Courtney
In the morning, I’m awake before everyone else. I slept for a few hours, but not well. It was a restless sleep. I get out
of bed, careful not to wake Elliott or Cass, and go to the kitchen for coffee. I stand in the kitchen while it brews, looking
out at Wyatt, sound asleep on his side on the sofa bed with his knees pulled into his chest so that his feet don’t overhang
the edge of the thin mattress.
Asleep, he looks harmless. His hair goes every which way and he has acne, not much, but some along the jaw and chin. He doesn’t
have any facial hair yet. His body is trim, athletic, quickly developing into that of a young man. Over the last year, he’s
grown four or six inches, if possible. His voice has gotten deeper too, to the point that there have been times in the past
when I was speaking to Emily on the phone, heard Wyatt in the background and was convinced there was another full-grown man
in their house.
No, Emily told me, giggling when I asked. It’s just Wyatt.
My face hurts. It’s tender to the touch. There is a dull pain, made worse by a headache, the kind that slinks up the base
of my skull, wrapping around my temples, settling between my eyes.
Growing up, Nolan would sleepwalk from time to time.
It’s hereditary, though I didn’t know it was something Wyatt did too.
Emily and Nolan never mentioned it, and I wonder if last night was a one-off triggered by exhaustion and stress, or if it’s something that happens often.
Either way, sleepwalking is usually the kind of thing a person outgrows by the time they’re Wyatt’s age.
With Nolan, it didn’t persist past age nine or ten, I don’t think.
Our parents would find him wandering the house in the middle of the night and march him back to bed, and it was never a big deal; it wasn’t even worth mentioning come morning unless Nolan did something hysterical that we laughed at.
I hear footsteps on the deck. I look up, my heart rhythm changing as someone raps their knuckles on the door. I hold still,
thinking that, if I don’t make any noise, whoever is there will go away. But no such luck. The knock comes again, more tenacious
this time. Wyatt stirs in bed, rolling over, and I realize that I’d rather take my chances with whoever is at the door than
have to face him alone before Elliott and the girls are up.
I go to it. I peel the curtain back to find Ms. Dahl from the resort, who I haven’t seen in days, not since the girls and
I ran for our lives to the lodge and she called the police. I pull the door open. “Good morning,” I say, my voice still weary
from sleep. Outside, I’m immediately assaulted by the cool morning air, the thin cotton pajama pants and camisole I slept
in making me feel cold and exposed.
The lake is green this morning. Algae blooms sprung up as if overnight.
“Good morning. I hope I didn’t wake you,” she says as I pull the door closed.
“No,” I tell her. “I was already up.”
“I just wanted to check on you. See if there was anything you need.”
“That’s sweet. Thank you, but I think we’re fine.”
She turns her head, gazes up the hill and toward the cottage in the distance. “I also wanted to tell you the police finished their investigation next door. They’ve released it. You can go in if you want and get your family’s things.”
I look toward the cottage. This should be good news, but still, my stomach sours at the thought of going back in again. “Have
you been inside yet?” I ask, thinking of Emily’s, Nolan’s and the kids’ things inside the cottage and wanting them back, like
the kids’ own clothes and Emily’s favorite go-to cardigan that she pulls on over everything when she’s cold, which is almost
always. I want it. I want to slip my arms into the shirtsleeves and wrap myself up in it.
“No, not yet. But I thought you might want to.” She reaches out, holds out a flat metal key, which I take, curling it in my
hand. Everything won’t be there. The police will have taken things from the cottage too, for evidence, like their cell phones
for example, if they found them.
Ms. Dahl quiets, her eyes examining my face. “Are you sure there isn’t anything I can do for you?” she asks, her tone changing.
“I’m sure.”
“What’d you do to your face?”
I touch my cheek by instinct. “Last night,” I say, glancing away because I can’t look her in the eye as I lie. “I went to
get water in the middle of the night. It was dark. I couldn’t see where I was going. I ran into the doorframe.”
She stares too long.
“I didn’t know doorframes had fingers.”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if I should let her think that Elliott did this to me—which is what she thinks—or if
I should tell her it was Wyatt.
“Actually,” I say instead, my throat tightening, lowering my arm to my side. “I was going to stop by later this morning to
let you know that we won’t be staying here much longer.”
“No?”
“No. I’m sure you can understand, but we can’t stay here, given what’s happened. My husband, Elliott, is going to see if there are any other accommodations in town with vacancy for us to stay.”
“Let me save him some time. He won’t have any luck,” she says, her words catching me off guard.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that most places around here book up months in advance. Some of them have been booked since last summer.”
