One By One by Freida McFadden(17)

Noah crinkles his nose. “What the…” he mutters under his breath.

I clasp my hand over my mouth to suppress a giggle, and for a split second, Noah looks proud of himself for making me laugh. For that half a second, it’s almost like the old days again, before we hated each other. When we could share an emotion without even having to exchange words.

“Warner is quoting that poem,” Lindsay says. “You know. The one by Robert Frost?” She shoots her boyfriend a loving look. “He’s very well-read.”

“Yes, I know it,” Noah says tightly. “But what the hell does that have to do with how to get to the inn?”

“You take the path on the left,” Warner explains. “It may be less traveled, but it’s the correct path.”

Noah doesn’t look at all thrilled about it, but he takes Robert Frost’s advice and turns left at the fork. It isn’t even a road anymore. It’s a dirt path. It’s very hard to imagine that a reputable establishment wouldn’t have a decent road to get there. I mean, what’s next? Are we going to have to drive across some rickety drawbridge?

After another twenty minutes of driving very slowly, Noah comes to a complete halt. He looks over his shoulder at Warner. “There’s no way this is right.”

Warner fumbles with the map in his hand. “No, we’re on target. It’s another two miles and we’re there.”

Noah throws the car into park. “Let me see the map.”

Warner hands it over. I look over Noah’s shoulder—the map is not that easy to read. It’s printed out on an eight-by-eleven-inch sheet of white paper, and everything is super tiny. Noah turns it ninety degrees, squinting down at the minuscule print.

“Do you want me to take a look at it, Noah?” Jack calls from the back row.

“I’m the one driving, so no.” Noah’s eyebrows bunch together and he clears his throat. “Okay. I think I see where to go.”

He shifts the car back into drive, but the engine is strangely silent. Noah frowns as he presses his foot onto the gas. What now?

“The car stalled.” He looks at me. “Does your car do this a lot?”

I bite my lip. “No. Never.”

“When is the last time you got it serviced?”

“I don’t know. Six months ago?”

“You don’t know?” he repeats.

“I said about six months ago. Give or take.” I think it was six months ago. I remember taking it to the mechanic right after a particularly brutal fight about why there was no fresh milk in the house. There was snow on the ground, so it was sometime during the winter.

Noah kills the engine, then tries to restart the car. I hear a clicking noise, but the engine doesn’t catch. He tries again with the same result.

“The battery is dead.” He blinks down at the dashboard. “The car won’t start.”

“I’ve got jumper cables in the back,” I say.

He snorts. “Great. Do you also have a battery in the back that we can give it a jump off of?”

Oh. I guess he has a point.

He unbuckles his seatbelt. “Let me take a look under the hood.”

“Take a look?” I repeat. Noah may be a physicist, but he doesn’t know anything about cars. “What do you think you’re going to see under there? An on/off switch on the battery that’s toggled to off?”

I probably shouldn’t have said that. It was sort of mean. On the other hand, the idea of Noah looking under the hood and discovering something wrong with the car that can be fixed right here and now seems just short of impossible.

Noah shoots me a dirty look as he pops the hood and climbs out of the car. Jack and Warner get out too and the three men huddle together under the hood, debating what could have caused my relatively new minivan to suddenly stop working in the middle of nowhere. I watch Noah’s face as he talks to Jack. The two of them have been friends for almost two decades. Does Noah know about me and Jack?

I can’t tell.

“I’m sure they’ll fix the problem,” Lindsay says confidently.

“I don’t know,” I mumble. I wish I had her optimism. Noah and Jack don’t know cars. It’s possible Warner is a car expert, but he doesn’t look like it, if I’m being honest.

What are we going to do if we don’t get the car running? We’re nowhere near the main road. And none of us have cell reception.

Noah slams the hood closed again, and he gets back in the driver’s seat. I can tell from his face he’s not optimistic. He turns the key in the ignition, and there’s only that clicking noise again. He drops his head against the headrest. “Great.” He cranes his head to look at everyone in the back. “Does anyone have a signal on their phone?”

The panic is starting to mount in my chest. I pull my phone out of my purse again with trembling hands—no signal. The negative responses echo from the back of the vehicle. None of us has a signal. We’re stuck out here and there’s no way to call for help.

“Listen, don’t panic.” Warner shakes the map in his hand. “Like I said, we’re only two miles away from the inn. We can walk there, and then we’ll send somebody to get the car.”

“Walk there?” Lindsay doesn’t sound thrilled about that idea. She’s not exactly outdoorsy either. “I thought if you get lost in the woods, you’re supposed to stay put.”