Chapter 74
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EVE HAS BEEN GONE for twelve years. I’ve had plenty of time to imagine all of the scenarios.
She was scared.
She was screaming.
She was begging,
She was silent.
She fought like hell.
She never saw it coming.
Now I know more than I did, but still not everything.
Ty’s picture on Eve’s camera from the Underground was the first clue.
Now that the police have looked into things, I know that Ty met Eve at the events center, where he worked in catering.
I know they dated, but she never told me or Grandma about him because it didn’t last long.
I know he killed her when she tried to break up with him.
He talked her into hiking the Underground with him—one last day together.
He killed her there and hid her in a crevice.
At some point, a flood brought her out for the women to find.
I never suspected Ty. I never saw him until I came to work at Sonnet.
I wonder how long he knew I was her sister.
I wonder how long he was watching me. I would notice them, sometimes this year, the photos of me tacked up on the bulletin board that looked slightly different because they were taken on a disposable camera and then developed.
He stalked me, he stalked Skye. Both of us took down our photos before the other saw them.
I wish we had talked more. I wish we hadn’t disliked each other so much. Maybe we would have figured things out.
Caro saw the last photo of me before I did and took it down before I saw it. She thought it looked like Hope. The three of us do look alike.
But only Eve and I are sisters.
When the police searched Ty’s house, they found a darkroom for developing film. They found lots of things there. I don’t like to think about it.
Eve’s disappearance happened when Hope was here filming The Last Portal.
It was constantly in the news. The story stuck with Hope.
She wanted to see if she could make a movie about it, draw some attention to Eve’s case.
She came to me with the plan and said I could be a co-producer.
That I could have half of the proceeds. I want to help you, she said.
And I want to find out what happened to Eve.
No, I said. Please. I was sixteen then. I don’t want a movie about her. Please leave her alone.
I couldn’t believe it when Hope said, Okay.
And then she came back, years later. If I wanted to disappear from the Underground, she asked, how would I do it?
I wasn’t afraid of the Underground. Because Eve and Ty didn’t sign in at the hike register, and no one saw him come out at the end, I never knew my sister died in the Underground. I never knew she was there.
You could cut over to Mystery Canyon, I told Hope. It’s hard, technical canyoneering. Not anyone can do it.
Mystery Canyon? she said. That’s a little on the nose.
And that made me laugh.
I need to make someone disappear, she said. When she saw the shocked look on my face, she said, Don’t worry. The person I want to make disappear is me.
I flick my turn signal and leave St. John. There is a blue paper box holding my sister’s ashes on the front seat next to me.
What, the police had asked, did I want to do with the body?
The collection of bones that used to be Eve?
Who do you recommend? I asked. I had had years and years to research this, and yet I never did.
Are you looking for a cost-effective mortuary? they asked.
I want the nicest one, I said. The one where you would take your kid if they died.
The officer blinked. Okay, she said. Well, then, it would be the Paintbrush Mortuary.
That one, I said. Let’s do that one.
Would you like to cremate her or have her remains placed in a coffin? the mortician asked. He was sorry for me, but he was also in the business of death. You’re the next of kin?
Yes.
You’re the only kin?
Yes. There are cousins, aunts, uncles, but I didn’t want to get into it. And they didn’t matter, not for this.
I’ll give you this sheet with the rates, he said. But I can arrange for a discount on any of the services. You’re too young to have to go into debt for something like this.
Thank you, I said. I went out to the car and looked at the sheet. I can afford lots of things now. Hope was very generous with my payment for helping her. She added extra as an unintentionally-almost-dying bonus. All of the money makes things easier for me and for what comes next.
My grandma left me her house when she died.
It’s small, not fancy, bare-bones and away from town.
Not in Spring City itself, where the second-home people and the move-ins have driven up the prices.
Still, selling the house would give me enough money for college tuition and room and board.
But I couldn’t do it. When I got the job at Sonnet, I locked up the house and moved to the staff tents.
I couldn’t sell it, but I also couldn’t live there alone.
A little ghost town of my own, made of a single home.
And I couldn’t decide what to do about Eve’s body. I wanted to ask someone about it. I wanted to ask her.
What would you want, Eve?
Would you care?
