Courtney
It wasn’t real. The face in the window. I imagined it, I tell myself as I slam the cottage door closed behind us. I lock it,
flicking the dead bolt into place, jiggling the handle to be certain it’s locked and that no one can get in. I lean into it,
resting my forehead against the door, trying to catch my breath, which feels impossible.
When I turn around, Cass and Mae stand behind me in the room, Cass four or five inches taller than Mae, because Mae, like
Emily, is petite, and because she hasn’t hit puberty yet. She’s still waiting for a growth spurt, which happened for Cass
a year ago. It gives the impression that Mae is much younger than she is, though she’s ten, like Cass, just one year away
from middle school. Emily and I were pregnant at the same time. We gave birth just five weeks apart. It comes rushing back
to me in that moment: the baby shower we shared, Emily and me posing for pictures with our baby bumps, her going into labor
first and then downplaying it, so I wouldn’t be scared. It really didn’t hurt, not as bad as they say.
And now Emily is dead.
I shudder at the thought, some sort of feral, guttural sound coming out of me.
My hand rises to my mouth as I squeeze my eyes shut tight, trying not to, but still picturing her lying on the floor of the screened-in porch, her mangled body bloodied, practically magenta from the way the blood pooled inside of her.
I see the expression on her face, fixed forever in place in a wide-eyed, openmouthed scream.
I throw up in my mouth thinking about it and swallow it back down, the reflux making my throat burn.
Someone killed her.
Someone killed Nolan.
They’re both dead. Murdered. My best friend and my brother. Gone.
I open my eyes. In front of me, Cass is wide-eyed, wild, her chest heaving, crying. But Mae is in shock, quiet, her skin sallow,
though I see her heartbeat through her thin cotton shirt. She breathes through an open mouth, her nostrils flaring. The knee
of Mae’s pajama pants is torn from when she fell. There is still blood on her hands. It’s on her knee too, staining the edges
of the tear red. Her hair, like Cass’s, is in her eyes. It’s practically the same color hair, a light caramel brown—like Nolan’s,
like mine—so that when you see them lying side by side sometimes you don’t know where Cass ends and Mae begins.
I drop to the arm of a chair. I pull them into me, wrapping my arms around their small waists, holding them as they press
into me. I look back over my shoulder to double-check that the front door is closed and locked, which it is, though that doesn’t
mean someone couldn’t just kick it in or break a window to get in. I picture Emily and Nolan’s cottage. Did someone let the
killer inside, or did the killer break down the door? I try to remember if the door was open, or if the weak wooden frame
was splintered by force, but I can’t recall. Still, I think about pulling a chair in front of our door, but I don’t know that
it would stop anyone, and someone could just as easily come in through the open windows.
“Are you girls okay?” I ask quietly, the words coming out fast, urgent.
It’s a stupid question. Of course they’re not okay.
None of us will ever be okay again. Still, Cass—always a people pleaser—nods, but Mae says nothing, her body palpitating in my arms. “I need to call for help,” I tell them, finding my phone in the pocket of my robe but seeing that the two bars I had next door have disappeared and I have none.
“Shit.”
Cass looks at me with fear in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“The cell signal,” I say, wishing more than anything that Elliott was here, that he hadn’t gone fishing today of all days,
that he would come back home. I don’t know what time he left, though early morning is the best chance to catch fish, and so
my guess is he was out on the lake just before dawn. I slept through it. I didn’t hear him get up, I didn’t hear him leave.
The sun rises around five or five thirty, which makes me think he slipped from bed sometime before that and was drifting out
into the lake in the canoe soon after with a thermos of coffee and his fishing gear, which he brought from home, tucked inside
the hull.
“What are you going to do?” Cass asks, her voice trembling.
“I don’t know,” I say, rising up. “Just give me a minute to think.”
I wander around the cottage with my phone in the air, searching for just one crucial bar, which I don’t find. I move toward
the window, hoping the signal might be better there than behind a solid wall. I peel the curtain back, pressing my phone to
the glass. No service. “Dammit,” I mutter under my breath, looking outside where the day is pristine, the lake and sky bluer than I’ve seen.
The cell signal is better up on the hill, by Emily and Nolan’s cottage.
Since the day we got here, that’s been the case, because the higher elevation is closer to the cell tower, or so Elliott said.
