Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six(47)

Cricket rolled her eyes. “Still working. Some emergency that won’t wait. He could be a while.”

Hannah looked back at her husband, still staring at his screen. What was it with these guys? Were they just hardworking men with important jobs? Or was it something else, a desire to check out, to separate? Maybe it was a little of both.

“And Mako?”

Something crossed Cricket’s face—it looked like guilt, then sadness. “I think he went to check on Liza. He went into her room and hasn’t come back out.”

“In our bathrobes?”

Cricket shrugged. “Why not? Who’s going to see us? We’re in the middle of effing nowhere. Then—right in the hot tub.”

It wasn’t real to Cricket, what she’d read, Hannah could tell. It was a ghost story, something from the distant past. A romp into the woods after spirits was just a game to her, just another way to have fun, like stories around a campfire. But Hannah couldn’t shake that image of Mandy holding her little girl. It was real—or had been. That love. That horrific murder.

Cricket reached into her pocket then held out her palm.

Two pink gummies rested there, fat and dusted with sugar. Oh, Hannah hadn’t been high in ages. She hesitated.

Cricket lifted her palm higher, smiled her wicked smile. “Come on, Han. Live a little.”

Hannah looked into the twinkling eyes of her best friend. The bad girl. The pretty one. The wild one. The one who frequently needed Hannah’s rescue. The one who always seemed to have way more fun than Hannah.

A final glance back at her husband. He didn’t even notice when she shut the door. “Why not?”

She grabbed one and popped it in her mouth. Cricket did the same, her grin widening.

“Let’s go ghost hunting.”



* * *



Fifteen minutes later as they made their way down the rocky path in robes and flip-flops, the pleasant effects of the gummy not yet taking hold, the errand seemed less fun and more irresponsible. Not to mention scary.

“I don’t feel anything, do you?” asked Hannah. She hadn’t been high since—when? She couldn’t even remember. College maybe? Maybe she’d forgotten how it felt. Or maybe her mom brain wouldn’t allow it. Like, it just wouldn’t take or something.

“It takes a while,” said Cricket, looping a strong arm through Hannah’s. “It said in the article that Mandy was planning to leave him. Her parents—they were waiting for her and the kids.”

Hannah had read the same, imagining those poor people waiting and waiting for their daughter, their grandchildren who never came home.

“The medical examiner deduced that he killed Mandy first,” Hannah said. “Her husband strangled her. The little boy was found in his bed. But the little girl must have run. He chased her down to the lake.”

“Maybe on this path,” said Cricket, looking around them.

It was depraved, wasn’t it? Like those people who listened to endless crime podcasts, sifting through the details of cold cases, all the different ways people can torture and kill each other. In the listening, in the examining, things seem like fiction, stories told to explain, to frighten, to excite. But these stories were real—a mother and her children had died in pain and terror, their deeply disturbed killer, a person charged with caring for them, then taking his own life. So much pain. There was so much pain in the world. Hannah clung to Cricket and the woods seemed dark. Hannah felt small.

“I don’t think it’s much farther.”

Behind them, Hannah could see the porch lights glowing. Above them the stars wild and violent in the velveteen black of the sky. The Big Dipper. Ursa Minor. Orion’s Belt. Mars glowed red. Venus blinked, always the brightest star in the sky.

One Christmas, her father gave her a huge telescope. Mickey and Sophia had no interest in the night sky. But Hannah and her father spent so many late evenings out on the porch with the big device, and piles of books. This was before all the apps that you could hold up to the sky now, that revealed all the galactic secrets. Before, you had to do your research. They spent hours searching, discovering, naming, watching for meteor showers or other astronomical events.

“We’re so small, tiny,” Leo said one night. It was late. Mickey was out, and Sophia was inside watching television. She had her dad all to herself. “We’re ants. Not even.”

He said it softly, with a kind of wonder. Hannah knew she was small. The youngest in the family, the quietest with the easiest personality. But not him. Not her dad. He was strength, security. He had all the answers, the bear hugs that banished monsters, piggyback rides forever. He was huge.

“You’re not tiny, Dad.”

He looked over at her, then pulled her into the crook of his arm, pressed her to him tight.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Look out there. All those points of light. Massive explosions, light-years away. That’s where we all came from, all of us. There’s stardust in our bones.”

The telescope was at Hannah and Bruce’s house now. She couldn’t wait to share it with Gigi.

There. A shooting star. She made a wish. Her everyday wish. May all people be happy, safe, and free.

That’s where we all came from, all of us.

The Origins test.

It was another hum in her subconscious.