Chapter 14 Hailey
Hailey
lit kitchen, Hailey’s grandma had made Hailey a cup of pour-over coffee and was now making one for herself. Hailey took a
last hurried, bitter sip and thanked her. “Be careful out there, sweetheart,” said Greta, with a frown. She had never liked
Jack, simply because of who his grandmother was. Hailey said she would, grabbed a stack of the MISSING flyers that Aunt Kate had made yesterday, and banged out the screen door into the damp, pink dawn. She hurried to the road
to meet Jack beside her grandma’s burgeoning garden, since Innisfree’s driveway was full with Hailey’s mom’s Volvo, Hailey’s
Protegé, Cody’s Jeep, and her grandparents’ old Camry, which they always stored in Maine over the winter rather than driving
it back to New York City.
Last night, when Jack had offered to help, Hailey had been so surprised and off-kilter that she’d simply blurted, “Want to
help me search in the morning?”
He’d given her a little smile. “We’ll leave no stone unturned.”
He’d easily agreed to go at first light, and, though he seemed to want to say more or be invited inside, she’d just said thank
you, good night, see you at 5:15.
She’d spent a rough night studying the contracts in the wedding binder only to find that, almost without exception, the window
had closed on getting any money back if they canceled. She’d tossed and turned on the lumpy cot in The Closet, trying to imagine
where her dad could be and coming up with not a single positive scenario she could believe in. Finally, she’d fallen into
nightmares of drowning, being chased by a shark, seeing Noah at a bar with some beautiful girl and slinking away so he wouldn’t
see her, and a few times in the middle of it all she’d half woken up and wondered, Jack Westfield? Really? But at least this morning she’d gotten a shower, the smell of lobster wasn’t plaguing her, and her headache was no longer
excruciating enough to make her nauseous.
“Hey, Hailey,” Jack said, smiling as she opened the passenger door of the gorgeous silver convertible and sank awkwardly into
the low leather seat. He had the top down, and she was glad she’d tied back her hair and worn a cardigan, because the morning
was still cool.
“Hi, Jack,” she said, and the way he looked at her caused a small thrumming in her heart, which she tamped down. Pinning the
flyers printed with her father’s picture and the word MISSING under her hands, she absently twisted her ring. Noah would still be sleeping. She hadn’t heard from him since yesterday afternoon.
But there’s no signal, so he probably did text or call and it just hasn’t come through yet, she reminded herself. Being pissed at Noah did not seem like a good idea right now, not given everything that was going on,
and definitely not with Jack Westfield smiling over at her like he could still see straight through her the way he used to
do, like seven years hadn’t passed at all.
“Ready?” Jack said. She gave a little nod, he gunned the motor, and they were off.
“Law school? Really?” Jack raised his voice to be heard above the wind as they skirted along the winding highway.
Hailey stuffed the flyers under her leg and pulled her sweater tighter around her.
Jack reached down without comment to press the button to turn on her heated seat, which, honestly, amazed her.
That he was paying attention like that. “What about your writing?”
Hailey’s stomach hitched. “Oh, that was just a silly thing I did when I was a kid! I haven’t really kept it up.” This wasn’t
entirely true. She was, technically, still “working on” a story (she didn’t dare call it a “novel”), writing it longhand in
a spiral notebook that was, at this point, almost full. She was on chapter twenty-two. It wasn’t nothing. But she’d added
only two chapters this entire past year, between the wedding planning and work and everything else, and she knew she’d have
zero time for it once she started law school.
So, it wasn’t like she was telling him a lie. That part of her life was pretty much in her past, an old childhood dream.
“What about you?” she said above the wind. “I thought you took some big job in Silicon Valley.”
“Key words, exit package. My company got bought out a couple months ago. I’ve been pondering next steps.”
“A.k.a., surfing?” Hailey smiled.
“Uh, yeah.” He gave her a wicked little grin, shifting into a higher gear. “Then my grandma called last week and said my dad’s
being a dick about her being here by herself. Wants her to sell the place since he never comes here. And she fell. Back in
February? Didn’t get hurt too bad, but still.”
“Oh! I hadn’t heard that.”
“She’s been trying to keep it quiet. I don’t think anybody here knows about it. But . . . she’s eighty-one. It could happen
again, right? So, I came out here to stay with her to piss him off. So she can spend the rest of the summer, and he can’t
complain about her being here by herself.”
Hailey’s smile had faded; her headache sharpened to a point beside her eyebrow. She inhaled. “You’re going to be here the
rest of the summer?”
The same wicked grin, this time with an added tilt of an eyebrow. “Yep.”
He hadn’t asked about her engagement ring, though it was winking in the early morning light.
