Frankie
“Kill?” I lower the coffee mug onto the kitchen counter with a thump. “You’re telling me there’s a cult based around the belief
that an ancient witch is going to save the world from another ancient witch—?”
“Goddess,” he corrects me. “Technically, Gaia is a goddess.”
“Whatever. I’m not judging anyone’s beliefs. But—”
I am. I completely am, even though I’ve heard of far stupider ones. Members of a popular cult back in the early 1900s believed
coconuts were the ideal food since they grow “so close to the sun,” and so they ate nothing but coconuts . . . until they
all died of malnutrition.
Far worse things have happened in other cults, including murder. I don’t want to minimize Ash’s belief that these young girls
are going to do something equivalently horrible.
But this whole thing is nuts.
“You do realize,” I say to him, “that it’s highly improbable anyone’s life is in danger here, right? Women are much more likely to be victims of a violent crime than to commit one. That’s a statistical fact.”
“I know. And that’s exactly what I’m scared of,” he says. “That Haley is going to get Emma killed somehow.”
He looks genuinely miserable standing there in front of those black-trimmed windows, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets
of his cargo pants. Behind him, the lake sparkles. The sun has burned off the marine layer. I can hear Mrs. DeLong calling
to all the little DeLongs to grab their oars. Outside, it’s a typical sunny Saturday in West Harbor.
Inside, the mood isn’t nearly so joyous.
“Well, there’s no need to catastrophize,” I say. “Hopefully Meg will tell Jackie—I mean, Deputy Chief Boyle—what she needs
to know about where she’s been, and Jackie will find Emma and the rest of the girls, and then your boss will be happy, and
that will be the end of it.”
Except it won’t. If those girls really are in a cult, it’s going to be an uphill battle to get them out of it . . . and for
them to recover. Their parents are going to need to hire exit counselors to help them transition back to normal life, and
that’s only if they can get them to come home at all. They’re never going to be the carefree, selfie-posting girls they were
before this.
But that’s okay. We’re meant to learn new information-processing skills and coping mechanisms as we age. It’s called being
human.
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he says—but he doesn’t sound as if he believes it, more like he’s trying to placate me. Actually,
judging from what he says next, it’s more like he’s trying to get rid of me. “Thanks for all your help this morning. I’m sorry
if you felt lied to, but I didn’t lie to you. Not once, not ever.”
I eye him. He looks sincere . . . but so do all my patients.
Not actively lying isn’t the same as telling the truth.
Many of my patients have hidden enormous debt, gambling addictions—even a second spouse and set of kids in neighboring East Harbor—by avoiding telling the truth, while insisting all along they never lied.
Just like Ash.
“Well, thank you,” I say. I find myself backing slowly toward his front door. I can take a hint. “For being so honest with
me.”
He looks slightly less defensive. “It’s the least I can do,” he says, “after all your help with Meg. Can I take you to dinner
tonight to make up for it?”
“Uh, I wish I could.” Now I’m the one who isn’t telling the truth. “But I-I . . .” I scramble to think of an excuse, then
remember my discussion with Angie on the phone. “I’m going to a party.”
“But I thought you . . .” His voice trails off.
“What?” Now I sound defensive.
“Nothing.” Ash is following me toward the door, his hands still in his pockets. “Never mind.”
“We’ll talk later,” I assure him. It will be hard to avoid it, given that he’s next door. “But right now I need to get home.
I haven’t fed the cat yet.”
Or showered. Or called anyone to tell them my new neighbor believes lost things find him, can deadlift an unconscious teenager,
and also completely ignored the binder I spent so many hours putting together.
He doesn’t look broken up that I’ve turned down his invitation to dinner . . . or that I’m leaving. “Okay,” he says. “Thanks,
Francesca.”
I open the front door. The air outside smells divinely of recently mowed grass. Mr. DeLong is almost as obsessed with maintaining his yard as Richard was.
“Frankie,” I say as I stand on the threshold.
“I beg your pardon?”
“My name,” I say. “It’s Frankie. No one calls me Francesca except my mother.” I swallow. “And my dad.”
“Oh, right.” He gives me a lopsided grin. “I’m sorry. Frankie it is. Well, see you later, Frankie.”
“Yeah. Good—” he’s already closing the door “—luck.”
Standing outside alone on Ash’s porch, I wonder what just happened. I didn’t do anything wrong. He’s the one hiding things and trying to pull me into some kind of bizarre drama involving runaway witches.
“Well, no, thank you,” I say aloud—but softly—to myself as I walk back to my own house. I have enough problems without adding
teenage witch cults to them—or men who believe they have superpowers. I still need to eat something, then get showered and
changed before seeing my Saturday patients.
