tensed up and held her breath.
The car plowed down a small embankment and headfirst into a tree, stopping with a sudden jolt that deployed the airbags. All the air whooshed out of Harper’s lungs at the impact. To add insult to injury, the hands she had tried to shield herself with connected with her face.
“Oof!” Harper’s eyes stung from the impact. She took a few moments to move her wrists, making sure they were not damaged.
It didn’t feel like she’d broken anything, and her shoulders relaxed with a sigh. Her head slumped against the headrest as she took a few deep breaths, trying to calm her racing heart.
The rain continued thundering down. One of the windshield wipers was bent and making an awful scraping noise as it slid back and forth across the glass.
She turned the wipers off, silencing the grating sound of metal on glass, and put the car into reverse. Hoping to back the little rental onto the road, she pressed down on the accelerator gently. The little car shuddered as the wheels spun in the mud. She tried again, pushing harder on the accelerator. The engine whined, then sputtered and stopped.
She turned off the ignition, and the interior light came on, masking any view of the outside darkness. Her reflection in the rear view mirror showed dark circles under her eyes, her usually straightened and tamed blonde hair a mess of frizzy waves.
She grunted, turning away from her reflection. There were bigger issues right now.
The airbags had begun to deflate, and she pushed them aside as she hunted for her handbag. It had slid from the passenger seat into the footwell, beyond her reach.
It took some maneuvering, but she grabbed it and found her phone in one piece.
“At least one thing is going right,” she muttered as she unlocked the screen. No reception and the battery was almost empty. She dropped the phone back into her handbag with a curse.
What was she thinking? She didn’t have West’s phone number anyway, and who else would she call?
She undid her seatbelt and twisted in her seat to look through the back window. The slope that looked so small from the road now looked like a mountain. It loomed behind the rental car in the dark, and she swallowed past the lump in her throat.
In this rain, it was unlikely anyone would see her car in the ditch—if anyone came out this way in a storm. No. The map showed the road had very few houses on it. Anyone with any sense would be home and out of this downpour.
Nobody was going to come along and save her.
She was all alone now.
The truth of her situation hit her. She was not a princess. This was not a fairytale. There was no knight in shining armor coming to the rescue.
Harper gritted her teeth. If she was going to get out of here, she was going to have to do it herself.
She reached for the door handle, but it wouldn't open. She jiggled the handle, pushing at the door.
Nothing.
“Seriously?”
She leaned across to the passenger side and grabbed the handle. This time the door opened with a creak. She climbed out of the driver’s seat, squeezing herself across the center console, and shoved open the passenger door.
It took some contorting, but she managed to get into the passenger seat, thankful to be wearing her favorite stretchy jeans and not the dress she'd considered putting on that morning.
A blast of cold air and rain hit her in the face, and she gasped in shock before gritting her teeth and pulling herself out of the car. Her foot got caught as she exited, and she dropped to her knees.
“Ugh,” she exclaimed. She pulled at her leg, and it freed with a jerk, sending her sprawling into the mud. “Oh, lovely.”
She stood, sliding in her converse sneakers on the wet ground and reached into the car to grab her handbag. Slinging it over one shoulder, she ignored the mud and made her way to the trunk.
The remote wouldn’t work, and the trunk wouldn’t open, so she shrugged. She could come back for it later. It wasn't as if the car was going anywhere anytime soon.
The slight slope was almost impossible for her to climb, but she managed to clamber up on her hands and knees. The rain eased slightly, but was still heavy, and Harper’s light sweater stuck to her like a second skin.
A second, cold and muddy skin.
She plucked at it with one hand and shivered.
She couldn’t just stay here. She needed to get help, so she had to walk. But in which direction? She squinted into the rain, imagining she could see lights from a distant house, but the trees were thick, and there was nothing. Lightning flashed, and she jumped.
She really shouldn’t walk around in a storm. Wasn’t there some rule for when to seek shelter in a lightning storm? Whatever it was, she knew she needed to get out of the weather, and soon.
She turned to look back at the car, but the thought of sliding back down the embankment to hide in the wreckage felt like defeat.
Maybe she could get phone reception up here? Harper dug her phone from her handbag and huddled over it, trying to keep it from getting wet. Still no reception. She sighed and, as she went to put it back in her handbag, it slipped out of her grasp and fell to the ground.
Right toward a muddy puddle.
“Oh shit! No!” she cried, trying to grab the device, but only managed to knock it further away.
Harper watched in horror as her phone tumbled through the air to land with a splat. She quickly bent to pick it up and pressed the button to turn the screen on. It briefly lit up and then went dark.
This had to be the worst twenty-four hours of Harper’s life.
She contemplated sitting in the mud, but there was still a beat of defiance in her, and she wouldn’t give up. The car was a wreck. She had no way of contacting her sister. She didn't have her guitar… So how was she going to get out of this mess, let alone write an entire album of hit songs in three weeks?
Not by standing in the rain, that’s for sure.
She took a guess and started walking in the direction she was traveling. She couldn’t be that far from West’s house, surely? She was on the right road, so it was only a matter of time until she found a house. She’d just stop and ask, or maybe she’d get lucky and his name would be on the mailbox. She’d seen a few of those on the drive, the last name of the owners painted on a little sign.
She was soaked to her skin, but Harper focused on putting one foot in front of the other. With every step, her sneakers made a squelching noise. The denim of her skinny jeans was slick with mud and uncomfortable, but there was nothing she could do about it.
She wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to conserve warmth and focused on getting herself to West’s place. A hot shower, a mug of tea, and a warm bed sounded amazing right now.
Harper wasn’t paying attention to anything but her daydreams of what would hopefully be waiting for her, so she didn’t hear the sound of an approaching vehicle. When a truck passed her, its wheels hit a puddle, a sheet of muddy water drenching her from head to toe.
She shrieked in shock and stopped as the cold, dirty water connected with her already freezing skin.
The truck’s brake lights changed to reverse lights, and she quickly stepped out of the way to avoid getting splashed again.
Harper swallowed nervously and gripped the handle of her purse tightly.
Sudden thoughts of being murdered and buried in an unmarked grave ran through her head. Maine was where a lot of Stephen King novels were set, after all.
Would anyone know where she was?
Stop being dramatic.
She swallowed and watched as the truck backed up next to her. The passenger window rolled down, and she peered into the shadowy interior. All she could see was the outline of a man, gripping the steering wheel with one hand that she could have sworn was the size of a baseball glove. The darkness inside the truck gave her no idea of his age or what he looked like.
She took a step back, almost losing her footing on the wet ground.
Harper wasn’t prepared when the driver spoke. The deep, masculine voice sent warmth over her skin and down to her toes. She paid no attention to the words, standing in the rain gaping like a fish.
She shook her head and snapped her jaw shut as a gust of freezing rain hit her in the face.
“Are you alright?”
She was standing in the rain, covered in mud, clutching her ruined handbag to her chest. The rental car that was meant to be her source of independence in this whole shitty situation was undrivable. Her sister—her best friend—wasn’t speaking to her, and her father had banished her, possibly forever.
She was so far from alright that she started laughing hysterically.
No, she was not alright.
But why had it taken this long for someone to ask?