I nod, say, “Well, he’s going to try. Maybe there was a cancellation,” my voice hopeful. I cross my arms against my chest,
feeling the morning breeze blow through me. Ms. Dahl turns to leave, but before she ever reaches the steps, I ask, “Can I
ask you a question? About an employee of yours?”
She turns back. “Daniel,” she says, before I can ask.
“Excuse me?”
“Daniel Clarke. Snake tattoo, right?”
“How did you know?”
“The police came around asking about him too.”
“What did you tell them?”
She shrugs. “That he’s a less-than-ideal employee. That if he was anyone else, I would have fired him by now. But I didn’t
hire him because he was qualified for the job. I did it as a favor to his mom, who I was friends with before she died.”
I nod and say, “The police say he hasn’t shown up for work in a few days.”
“That’s nothing new, honey. Daniel comes and goes when he wants to. Doesn’t mean he had anything to do with all this. Daniel
is mostly harmless.”
Mostly.
“Do you know where he is?”
“The police asked that too. Hell if I know. I haven’t heard from him. He’s like a cat you let outside to roam. It’s gone so long, you think it’s dead—that a car or a coyote got it—but then one day, he just reappears as if no one was ever looking for him.”
“Where does he go when he’s gone?”
She shrugs again. “I don’t ask and he doesn’t say.” She stops there. She frowns, clearing her throat, and I can see on her
face and in her hesitation that there’s something more she wants to say.
“What is it?” I ask, searching her eyes.
She starts to tell me, but then she stops and shakes her head. “No. I shouldn’t.”
I feel a desperation mounting, a need to know. “You shouldn’t what?”
“I shouldn’t say it.”
“Say what? Please,” I beg, reaching out to touch her hand, “if you know something, tell me.”
She tilts her head to the side, says, “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but your girl’s dead.”
I gasp, letting go of her hand like it’s hot lava, my hand rising to my mouth. “What?” I ask, breathless, shaking my head,
pressure building in my chest. “What do you mean? How . . . how do you know?”
“Because this is what happens when girls go missing. They don’t come back.”
I don’t understand at first. It takes a minute for her words to sink in, for me to process what she’s saying. Ms. Dahl doesn’t
actually know that something’s happened to Reese. It’s hypothetical. An overgeneralization.
“Why . . . why would you say something like that to me, if you don’t actually know, if you don’t have any proof that Reese
is dead? She could be alive. For all you know, she could be fine.”
“Because it’s best if you come to terms with that now, honey, so that you don’t end up like that other girl’s family, always
looking, never done. I tried telling them that too, that their girl was dead. They didn’t want to hear it.”
I don’t know what to say, how to respond to that.
Instead, I say nothing, watching as she turns to leave and then, after she’s gone, I stand on the deck, composing myself, trying to catch my breath, to convince myself that Ms. Dahl doesn’t know anything, that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, that Reese might still be fine.
I turn to go back inside. And that’s when I see the cooler on the deck beside Elliott’s rod and tackle box. It’s what Elliott
would have carried his fish home in the other morning after being out on the lake. It sits there on the deck beside his shoes.
I eye the cooler from a distance. I glance at the cottage door, listening for voices, for signs of life, and then, slowly,
I step closer to the cooler. I hunch down, reaching for and unfastening the cooler’s latches, wondering what a two-day-old
fish cadaver looks and smells like, wondering if, after he bled the fish, Elliott cut off their heads or if I’ll open the
cooler to find their glassy, lifeless eyes staring back at me.
I hold my breath. I press a hand to my nose to fight off the smell.
I lift the lid. I peer inside, inhaling a sharp breath of air.
The cooler is empty, the rigid plastic interior spotless.
The door suddenly swings open. “What are you doing out here?” Elliott asks, rising above me. I gasp in surprise.
It takes a second to respond, and I wonder if, in that second, Elliott picks up on the lie. “I . . . I was worried about the
fish. I didn’t know how long they would stay good in the cooler. I thought about putting them in the fridge.”
I stand up. As I do, Elliott takes a look at my face and says, “That looks awful. Does it hurt?” I nod. “I still can’t believe
he did that to you.” He reaches out to move my hair, to get a better look at it. “I got rid of them,” he says about the fish.
“I can see that. When?” I ask, my throat tightening, thoughts of Reese’s picture on his iPad returning to me just then, of that day in the cottage and the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. That feels like a lifetime ago.
“Yesterday when you were gone. I didn’t think anyone would eat them.”
I nod. He’s right. These days, we’re hardly eating anything at all. “What did you do with them?” Elliott gives me a quizzical
look, lowering his hand to his side, and I say, “I only ask because I worry they might smell if you put them in the trash.
They might attract bears.”
“There’s a Dumpster over by the lodge. I threw them in there.”
I nod, my eyes rising, searching for it.
Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. How would I know?