One By One by Freida McFadden(27)

I shoot daggers at her with my eyes. “What’s the difference?”

“What’s the difference?” she repeats. She gives me a sharp look that reminds me that I probably shouldn’t have been clinging to her husband for comfort. I hadn’t been thinking about it at the time, but now I realize how that must’ve looked to everyone else—especially Michelle. The truth is, I’m scared of this woman. “The difference is that we’re still lost. We don’t have much food or water, and it’s now nighttime. We need to keep moving.”

I scramble back to my feet. “We can’t leave Lindsay here.”

Michelle stares at me. “She’s dead, Claire. And if we don’t get moving, we will be too.”

I shake my head.

“I’m surprised at you.” Michelle lifts an eyebrow. “You’ve got two young children waiting for you at home. You really don’t care about getting back safely for them?”

I suck in a breath. She makes a good point. If I had eaten those berries like Lindsay, I could be lying on the ground beside her—dead. Emma and Aiden wouldn’t have a mother anymore. All of a sudden, my longing for my children becomes so intense that I feel like I’m suffocating.

But at the same time, I can’t imagine leaving Lindsay here like this. Just lying on the ground. What if animals start eating her? I feel sick at the thought of scavengers chewing at her skin. She doesn’t deserve that. Even if she’s dead.

Oh God, I can’t believe she’s dead. Lindsay, Lindsay…

“Warner,” I say pleadingly. He looked so haunted when he pulled away from Lindsay’s dead body. There’s no way he’s going to want to keep moving. “You think we should stay, don’t you?”

Warner wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. He looks down at Lindsay, his light brown eyebrows scrunched together.

“I…” He clears his throat. “I actually… I think Michelle is right. We have to keep moving.”

I stare at him in disbelief. “What? Are you serious?”

He lets out a long sigh. “We have to. It’s our only hope. That’s what Lindsay would’ve wanted.”

My mouth falls open. I can’t believe other people are agreeing to this. Especially Warner, the guy who was sleeping with Lindsay and apparently so in love with her that he was going to pop the question this week. He should be showing a little more grief for the woman he almost married. He should be sobbing into his hands. Not spouting bullshit about how Lindsay would’ve wanted us to abandon her body here in the middle of the woods.

“You’re kidding,” I say. “Aren’t you sad? Can’t we take five goddamn minutes to grieve?”

His full lips purse. “What do you want me to say? I’m sad. Of course I’m sad. Lindsay was a beautiful woman. This was tragic.” He takes a deep breath. “But it’s not going to help Lindsay for us to die here.”

I look over at Jack, whose eyebrows are bunched together. He hasn’t said a word about any of this. But he’ll support me. He’s known Lindsay almost as long as I have. And he cares about me more than anyone else in this group, including my own husband. Not for the first time, I wonder what sort of life I would have had if I had ditched Noah for Jack at that party in college. “Jack…?”

“I agree with Michelle and Warner,” he says quietly. “We need to keep moving.”

I jerk my head back like I’ve been slapped. I know they’re just being logical, of course. It’s not like I want to be stuck out here in the wilderness. It’s not like I want to starve to death or die of thirst. I want to go home to my family. But at the same time, I just can’t fathom leaving Lindsay like this.

But what am I supposed to do? Stay here alone with a dead body?

“As soon as we get to the inn,” Jack says, “we’ll send somebody to… collect her.”

“Collect her?” How could he be so cold? “What if they can’t find her? Or what if it’s too late and she’s already been…”

I can’t even bring myself to say the words. I can’t think about scavengers ripping apart my best friend’s dead body. I try to look into Jack’s brown eyes, but he averts his eyes.

“Let’s get moving,” Warner says. “It shouldn’t be much longer.”

Jack shifts his backpack on his shoulders and follows Warner. Michelle does the same. I stand there, looking down at Lindsay’s motionless body. I can’t just leave her. I can’t.

“Hey.”

I turn my head and see Noah standing behind me. Somehow, I’d almost forgotten he was with us. He backed away when I was clinging to Jack. If he says a word about that, I swear to God, I will lose it completely.

“Hey,” I manage around the lump in my throat.

“Listen.” He rubs at the back of his neck. “If you want to stay behind, I’ll stay with you.”

I blink at him—it’s the last thing I expected him to say. “You will?”

He nods. “Yeah, you… you shouldn’t be alone here.”

I look ahead. The others have gained a lot of distance on us already. If we wait much longer, we won’t be able to catch up anymore. Whatever I decide, I have to decide right now.

“Do you think I’m being stupid for wanting to stay behind?” I say.