Courtney #2
I look away. I gaze past the police cruiser and toward the trees, which are dense, dark silhouettes under the ink-stained sky.
The police have finished their investigation next door.
There are no more police cars parked at cottage number eight and no more cops raking the area for evidence.
Most, if not all, the guests have left the resort.
It’s just us, as far as I know, though there is a light on in one of the cottages further down, and I wonder if someone is there or if someone forgot to turn the light off before they left.
Maybe we’re not alone after all.
Maybe someone else is here.
I kill the car engine. I don’t have to look to know that the police officer is still watching me in his mirror. I avoid his
gaze, letting my eyes go to the cottage instead, where Elliott left a light on outside for me, a dusty iron sconce that sits
to the right of the front door and gives off a dull light that moths and beetles fly circles around. But it’s light nonetheless,
and I’m grateful not to have to step out of the car and into total darkness.
I open the door and step quietly out, the night air terrifying as it wraps its cool arms around me. Outside, crickets have
begun to surface, their high-pitched chirps screaming out into the night, the temperatures dropping with the sun. I close
the door and make my way to the deck steps, which I climb, my fear swelling, feeling the officer’s eyes on me from behind
and not knowing who or what else is out here with me.
I walk faster toward the door. I reach out a hand to unlock it when, all of a sudden, the door swings sharply open and I gasp,
dropping the keys, the sound of them hitting the deck brassy and loud.
Elliott stands in the open door, a dish towel in his hands. He looks out, his face softening when he sees me, quivering in
the faint glow of the porch light. “Shit. Sorry. I thought I heard something and came to check. I didn’t know it was you.
I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Tears sting my eyes, rolling down my cheeks. Elliott pulls his eyebrows together, misreading my reaction, asking, “Did something happen, Court? Did you find her?” meaning Reese.
But I shake my head, wiping my eyes. “No,” I say, feeling like a child for crying. “We found nothing. She wasn’t there. I
just . . . You scared me.”
Elliott runs a hand the length of my hair and says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” He pulls me into him, wrapping his arms
around me, and I nod against his chest, feeling a slight chill as I imagine the police officer, watching us from the front
seat of his car.
Elliott steps back, looking at me. I’m exhausted, my eyes heavy, swollen and red, though I know that even when I lie down,
I won’t sleep. I can’t sleep. I’ll lie there thinking again about someone circling the cottage, looking for a way in.
“Come inside,” Elliott says, his voice tender as he takes me by the hand and tries pulling me in.
I pull back and say, “I’m coming. Just let me get my keys,” as I bend down, lowering myself to retrieve my keys from the deck,
where they landed beside Elliott’s shoes. He took them off yesterday, leaving them outside because they were wet from fishing.
Now the light from the wall sconce shines down on them, and in the pale yellow glow of the exterior light, I see something
I hadn’t seen before: pinpricks of red dotting the toe and the side of the rubber sole.
Blood.
I blink away, feeling the rhythm of my heart change.
“You coming?” Elliott asks, and I glance up to see he’s gone further inside the cottage now, stopping to turn back and look
for me. He stands there in a short-sleeved gray Henley and jeans, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders broad, days of stubble
turning into a beard.
I try to be nonreactive, but my stomach roils, and I hate Detective Evans all over again for planting this small seed of doubt in my mind.
Why would my first thought be that Elliott did something to Emily and Nolan instead of that he pierced himself with a fishhook or slipped and fell yesterday morning in the canoe?
I know my husband. I know he could never hurt someone. Never. He left our bed at five in the morning like he said to go fishing.
Besides, Elliott loved Emily and Nolan as much as I did. He has no reason in the world to hurt them. None.
But in the same breath, some voice in the back of my mind asks what if?
“Courtney?” he asks again, his head tilted, his eyes tired like mine with dark circles beneath them.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m coming.”
I sweep the keys up off the deck and follow him inside, taking one last look over my shoulder at the police officer before
closing the door, separating us from the outside world.
The girls scramble down from the loft when they see that I’m back. They stand before me, their eyes wide and hopeful as they
look around the room, excitement turning to doubt and then defeat.
“Where’s Reese?” Cass asks, her voice crushed as, beside her, Mae lowers her chin to her chest and stares down at her hands
when I say we didn’t find her, that she wasn’t there.
“I thought she was,” Cass says. “You said she was.”