It’s easy to say, Doesn’t matter, they’re dead, I’m dead, it’s over, but when you are confronted with the disposal of the bones that held your sister up, that used to be covered in flesh that held you, that used to shield a heart that beats, well.
What I wanted was to bundle them up in a blanket and hold them close. To look at them with attention, because her bones are a part of Eve that Eve herself never saw. But I knew that would be strange. I knew I might not ever be able to put them down.
So, cremation. And now, laying her to rest.
It’s dusky, September evening light. Since I’m going to scatter the ashes anyway, I didn’t pay for an urn. All I have is this blue cardboard box, with a number and Eve’s name printed on a label on the outside.
I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m not taking her to Eden. I want to take Eve someplace she has never been before. I want to take her to someplace where I have never been before.
I’m on this road in the desert that I’ve never driven, and I keep going and going. I don’t even know if I’m still in Utah or in Arizona by now.
I might keep going. Colby called. He’s not coming back. “Thank you for covering for me,” he said. “But the situation’s worse than I thought. I’m going to have to stay here and take care of her. She’s going to need me when she comes out.”
“I understand,” I said, because even though Colby leaving changes Sonnet for me, I understand siblings. Colby’s sister overdosed. She lived, and he’s gotten her into rehab.
She lived.
“I can put in a good word with the owners to hire you as my replacement,” Colby said. “You’re young, but you can do it better than anyone else. For crying out loud, look how you’ve handled this. Page, I’m so sorry. I left at the worst possible time.”
And he didn’t even know the half of it. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “But I think I’m going to move on from Sonnet. I might leave Utah, in fact.”
“Good for you,” Colby said. He sounded proud. He is the closest thing I have to a brother, and he’s a good one. “Keep in touch?”
I told him I would.
It’s darker now. The stars are coming out.
Eve and I always said, You have to leave to come back.
We are very far down this road, she and I.
“Okay, Eve,” I say, “let me know when,” and I glance over at the box, and it’s ridiculous as hell, what I’m doing, so I begin to laugh, and I’ll admit there’s a note of hysteria in it.
I’ve taken my eyes off the road for a split second, but when I look back at the road, there’s something huge, with animal eyes flashing in the headlights.
A deer.
I slam on my brakes, my head snapping forward on my neck. A thunk, heavy and hard. I bit my lip when I hit the brake, I realize, tasting blood. I look up. The road is empty and dark.
I didn’t hit the deer.
The thunk was the box. Eve’s ashes have gone flying out of the seat belt and into the footwell. The box has split open. In the dim light from the dashboard I can see that something is on the floor, spilling from the box, something gray and ashy.
Oh no.
I pull over to the side of the road, well onto the shoulder, and rest my head on the steering wheel.
Seconds ago, I was laughing, and now I’m crying.
Am I going to have to pick up my sister’s ashes by hand, try to put them back into the broken box?
Is Eve literally going to slip through my fingers once again?
There’s nothing to be done but to do it. I unbuckle my own seat belt, walk around to the passenger side of the car, open it, and shine my phone’s flashlight into the footwell.
Oh.
The ashes did come out of the box, but they’re still sealed inside a plastic bag. The relief is absolute.
“Let’s tuck you back in there,” I say to Eve, and I pick up the bag and the box, ready to slide it back inside, get on my way.
But as I do, I look over at the side of the road.
There’s a gentle incline leading up to the kind of sagebrush-y, juniper-tree landscape that is common in the desert.
It’s nowhere special. But even with the light pollution from my headlights, there are so many stars.
“Okay,” I say. I pick up my keys and the plastic bag with Eve’s ashes inside. It’s heavy. I hold it close to my body as I walk.
At the top of the incline, I stand looking out at the road, up at the stars, back down at the bag in my hands.
Using the pocketknife on my keychain, I slit the bag open.
And then, without thinking too much or too hard, I shake the ashes out onto the ground.
“I loved you,” I say. “I love you.” Because I do, still.
Eve being gone does not change that fact. I will love my sister all my life.
I walk back down to my car, toss the empty blue cardboard box into the back seat.
I start the engine, check behind me, pull onto the asphalt.
I leave my sister somewhere by the side of the road.
I do not make note of any landscape clues so that I’ll know where I’ve left Eve’s ashes. It’s too dark, anyway.
I will never know where my sister is again.