Chapter 40 Ash
ASH
“WHAT THE HELL ARE we watching?” Ash asks.
She and Caro are sitting in a cherry-red Thunderbird at the drive-in theater. It is the most incongruous thing they could possibly be doing, given the situation, but they’ve washed up here like two exhausted shipmates on a desert island. They didn’t know where else to go.
“You’ve never seen Planet of the Apes?” Caro asks.
“I have,” Ash says. “With Mark Wahlberg.”
“That’s the remake,” Caro says. “This is the original.”
“It’s disturbing.” On-screen, one of the plastic-faced apes has shot a hairy-chested Charlton Heston.
“It is.” Caro sounds weary. Ash knows that they’re both talking about the movie even though there are so many other, deeper things they could be talking about because they are worn out.
They’ve been looking and looking and looking, running around all over, and they aren’t any closer to finding Hope.
Or Caro’s dad, for that matter.
Caro drove over to St. John to speak with the director at the residential center and to look for Henry herself.
She just got back, and she looks exhausted.
Ash spent the afternoon talking with Raye, Hope’s agent, who she’s decided she likes very much.
But she has a very strong sense that Raye doesn’t have all of the information, either.
None of them do.
At least Hope’s not dead, Ash thinks. But then her traitorous mind follows up with You don’t know that.
Someone’s walking toward their car, backlit against the movie screen. Ash’s heart skips in fear. She lifts her phone to shine a light in the face of whoever it is.
“Oh,” Caro says. “It’s Spencer.”
“Right.” Ash lowers her phone. She didn’t recognize him, but why would she? She barely knows him.
“Hey,” Spencer says, bending down to talk to Caro through their window. “Have you guys heard anything?”
“Shhh!” someone from another car whispers. Everyone has their windows rolled down to let in the cooling evening breeze.
“Hop in,” Caro says to Spencer. She climbs out and folds the front seat so that he can climb into the tiny back seat behind them. He’s so tall. His knees jut up high when he sits down. He looks better, like he’s rested and had a chance to shave.
“Have you heard anything more?” he asks them.
“No,” Ash says. “You?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing.”
“How’s Kevin doing?”
“Not great.”
“Why are you still here?” Ash asks. “At the resort?”
“Ash,” Caro says, but Ash wants to know. Shouldn’t he be back in St. John comforting Kevin? Helping with Tony’s funeral plans?
“Well.” Spencer sounds embarrassed. “I did think about it. But Kevin’s super busy with his family, and I didn’t know Tony all that well.
And I thought maybe I could help out here.
” Ash glances over her shoulder into the back seat.
Spencer’s looking at Caro as he says this. “Since you have two people missing.”
“There’s got to be more to it than that.” Ash feels Caro staring daggers at her, but she’s not trying to be rude. There are so many unknowns right now that she’s going to ask about the things that it might be possible to know.
“Okay,” Spencer says, after a second. “There is.”
“Yeah?” Caro says. “What is it?”
“I actually can’t stand Tony,” Spencer says. “Couldn’t. I came on this hike as a favor to Kevin, because he’s married to my sister. Monica.”
“Can you also not stand Kevin?” Caro asks.
“Kevin’s fine,” Spencer says. “But he needed me to come along because I’ve been down the Underground before and he wanted some backup.
This trip was supposed to be an intervention for Tony.
He’s been drinking too much, and it’s gotten out of hand.
Kevin didn’t want to do it alone. He felt like since Tony and I didn’t know each other very well, Tony wouldn’t see it as people ganging up on him.
But I’d be an extra body if Kevin needed one. ”
“Yikes,” Caro says. “That seems pretty fraught.”
Okay, Ash thinks. No wonder he doesn’t really want or need to be around Tony’s family right now.
“Yeah,” Spencer agrees. “But we never had the intervention. The first night, you guys showed up. And then the second night Kevin chickened out. Tony was in a bad mood all day. So Kevin decided he’d talk to him when we were hiking out on the last day.”
“Too bad for Tony,” Ash says. “He died before he could be intervened.” She snorts with laughter before she can stop herself. “I’m sorry,” she says, horrified. This keeps happening. “I’m apparently coping with all of this by making inappropriate jokes.”
“There’s no better way,” Spencer says.
Ash cranes her neck around to look at him again, the way he’s folded into the back seat. “You look like a toy,” she says.
“What?”
“You’re so squished.” The back seat is infinitesimal, and Spencer is tall and lanky. “You know how toy cars are barely big enough to contain the figurines? You look like that.”
“You’re right,” Spencer says. “Toys never have any headspace in their motor vehicles.”
“They don’t,” Ash agrees. “Think about Little People. Barbies. Lego figures.”
“Unless the vehicles in question are convertibles,” Spencer says.
“Which this is not,” Caro says. “Spencer, seriously, come sit up here. I’ll go in the back.”
“You’re as tall as I am,” Spencer says.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get here in time for the ’57 Chevy,” Ash says.
“That’s my favorite car, and it’s much bigger.
” She checks out the people who are sitting in the Chevy, a young couple snuggled up together in the front seat.
“Maybe another night,” she says, which is ridiculous, because how often are they going to sit around and watch movies with their best friend still missing?
The couple making out in the ’57 Chevy accidentally hits the horn.
“You’d think the staff would have deactivated that.” Ash glances around at the other vehicles. “Hey. There’s a Buick Century up there that’s empty. Those have decent back seats.”
“I didn’t know you knew so much about cars,” Caro says.
“I’m full of surprises.” Ash opens her door.
“I really am fine,” Spencer says, but Ash is already out of the car. She feels antsy, itchy, cannot sit still. Maybe more space will help. Caro follows suit, and Spencer has no choice but to come with them.
They scuttle across the lot, hunched low so as not to block the view of the other guests. “Caro,” Ash hisses, low so Spencer can’t hear.
“What?”
“I think he likes you,” Ash says.
“What?” Caro asks. “Who?”
“Spencer,” Ash says.
He’s only a few feet ahead of them. He slows, his lanky form pausing near a car. It’s not the one Ash had in mind. She gestures for him to go to the end of the row.
“Why?”
“He said he was staying here to see if he could help us out,” Ash says. “He could be with his sister and her husband.”
“He already explained all of that,” Caro says. “And it doesn’t mean anything.”
“I think it does,” Ash says. “And he’s cute.”
“Hope’s missing,” Caro says. She sounds weary. “And I’m with Dan.”
“I know,” Ash says. “I’m pointing it out because it’s interesting.” And might be relevant, she wants to say, but doesn’t.
They’re arrived at the car Ash had in mind, the sturdy Buick Century with its nose turned toward the screen. Caro heads for the passenger side, but when she gets there she pulls up short.
“Someone’s inside,” she says.
“So we sit somewhere else,” Ash says, but then the way the figure is seated, their posture, gives her pause. She joins Caro on the driver’s side of the car, where the person is sitting, and leans in closer.
“Oh my gosh,” Ash says. “Are they dead?” Her mind has jumped to the worst. It makes sense that she has, given that worst-case scenarios keep cropping up, but the figure inside moves and Ash exhales in relief. “Okay. This one’s taken. We’ll go back to our car, no big deal.”
But Caro is frozen. “Dad?” she says.