I did say that. I told Detective Evans on the phone last night that I knew where Reese was, because I had seen her on the
Snap Map.
“Well, she was, honey, at some point, we think. But she’s not there now. We’re not done,” I say, my voice elevating with a
modicum of hope for their sake. “We’re still looking. The police are doing everything they can to find her.”
I watch as Mae rubs her eyes before they turn in unison and climb sluggishly back up into the loft, with none of the same enthusiasm as when they came down.
They fall asleep up there, watching a movie.
Elliott carries his pillow downstairs and back to our bed to sleep with me.
I stand at the bedroom door after Wyatt has gotten settled in bed, wondering if I should close it, if I should lock the door.
I’m afraid, for many reasons, and know I’d feel marginally better with the door locked, but if the kids need me in the middle of the night, I won’t be able to hear them.
Elliott lies on his side in bed, his head propped on the palm of his hand, watching me. “What are you doing?” he asks.
In the end, I leave the door open. I turn off the light, climbing under the covers and pressing into Elliott, letting him
wrap his arms around me from behind.
As we lie there in silence, all I can think about is the blood on his shoes just outside the front door.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks after a while, as if he can sense it, as if he somehow knows.
I’m hesitant to tell him, not wanting it to come out as an accusation because I don’t know how he’ll react.
“There was blood on your shoes,” I say softly, under the cover of darkness.
“What do you mean?”
“Outside, when I dropped my keys and leaned over to pick them up, there was blood on your shoes.”
Elliott rolls me briskly over onto my back, suspended above me, though I can’t see his eyes because of how dark it is in the
room. His voice is astonished, louder than it needs to be with the size of the cottage and how close we are to the kids. “What
do you think, Court? That I killed them?”
“Shhhh. No. Of course not,” I say. I don’t think that. Really, I don’t.
“Then what are you trying to say?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I guess I’m just wondering why there was blood on your shoes.”
He sighs. “It’s probably from the fucking fish, Courtney. Jeez.” He drops down onto his back, lying flat beside me, our heads
on separate pillows.
We’re quiet for a minute. I breathe hard, feeling the rise and fall of my chest, feeling Elliott’s indignation beside me like
heat from a fire.
After a minute, I say, “I didn’t know fish bled.” I’ve never been fishing before and I don’t know that I ever want to go.
Killing something and watching it die isn’t for me.
He’s slow to respond, but when he does, I hear in his voice that he’s no longer mad, that he’s already forgiven me for the
accusation. That’s the way it is with Elliott. He gets angry and then he gets over it. “You bleed them.”
“How?”
“Don’t ask. You don’t want to know.”
“I do want to know. Tell me.”
“By cutting the artery that runs through their gills.”
“Why?”
“They taste better. And die faster.”
I grimace. “I’m sorry I said something,” I say.
“It’s more humane. Honestly, Courtney. It takes seconds and then they’re gone. It’s better than suffocating to death.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant about the blood on your shoes. I know you didn’t kill them. God, of course you didn’t,”
I say, rolling toward him. “My mind is all over the place. I just . . .” My voice cracks and I start to cry, quiet, choked-back
tears, so the kids don’t hear.
“Hey now,” Elliott says, turning his body to mine.
I press into him. “I’m just so fucking scared,” I confess, whispering as he strokes my hair.
“I know. Me too,” he says, though those words are at odds with his behavior. Elliott hasn’t once seemed scared to me, and I wonder if it’s because he’s not or if he’s trying to hold his emotion back for the kids’ and my sake. He hasn’t cried. He hasn’t broken down like me.
I weep softly into his chest, thinking about Emily and Nolan, thinking about Reese out there all alone for the second night
in a row, wondering what’s happening to her, where she is and who she’s with.
“I can’t stay here,” I say to Elliott.
“I know. I can’t stay here either. Not with what’s happened.” There is a pause, and then he says, “But we can’t go home. The
police won’t let us.”
“We can’t go home without Reese,” I say plainly, getting hung up on the fact that I have to explain that to him. Elliott should
know I’d never leave this place without Reese. Never. Even if the police said we could, I still wouldn’t leave without her.
I owe it to Emily and Nolan to find her, to bring her home.
“No. You’re right. Of course we can’t.” He rubs my back, says then, his tone more solicitous now, making me wonder if I’ve