Courtney
I stand at a distance, watching out the window as Detective Evans speaks to Elliott. Elliott’s back is to me so I can’t see
his face, but the detective leans against the deck railing, an inch or two taller than my husband and broader, with his arms
crossed. He nods, says something, then nods again, and I wonder what he’s asking and what Elliott is telling him. My jaw is
clenched, though I don’t know I’m doing it until I feel the pain radiate up the side of my face and into my temple.
“What did he say?” I ask when Elliott returns, turning his back to me to close and lock the door.
He turns back, lets his gaze run over the kids before meeting my eyes. Everyone is quiet. Mae has barely moved since Detective
Evans was in here speaking to us, her body wilting over the arm of the sofa, her eyes empty.
“That we should shelter in place in the cottage while they decide if it’s safe to be outside,” Elliott says.
I nod, but that’s not what I meant. That’s not what I was asking. I take a breath. “But what did he ask you?”
Elliott shrugs. “What time I left to go fishing, if I saw or heard anything unusual outside, if I caught anything, what my
relationship with Nolan and Emily was like.” He pretends not to care. He pretends that line of questioning doesn’t bother
him, but I can see in the tautness of his face that it does.
“Did you?”
“Did I what?” he asks, defensive as if I’ve just asked him if he killed Emily and Nolan.
“Catch anything,” I say.
He shrugs, nonchalant. “Couple bass.”
“I suppose they have to ask questions like that,” I say, meaning questions in general to rule him out as a suspect. If they
didn’t, they wouldn’t be doing their jobs.
“I suppose. What did they ask you?”
I tell Elliott what we talked about. The arguing, the Benadryl, how Wyatt said he saw Emily in the kitchen crying last night.
“Mae remembered too, that Reese had been hanging out with some boy around the resort. She heard him in their cottage. She
said Reese was scared of him. What if he did this, Elliott?” I ask, thinking of this boy creeping into the cottage late at
night. I picture his face, his eyes, and the way he looked that day by the pool at Reese, his gaze smoldering and intense.
Young love, I thought at the time, envying Reese for it, wanting to be seventeen all over again and have some boy look at me like that.
But what if I misread the situation? What if something different was going on?
Elliott shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“I remembered something too.”
“What?”
“Last night as we were leaving the cottage, Emily said she wanted to talk to you today. She had something to ask you.”
But Elliott’s face goes blank. He pulls his eyebrows together and shakes his head, asking, “She did?”
“Yes. You don’t remember?”
“No, but I’d been drinking,” he reminds me, and I nod, wondering just exactly how much Elliott had to drink. I only had a
glass or two of wine and sobered up quickly when Reese and Emily started arguing. But maybe he had more to drink than I think.
“You don’t know what she wanted to talk to you about?”
“No. I have no idea, Court. If I did, I’d tell you.”
I feel numb. Physically and emotionally drained. I replay the day’s events in my mind. It’s just after eleven in the morning
now. All that’s transpired has taken place in less than four hours. Waking up. Making pancakes. Finding Emily. Finding Nolan.
The girls and me running for our lives to the lodge, waiting for the police to come, being questioned by them. It feels like
it’s been four days, even four years. I step away from Elliott, lowering myself to a chair, my legs weary, thinking how it’s
not possible that this is the same day Cass woke me up to make pancakes for her and Mae, and that it’s not possible Emily
and Nolan are dead.
“Courtney?” Elliott asks.
“I just need a minute.”
Elliott watches me for a while, and then he goes back to the window, looking out at the police, who continue their investigation,
going from door to door, speaking to people in neighboring cottages, and I wonder what they’re asking and if they’re asking
things about us.
What are they like?
Did everyone get along?
Did you ever hear them fight?
I look away. I let my eyes go back to the kids. Wyatt sits in the chair with his posture slumped, staring at his phone. Mae’s
body still lies flaccid over the arm of the sofa while, at the other end of it, Cass sits there, picking absentmindedly at
her skin. They’re all quiet, but Mae in particular has barely spoken since we found Emily and Nolan next door. I go and sit
beside her, between both girls, putting my arm around her shoulder, my hand on Cass’s knee. I don’t know what to say to the
kids, and so I say nothing of value, only things like, Can I get anyone anything to eat?
and Does anyone need something? I put a movie on the TV to try to distract them—as if some slapstick comedy might be enough to shift their attention away from what’s happened—though we’re all grateful for the noise because the silence in the cottage is more than any of us can stand.
