The Dead and the Dark(36)

“Wow, that’s—”

She didn’t have time to finish. John folded his arms over his chest and asked, “So, what, you like girls?”

“Yeah. That’s generally what a lesbian is.” Logan took a drink of beer without breaking eye contact. How she’d gone so quickly from semiembarrassment to unrelenting bravado was a mystery to Ashley.

“Is it … like, do you think it’s a genetic thing?” Fran asked. She wrinkled up her nose and looked around. “Is it okay to ask that?”

“First, I’m adopted,” Logan scoffed. “Second, no, it’s not.”

“It’s not genetic or it’s not okay to ask?” Paul asked.

“Both.”

The cabin was silent.

Bug looked at Ashley like she was going to be sick. Ashley closed her eyes and pictured her mother sitting in this circle. She tried to picture the perfect Tammy Barton solution.

“Hey, I have a party game for us to play,” Ashley said. She put a hand on Bug’s wrist to comfort her. “Let’s all just drink until we’re having fun, okay?”

Somehow, this worked.

Paul turned up the music on the speaker and everyone drank. Within an hour, it was a party just like any other before Tristan’s disappearance. As it turned out, the best way to make a room of people get along was to blur their heads with cheap beer until they couldn’t remember why they were different in the first place. Fran ended up on John’s lap, Bug seemed to actually enjoy talking to Paul for once, and Logan, Nick, and Elexis drifted into their own conversation about god knew what. It was all effortless again. The apprehension about Logan and the others melted into easy laughter, and everything was okay.

Ashley could almost picture Tristan here, laughing along with the others. She could imagine him and Logan joking together.

Everything was the same again, but Tristan was gone.

Quietly, Ashley moved to the cabin’s old, worn-down kitchen. It was more like a crumbling wooden tunnel given the missing back wall. Wind whispered between the decayed planks, ruffling Ashley’s hair against her neck. She hadn’t had more than two beers, but the room felt distant. The whole world felt distant. If she wandered into the woods right now, she wondered how long it would take the others to notice she was gone. Just as easily as they were moving on from Tristan, they’d move on from her. She could slip into the night and be a ghost just like him. The thought made her heart slog an empty rhythm against her ribs.

Under the sounds of the party, there was another noise. A quiet hum, throaty and low. When Ashley closed her eyes, it was all she could hear. It danced between the shifting trees. Almost like it was getting closer.

Without warning, the kitchen door burst open.

“There you are,” Logan declared. “I was looking for you.”

Logan staggered into the kitchen and ripped open another can of PBR. She’d smudged the corner of her lipstick, but she was otherwise surprisingly put together. She wasn’t sharp and sarcastic like she’d been when they arrived. She seemed comfortable—happy, even. She fit in a little too well, like parties were her first language.

“Seems like you’re having fun,” Ashley said.

“Seems like you’re not.” Logan leaned against the decaying counter opposite Ashley. “You find anything interesting?”

Ashley arched a brow.

“The investigation. The whole reason we’re here. Did you see any ghosts?”

Ashley exhaled. “Oh, yeah. Uh, no. I haven’t seen anything.”

“Have you been looking?”

“No. Not really.”

Logan narrowed her eyes. The bass from the song in the main room thumped in the silence between them. After a moment, Logan looked out the collapsed kitchen wall into the black night. “What’ve you been doing in here, then?”

Ashley shrugged. The thing she’d felt before—the loneliness that welled like a tide in her chest—was gone as quick as it had come. The junipers outside the kitchen rustled in the cool wind, and Ashley was back to earth. She fixed Logan with a look. “It’s not like you’ve been investigating, either.”

Logan scoffed, indignant. She held out a closed fist. “I have, too. I even found something.”

“Are you gonna show me?” Ashley asked.

“I don’t think you earned it,” Logan slurred. “You didn’t even look.”

Ashley rolled her eyes. Against her better judgment, her lips curled into a reluctant smile. This Logan was different from the one she’d expected. For a moment, she was warm and open. Her laughter was real, dark and smooth as velvet.

“Please,” Ashley said, “can I see what you found?”

Logan smirked. “Since you asked nicely.”

She turned her fist over and revealed something small and shining on her palm. It was a thick gold ring with a cursive inscription inside: Mark 10:9. Ashley plucked it from Logan’s palm and studied it. “What God has joined together let no one separate.”

“It doesn’t say that,” Logan said.

“That’s the verse.”

Logan snorted. “I knew you were a church girl.”

Ashley playfully shoved Logan in the arm. The ring was nondescript—no embellishments or jewels on the outside, and only the inscription on the inside. “It’s not really a clue.”