Courtney #2
My eyes dart back, panicked, expecting to see Emily and Nolan’s killer coming into the lodge with us, but it’s not; the sound
is from an arcade game. I look back, my mind all over the place, frantic. I can’t stop wondering what happened, who killed
them. Was it someone we know or was it random? Did the killer think Emily and Nolan were someone else? Did they go into the
wrong cottage and still kill them anyway? I can’t stop thinking about Reese and Wyatt in the cottage now. They’re dead. Of
course they’re dead. They have to be. I can’t stand the idea of going back, of seeing their bodies like I did Emily’s and
Nolan’s. It would kill me. I wouldn’t survive it.
“Oh,” the woman says, seeing us, taken aback because we’re not who she expected to see, and because of the way we look: pale, tear streaked, breathing hard.
She regroups. When she speaks again, her voice is softer, changed.
“I’m sorry. Pardon my French. I thought you were someone else.
” She pulls her eyebrows together, bends down and leans in toward bloodied Mae.
“You need something, honey? Are you hurt?” she asks, smiling, and I think she believes something inconsequential has happened, like that Mae’s fallen and we’ve come for a Band-Aid.
She has a kind, gentle face, pear shaped with rolls of skin on her neck.
Her name tag reads Greta Dahl. I’ve seen her before.
She was here the day we checked in to the resort and got our keys.
I step closer to Ms. Dahl. “There’s been a . . . a . . . an accident in cottage number eight. My brother and his wife. They’re . . .
they’re . . .” I glance back, aware that Cass and Mae are listening. I lean in, quiet my voice, my eyes pooling with tears.
“They’re dead.”
But Cass still hears, her voice rising in pitch as she asks, “What? They’re dead?” as if only now realizing, and I nod, watching as she cries harder. Beside her, Mae presses her hands to her ears, blocking
out the sound of Cass’s sobs.
“What do you mean they’re dead?” Ms. Dahl asks, her smile vanishing as she takes a step back, a look of shock and disbelief on her face.
“I . . . I went this morning to see if everything was okay,” I say, explaining how Mae came to our place, crying and upset.
“The front door was open. I went in. It was quiet. I thought at first that they were all asleep. I found my sister-in-law
on the screened-in porch. The blood. Oh God,” I say, bringing my hand to my own mouth, pressing hard as tears spill out and
over my cheeks, seeing it all over again, the color of Emily’s skin, the way her contorted body was sprawled on the floor,
mouth open, eyes wide and opaque like murky lakes, blood everywhere, and the smell—I remember now—something coppery that I
couldn’t place at the time. It was the smell of blood.
“My brother is dead too. I saw his body. Someone did this to them,” I say, crying, speaking fast. “Someone killed them.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head, finding it impossible to believe.
Her eyes go to the man at the bar and then back to me, saying, sputtering, “There must be some mistake. That can’t be right.
Are you sure . . .” But then she stops and asks, “Have you called anyone, honey? The police? Are they on their way?” Her movements are brisk as she steps past me for the door, which she dead-bolts, looking through a window and outside to see if anyone is there, if anyone followed us here.
I feel grateful, believing we’re safer inside with the door locked, believing it’s better that we’re not alone, that someone is here with us.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “No. I tried, but I couldn’t get a signal. We came here to see about a landline.”
She nods, spinning back, away from the door. “Yes. Of course,” she says. “I’ll call right now.” She speaks quickly, her words
choppy, punctuated, her movements fast. She brushes past me for the office, where she closes the door and I hear nothing,
which I’m grateful for because that means the girls can’t hear it either, that they don’t have to listen for a second time
as someone says that Emily and Nolan are dead.
“Here,” I say to them, “let’s sit.”
I help them to stools at the bar. At the same time, the man says, “Must’ve been a hell of a thing to see,” while reaching
for his beer, and I nod. I look away, but when I look back a minute later, he’s still watching me.
I drop my eyes to my phone. My fingers shake as I text Elliott. Come home. Something’s happened. Because of the Wi-Fi in the lodge, the message sends, but I don’t know if, out on the lake, Elliott receives it.
When Ms. Dahl comes out, she gets us glasses of water from the tap. She says, “They’re on the way. Shouldn’t be too long,”
and I see on her face and in her body language that she wants to ask more, to know more, but she doesn’t for the girls’ sake.
“Does anyone need anything?” she asks instead, her eyes tight.
We say no, but still, she gets the girls snacks from the vending machine because she’s anxious and can’t stand still, though no one is hungry. No one wants to eat.
The bags of Fritos sit untouched on the bar. I reach for Cass’s and Mae’s barstools, pulling them closer to mine. I ask for
a garbage can for Mae, who’s begun to feel sick. I think of all the pancakes and syrup she ate earlier today and know that
eventually, they’ll come back up. Ms. Dahl brings us the garbage and a wet rag, which I press to Mae’s face, crooning, “Breathe.
Just try to breathe.” It doesn’t work. She begins to vomit into the small plastic can as I lay the rag on the back of her
neck to cool her.
“How long did they say?” I ask Ms. Dahl, anxious for the police to come, for them to be here. Bile rises up inside of me at
the thought of Reese and Wyatt inside that cottage. Of what might be happening, of what they might be going through. Of me,
standing idly by, letting it happen. It crosses my mind to leave Cass and Mae here, to go to the cottage alone, to see if
they’re safe or if they’re hurt, but the idea of going back, of leaving Cass and Mae with strangers, is more than I can bear.
Ms. Dahl paces behind the bar. With each pass, her eyes rise to the door, though from where we sit, it’s impossible to see
outside. “They didn’t say, honey. Just said they’d send someone.”
I nod, rubbing circles on Mae’s back. Cass, herself, looks green, and I don’t know if it’s from seeing Mae puke, from the
smell of the vomit in the trash can, or from everything else that’s happened. I stroke her cheek. “I can’t imagine there are
too many emergencies around here,” I say to no one in particular, desperate for the police to arrive, though I imagine too,
that in a town this size, there aren’t many police.
The man decides to leave, to go back to his cottage and check on his wife and kids.
Ms. Dahl tries to object, saying, “I don’t know if that’s safe, not until the police get here.
I think you should wait.” But he goes anyway, Ms. Dahl walking him to the door, where she gazes vigilantly out before unlocking and opening it.
Once he’s gone, she flings the door closed, flicking the dead bolt.
She comes back to the bar, looking for something to do, for some way to keep busy until the police arrive.
She puts the man’s dirty glass in the sink and then starts wiping down the bar with a rag, glancing at us as she does, sweat starting to appear on her upper lip.
“You doing okay, honey? Anything you need?” she asks.
I tell her no. No, I don’t need anything. But also no, I’m not okay. My brother and his wife are dead. I don’t know where
Reese and Wyatt are, if they’re alive, if they’re dead, and the guilt eats at me. Ms. Dahl moves the bar rag around in aimless
circles, and at first I’m lost in thought, staring blindly at her rough, worn and calloused hands and the movement of the
rag on the countertop, thinking about the last thing I heard Reese say to Emily last night, until I feel eyes on me and realize
that Ms. Dahl is staring at us with a cold, fixed gaze as she wipes down the bar.
Cass notices too, pressing into me, hiding her face against my arm.
Greta Dahl’s staring gets under my skin, until the paranoia sets in and I start to wonder if it’s taking so long for the police
to come because, when she went into the office to make the call alone, closing the door behind herself, she never called them.