The day crawls by. All day I try to be strong, to be stoic, to not let myself fall apart, though that’s exactly what I want
to do: to cry, to throw and break things, to scream, to hide. Instead, I spend the next few hours in a delirious daze of disbelief,
taking care of the kids, trying to get everyone but myself to eat because I can’t eat. I try, but it comes back up and I find
myself in the bathroom again, on my knees, vomiting into the toilet until my stomach is empty and there’s nothing left to
throw up.
I have phone calls to make: to Emily’s mom and to Nolan and my parents, but for the longest time, I can’t bring myself to
call them. It hangs over me all day like a dark cloud that I keep putting off because I don’t physically think that I can
do it.
“Do you want me to call?” Elliott asks, his tone solicitous, and I know he’s trying to help, but I say no.
“They need to hear it from me.”
By the time I’m ready to make the calls, there is no cell reception in the cottage. I step out on the deck with my phone,
knowing that I’ll have to climb the hill to get a signal that lasts long enough to make the calls—either that or go to the
lodge for the Wi-Fi, which I don’t want to do either. Detective Evans told us to stay inside, but I can’t keep postponing
this.
Cautiously, I move down the wooden stairs. I leave the alleged safety of the deck. I look around as I step onto the thin,
patchy grass, feeling only slightly less vulnerable because of the police on the property, still collecting evidence in cottage
number eight.
Would the killer be so bold as to come back when the police are here?
What if the killer is still here?
What if the killer never left?
I cross the yard. I slip past other cottages for the hill, climbing it. A cool breeze blows, and I watch the leaves in the
trees tremble like I do. I hold my phone in my hand, staring down at it, waiting for a bar to appear. As I reach the top,
it does.
I call Reese first. I don’t expect her to answer and she doesn’t. Her voicemail has not been set up, so the voice that greets
me isn’t Reese herself; it’s something automated, soulless. The number you are trying to reach . . . I click end and try again. The number you are trying to reach . . .
I pull up Instagram instead. I search for Reese’s profile to see if she posted anything since she’s been gone, like a cry
for help, a hint of her whereabouts, something, anything. She hasn’t. Instead, her posts have been completely wiped clean.
There are none. In their place are the words: No posts yet, though I know for certain Reese has posted to Instagram before. I can picture her posts, most of them of her and that one good friend of hers, posing, taking
selfies, and the comments from her friends that always made Elliott and me laugh, nonsense things like You ate, which, as far as we could tell, had nothing to do with food.
Reese has deleted every single one of them from her page.
When I call, Emily’s mother sobs, gasping, choking sobs so that she can’t speak, but my own parents are silent for a long
time at first. When they finally do speak, they say that they want to come, to be with me and to look for Reese, but I say
no, that they can’t. My father is on dialysis for end-stage kidney disease. He goes three days a week and my mother drives
him; she sits with him, holding his hand until it’s through. Not going to dialysis isn’t an option, because without it he
could die.
“No,” I say decisively. “I will let you know when we find her.”
After I end the call, I clutch my stomach, folding an arm around it and bending at the waist. I press a hand against a tree, leaning into it.
I cry, a moaning, no-holds-barred cry, because I’m alone; no one can hear me from here.
But it only lasts for a moment before the sound of slow and deliberate footsteps coming from the woods startles me, and I stand sharply up, gasping, holding my breath.
I stare out at the landscape, more acutely aware of my own mortality than I’ve ever been.
A police officer appears in the depths of the trees. He’s tucked back, his head sloped, watching me from a distance. “Everything
okay, miss?” he calls out, and I nod. “You shouldn’t be outside. You should go inside, where it’s safe.”
Safe. Is anywhere safe?
Did Emily and Nolan think they were safe inside their cottage?
I nod again, hurrying down the hill and back to the cottage, and then I go inside, close the door and lock the dead bolt.
“Did you get a hold of them?” Elliott asks, and I say yes. I walk past him for the bedroom, feeling his warm hand graze my
arm as I do.
We’re better off during the day, but as darkness falls, the five of us grow more alert, jumping out of our skin with every
noise, from the sound of the wind whispering through the trees, to footsteps passing by the cottage or a police car pulling