Chapter 42 Ash
ASH
ASH IS ALONE.
She texts Wade again. Could you please tell me where you are?
Minutes pass. Nothing. On-screen, the apes are preparing to make their last stand.
Ash knows it’s unfair to ask her husband for information that she’s been withholding.
Still, there’s a pit in her stomach. Why did she have to call him that first night?
In spite of recent events, she still doesn’t know much about how hard it is to track a cell phone.
She assumed that calling Wade would be fine, that he would never do such a thing, but could anyone really blame him if he had?
His wife leaves on a trip and won’t tell him where she’s going?
She imagines him explaining it to his mom or to Derek.
Lois, his mom, prides herself on being a wonderful mother-in-law, a class act in all circumstances.
So Lois won’t say anything outright, but her face will take on a meaningful expression and she’ll say something like, “Ash is an amazing woman and you are a wonderful husband, Wade. I’m sure she wouldn’t ask for this if she didn’t need it, and I think you’re doing the right thing by giving it to her.
” Then Wade and his brother would trade smirks at the way Lois had phrased giving it to her, but they wouldn’t laugh outright because then they’d have to explain the joke to Lois and she wouldn’t like it.
Ash is so sick of golden boys.
She texts her daughters, aiming for a light and breezy tone.
Hey girls! How is today going? How’s Grandma? Remind me again where Dad and Uncle Derek went on their trip?
She doesn’t love the way she’s asking the girls the question. It feels like she’s using them to find out about Wade. Putting them in the middle.
Instead of feeling like she’s on the inside of something special—which is how it’s felt to Ash ever since the group came together that first night online—she feels like she’s standing on the outside of a place where she used to live, craning her neck for a glimpse through a window.
It’s a feeling she’s had the last year or two in her family, in her marriage.
You’re everything to me! Am I even a minor character in your life?
Ash puts her hands on the steering wheel the way Henry had his. She presses her foot against the gas pedal and imagines speeding, Thelma and Louise style, right through the screen and out among the red plateaus to find her friend. Maybe instead of Brad Pitt in a tank top she’ll find Hope.
Ash glances at her phone again. Nothing more from the anonymous number. The police said they couldn’t track the calls or messages, but how hard did they really try? And are the police telling Ash and Caro the truth about everything, or do they consider them to be suspects in Hope’s disappearance?
We told them everything. Even what we swore to Hope we wouldn’t. And it might not even matter.
Ash realizes that the movie has ended. Other people are slamming their car doors, and the screen is dark.
The pathway lights glow, lighting the way, and she hears people walking on the gravel as they make their way through the juniper trees.
The smells of popcorn and sagebrush still hang in the air.
It’s blue-black dark now, pinprints of stars above.
Something is nagging at Ash—and it’s new, besides Hope being gone and things with Wade feeling off and Tony and Ed and Jean being dead and this whole nightmarish mess—
But what is it?
As Ash goes to leave, something in the footwell sticks to the sole of her shoe and she reaches down to pick it up. A postcard. She turns on her phone’s flashlight. The handwriting is familiar, one she’s seen on birthday and Christmas cards over the past two years:
Hey Dad,
I was thinking about the Devil’s Backbone Drive and how you and I used to go eat at the grill in Story after. I remembered how they served everything on mismatched china and had fresh rainbow trout on the menu. Do you? Should we try to go there again?
I love you.
Caro
Ash flips the card over. A photo of the drive-in theater and a familiar logo look back up at her. It’s one of the Sonnet postcards. They all took them to send to people, and they all promised Hope they wouldn’t mail the cards until the end of the trip. Of course Caro would write one to her dad.
But this postcard had been sent. From the post office in Spring Creek. To his address. Henry Stewart, Suite 34, Lookout Pointe, St. John, Utah.
Ash is cold. What does this mean?
They promised Hope they wouldn’t send these. They promised Hope they wouldn’t tell anyone where they were.
Other guests are gathering at the picnic tables and firepits to hang out and talk.
They are silhouettes and shadows. They are not people Ash knows.
She finds herself veering away from the common areas, though she promised Caro that’s where she’d stay.
She wants to get in her Airstream and lock the door. Anyone could be out there.
Hope had stalkers. They knew that. They should have been more careful. But Hope kept telling them she was like the rest of them, that everyone had weird things in their lives and being famous happened to be her weird thing.
And then they’d found out that someone had been watching them. And then, they made their plan to disappear—
That was Hope’s gift and her curse (please don’t let it also be what got her caught and killed): She never thought that she was better than anyone else. She never saw herself as more than the others. But she was. She was in more danger than the rest of them the entire time.
Ash is almost to her trailer when her phone vibrates. She looks down and there it is, another message.
Surprise!
It’s me again.
There’s one more thing I need you to do.