That said, I don’t know that I can get myself to go back up there to make the call.
I don’t know what’s happening inside the cottage.
I don’t know who is there. I don’t know if when they’re finished there, they’ll come for us.
I let go of the curtain, watching as it swishes closed.
I can’t stay here. I have to get help. I have to do something. Reese and Wyatt might still be alive. I have to save them before it’s too late. I have to save the girls and me.
“I have to go to the lodge for help,” I decide, turning away from the window and looking back at Cass. The lodge is where
the rental office is. There is free Wi-Fi there and, even better, a landline where I can call the police. “You girls stay—”
“No,” Cass says, shaking her head and cutting me off, though it’s not as decisive as it sounds; it’s scared, whining before
she bursts into tears. “You can’t go,” she begs, shaking her head.
“It will be fine, Cass,” I say, my voice turning buoyant, breezy, trying to convince her, as if suggesting she stay in the
car while I run into the convenience store for a gallon of milk. “I’ll run. I’ll go fast. You girls stay here and lock the
door behind me. Don’t open it for anyone until I come back. Keep the curtains closed. When I’m back, I’ll let myself in with
the key.”
“No. No. You’re not going.”
“There isn’t another option, honey. It will be fine,” I say again, drawing the last word out for emphasis. “I need to get
to a phone so I can call for help. I have no signal.”
“You’re not leaving us here.” She reaches for my hand, fastening to it like glue, tugging so hard it hurts. Her eyes are pleading,
desperate, and I give in. There is no good option. Maybe it’s better that we stay together. I could never live with myself
if I left them behind and then something happened to them.
We leave out the front door, trying to be silent and invisible. I pull the door closed quickly behind us, to prevent the hinges from squeaking, holding on to the handle until the latch is aligned with the plate and it slides noiselessly into place. I ease the screen door closed.
Cass tries to take off immediately, but I grab her by the hand and we stand on the deck, our backs pressed to the weathered
wooden siding, searching the trees with our eyes. In the cottages around us, people still sleep with doors closed and curtains
drawn, while overhead a flock of loons soars by, landing gracefully on the lake.
I count down on my fingers—3 . . . 2 . . . I mouth the word, Go, before we leave the deck, running. Cass darts ahead, but again, Mae lags behind because her steps are smaller than ours.
I tug on her hand, practically dragging her along the path and through the trees. Cass takes the lead, sprinting in the direction
of the lodge—she knows the way by heart because of all the times the kids have gone together to play pool or foosball or rent
DVDs.
Cass gets there first, but the German shepherd stops her in her tracks. It’s tied to a tree, though it rises up, showing its
teeth. Cass cowers, and I have to tell her that she’s fine, that the dog can’t get her because of the rope, and only then
does she go on, slipping quickly past, pressing on the lodge door, running inside but stopping so abruptly that Mae and I
stumble into her, practically falling.
It’s dim inside the lodge. The lights are wanting. The ceilings are low, the wood paneling dark. It takes a minute for me
to orient myself, for my eyes to adjust to the lack of light, but when they do, I see that we’re not alone. That the lodge
is not empty, as it should be at just past seven in the morning.
There is a man sitting at the bar alone.
I’ve seen him around the resort before. In fact, the other day, I saw him stop and say something to Reese by the pool.
I don’t know what he said, but I noticed her reaction from behind: the clenched hands, the nervous laugh.
She walked away, and as she did, she stole a hesitant glance back to see if he was still there, and he was, his smile smarmy.
Now he looks up as we come in, one of the only people awake at the resort besides us. He’s on his laptop, presumably working,
though he has a beer at 7:00 a.m., which he reaches for, saying nothing as the lodge door clicks closed, taking the sunlight
with it.
As it does, Cass backs into me, scared.
A woman comes out from the office, muttering under her breath, “That better be you, Daniel, you little shit. You think you
can just waltz into work whenever you want and—”
She stops, pulling back. I stand just inside the door with Mae and Cass beside me, pressed in close, Mae clutching a fistful
of my robe in her hand. My heart hammers inside me, and I want to scream at the woman to call the police, but I’m doing everything
in my power to stay strong for Cass and Mae, to not fall apart, to not lose control. I hear a noise from behind and I gasp.