Last night, Hailey’s mom had admitted to having totally forgotten about the couple dozen forest preserves, all owned and maintained
by a single land trust organization, that were within a dozen miles of Summerland Cove, scattered around the broad peninsula
that was bounded by tidal rivers and ended at the ocean. Hailey couldn’t believe no one—not even her—had thought to consider
that her dad might’ve stopped at one on his way to The Cove on Saturday.
“We should go check the parking lots right now!” Hailey had told her mom. They’d been finishing cleaning up the kitchen, just
the two of them. Grandma and Grandpa had gone up to bed, and Lindy had ordered the other kids to take an hour to themselves
and do something that “felt halfway normal.” Emma and Reese had disappeared up to the girls’ room; Eli had taken a shower.
Cody had gone for a walk and would end up either at the yellow cottage playing video games or visiting Kelsey Grimes. (Every
summer for a decade, it had been obvious there was something between those two, though Cody swore they were just friends and
he had no interest in more, especially since she was now in school in Wisconsin and that was “too damn far away.”)
Lindy had looked up from scouring the lobster pot, eyes snapping. “I don’t want anyone going out tonight to look! I want you here, under this roof. Safe. It’s bad enough Cody insisted on going out for a walk.”
“We need to be doing everything we can, Mom.”
Lindy frowned, returned to scouring the pot. “I think someone would’ve reported it, if a Subaru with Rhode Island plates was
parked for two days and a night at one of those places.”
“But what if nobody came along?”
“Lots of people use those trails every day. If he’d hurt himself, someone would’ve found him. Probably right away. It’s not like they’re labyrinthine trails, you know? They’re pretty short.”
Hailey folded her arms, feeling petulant. She didn’t want to think that her dad hadn’t made it at least to their peninsula.
She didn’t like to think of him lost out there in the wider world. Nor did she want to remind her mom of what the whole family
knew: When David was by himself, he sometimes ventured off the beaten path. “Okay, so it’s not likely,” she snapped, “but
it’s possible. Like, say he drove all the way here and made good time and figured he could just spend, like, an hour in the woods before
he had to show up here and face everyone at the party.”
Lindy cocked her head but kept scrubbing.
“He would do that. You have to admit. And you know he doesn’t really like parties.”
Lindy turned to her, aghast. “Your father likes parties!”
“Okay, Mom. Whatever.” Hailey realized then that neither of them had said a word about the wedding, or about all the things
they still needed to do to get ready for it. The question of whether they should cancel loomed, despite what she’d promised
Noah. But then, she felt like admitting this out loud to her mom would be like conceding that her dad was seriously gone—and that they might be in this horrible search-mode limbo for days, even weeks. Forever?
Impossible.
And then, even though Lindy had seemed totally done in and claimed not to want anybody to leave the house, and even though
it was after nine by the time they had finished with the kitchen, she rounded everybody up, sending Eli and Hailey over to
the yellow cottage to get Kate, Josh, and Cody, and the six of them—two carloads—drove to town to check their cell phones,
while Emma and Reese again stayed at Innisfree next to the landline.
No one had gotten a message from David.
At least, Hailey thought now, checking the local trailheads was a clear mission for her and Jack to tackle this morning. The closest one was just a few miles from Summerland Cove, and it was one of her dad’s favorites, so she had to think it was where he’d have been most likely to stop.
As Jack turned in among the tall pines that shaded the parking lot, the roadster bumping over the uneven dirt, Hailey’s stomach
twisted. The lot was empty. No Subaru. No Dad.
Yes, it had been a long shot, but—
Do not wallow, she told herself. She plucked a MISSING flyer from the stack, asked Jack to stop, then jumped out and pinned the flyer to the large wooden kiosk that featured a
map of the trail and information about the wildflowers and animals you’d be likely to spot on your hike. She grabbed a land
trust brochure from the wooden holder that was mounted nearby and hurried back to the roadster, sinking into the seat again.
She unfolded the unwieldy brochure, which was printed on plain white paper with blue ink and provided a map of the peninsula
showing the locations of all the land trust trails.
“Okay, there are thirty trails,” she reported, tugging the big paper straight, studying the legend. “We know he’s not at this
one.”
Jack spoke quietly. “We’re going to assume the car didn’t get stolen after sitting here for a couple days?”
Hailey winced. If you allowed for the possibility that her dad and his Subaru could’ve become separated, that made the search
for him even more impossible. “It’s not that nice of a car,” she said, and if she was in denial about the infinite number
of places that her father could be after almost forty-eight hours missing, she was going to stay in denial. She would limit
the number of possibilities she’d allow in her mind, at least right now, to these thirty trailheads on the peninsula.
Or, twenty-nine, since he wasn’t at this one.
Jack gave her a small, sympathetic smile, as if he understood. “Okay, Hales. Where to next?”