I’d been lying when I told Ash I couldn’t have dinner with him because I’m going to a party. The last thing I want to do is
go to an engagement party, even the engagement party of someone as nice as Jessica Gold. This is why I’d sent my regrets.
Besides, no one needs a bitter old divorcée like me at their festive pre-wedding celebration.
Ash doesn’t know I sent Jessica my regrets. Things might get awkward if he notices my car hasn’t left the driveway, but I
can always make up an excuse if he asks why I didn’t leave my house. Food poisoning is my favorite. No one ever questions
you when you say you had food poisoning.
And what do I even care if Ash Merit wonders why I lied to him? It’s not that I don’t have sympathy for him, or for his boss or the Bridles or Meg or any of the other missing girls and their families.
I just don’t have any time to spare for anyone but my own patients . . . and Daisy.
I’m planning on taking the cat to the walk-in clinic in Bridgeport after my appointments. Traffic will be a nightmare, but
it will be worth it to find out if she truly is a stray, or, more importantly, pregnant, and what, if anything, I need to
do to help her along her journey as a new cat mom.
But just as I’m telling my last patient of the day that we’re out of time and will take up his chronic overspending on skins
and other gaming microtransactions next week, there’s a knock at my door.
At first I think it must be Ash.
“I wonder who’s found him now, Daisy.” I’m still saying her name a lot, so she’ll recognize it. She doesn’t look impressed.
“Maybe Amelia Earhart?”
But when I tug open the door, it isn’t Ash standing on my front porch. It’s my sister Angie, pulling a wheelie bag behind
her and panting a little from the exertion.
“Oh, great, you’re home. I came as soon as I heard,” she says.
I stare at her in shock. “You already heard?” I know the gossip mill in West Harbor churns pretty fast. But this was unprecedented.
“How?”
“It’s all over the Internet.” Angie pushes past me, rolling her wheeled makeup bag behind her (even though—or perhaps because—Richard
used to ask her not to, fearing scuff marks on his hardwood floors). It isn’t until she casually throws a shopping bag from
Enchantments—Jessica Gold’s clothing boutique—onto my couch that she notices Daisy for the first time.
“Oh my God,” she cries. “You finally caught her?”
“Yes,” I say. She doesn’t need to know that it was Ash, not me, who caught Daisy.
“Are you sure she’s a stray?” Angie has already stopped at the mirror I have hanging on the wall near the front door and is
checking her hair. “She looks too fat not to have an owner . . . though I know you’ve been feeding her tuna.”
“She isn’t fat, she’s with child.”
Angie’s eyes widen as she turns to stare at me. “You adopted a pregnant cat?”
“I don’t know for sure. I haven’t had a chance to take her to the vet. I’ve been a little busy.”
“What have you been busy doing?” Angie has now knelt down beside her roller bag and opened it to unload things onto my dining room table:
wide tooth comb, hair clips, foil, boxes of what looks like hair dye. I don’t ask why she’s unpacking these things. I don’t
want to know.
“Isn’t that what you heard?” I ask instead. “I’ve been busy dealing with one of the missing girls. She showed up at my neighbor’s
house this morning.”
“Get out!” Angie looks stunned . . . and excited. “Where was she? Is she okay? Did she know where the other girls are?”
“Probably, but she was in no shape to tell. I thought you knew all this.” I watch as Angie goes to my hall closet and pulls
out one of my beach towels. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”
She turns to stare at me, her eyes wide. “You mean you don’t know? You haven’t heard?”
“About what? What are you talking about?”
Angie heaves a sigh, then lays down the towel and walks over to me, putting her hands on either of my shoulders and tilting her chin to look up at me. I’m the tallest of my siblings—including Mark—and have always relished this fact.
Until now, because I can look right down the low-cut, sequined shirt Angie is wearing and see that she has on her best black-lace
push-up bra. Something is up, and it isn’t only my sister’s tits.
“This is going to be hard to hear,” she says, and I know instantly that whatever it is, she can’t wait to tell me. She’s loving
that she’s the person who gets to tell me, even if she’s pretending she doesn’t want to. “But I want you to know, I think
it’s amazing news.”
There are only two things that it could possibly be: either someone has contacted my sister claiming to be Daisy’s long-lost
owner and asked her to come over to take her away from me, or they’ve found Emma Bridle. They’ve found Emma Bridle, and she’s
fine, and Ash can stop looking for her and go back to the city, and my life can finally return to normal.
That’s what it is. It has to be—
“Frankie,” Angie says, her grip on my shoulders tightening. “Richard just posted a new entry onto his sailing vlog. Last week,
a massive storm hit the Azores. It ran Richard’s boat aground, causing irreparable damage to its hull. Richard’s had to give
up sailing around the world. He’s on his way back to West Harbor.”