The Stillwater Girls(39)

The screen turns blue, and a local number flashes across, bold and white. A moment later, the camera pans to an empty podium. The rustle of paper and clicking of cameras and low hum of voices chattering in the background come to a stop when a gray-mustached sheriff approaches the stand and adjusts the microphone.

“As many of you have heard, yesterday at approximately 0700 hours, two young women . . .” He gives his statement, providing the press with a formal report containing nothing that I didn’t already know. “The department is currently searching for a woman with blonde hair and blue eyes, average height and build, late thirties to early forties, as well as a young girl with blonde hair, approximately nine years old. We believe this woman and child to be the family of these girls. If you have any information, please call the sheriff’s department immediately. I’ll now open the floor to questions.”

He points to a journalist off camera, whose question I can’t hear.

“No comment on that at this time,” he answers.

Heading to the en suite, I take the opportunity to wash up for the night, borrowing Brant’s artisanal face soap in hopes that the lavender chamomile scent might help me fall asleep easier tonight.

I need to call him again. So far all my attempts have been feeble.

It isn’t unusual for him to be out of reach when he travels. Not everywhere he goes has adequate cell tower coverage, but going more than a day or two without talking together is rare.

Climbing into bed, I pull my phone from the charger and try him one more time—this time opting to call the hotel phone directly—before I crash for the night.

“Hello?” He answers on the third ring, catching me off guard.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t it be?” He laughs at my question.

“I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday.”

“Unfortunately cell towers in the Amazon are few and far between,” he says with a chuckle. The sound of rustling sheets fills the earpiece, and I imagine him settling into his hotel room after a day of shooting, a crystal tumbler of hotel bourbon resting on a coaster beside him, the TV muted in the background, English subtitles flashing across the screen.

He was using the hotel’s WiFi when we FaceTimed the other day. Was he not at the hotel yesterday?

“That’s what I figured,” I say, wondering if he picks up on the curtness in my words, the reservation in my tone. “I’ve taken in two young women.”

Silence.

“Wait,” he says. “What?”

“Their names are Sage and Wren. They’re eighteen and nineteen.”

More silence, silence that feels ironically loud somehow, but his speechlessness doesn’t frustrate me. This would come as a shock to anyone.

“I thought . . . don’t I have to be there to sign something?” he asks. “We haven’t even done our home study.”

“We’re not fostering them,” I say. “They’re going to be staying with us until we can reunite them with their family.”

“Nic . . .” His voice dwindles into nothing for a moment. “This is . . . wow . . . I don’t know what to say here.”

“You don’t have to say anything. It’s an unfortunate situation, and I just want to help them any way I can,” I say. “Maybe check the channel four news website when you get a chance.”

He agreed to the fostering thing. In my opinion, this isn’t any different.

“It’s been a long couple of days,” I say. “I’m exhausted.”

He draws in a long breath, saying nothing, though I can only imagine what he wants to say in this moment.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know this isn’t the reaction you were hoping for. It’s just . . . it’s going to be an adjustment, that’s all. I’ll get used to it. We’ll make it work.”

“As opposed to not making it work?”

“You know what I mean.” His tone is sharp, sharper than mine.

I can’t help but wonder if this complicates things for him.

And I can only hope it does.





CHAPTER 25

WREN

I wash my hands in the bathroom with a bar of milky-white soap, and I breathe in a comforting lavender scent that reminds me of home.

I don’t know how anyone can live with all these windows.

Our cabin had four windows, and at times that almost seemed too much. If we needed more light, we went outside. The only time the windows were appreciated was in the winter, when the sun happened to be shining and we wanted to pretend the threat of frostbite didn’t linger in the air.

Nicolette gave us what she called “the grand tour” this morning before breakfast, and I’m not sure she has a single room in this entire house without a window or “skylight” in it—most of them bare and uncovered. She says she likes natural light and that out here the woods give them plenty of privacy, but then she stopped herself, saying, “or the illusion of privacy, I suppose.”

Sage and I take our seats at her kitchen table as she moves around the kitchen in a pale robe covered in a lilac print, her thick, crimson hair tied in a smooth-as-glass bun on the very top of her head.

I’ve never seen hair so sleek and glossy.

My sister rests her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand, watching Nicolette using all these little machines and electrical gadgets to whip up our meal.