What Lies in the Woods(27)

I knew because I’d watched Liv take it.

I looked again at the photographs. They weren’t random at all. They were landmarks. The reading rock, the crooked tree, the creek. It was a road map back to Persephone.

I slipped the earring box into my pocket before I left.





Liv’s missing,” I said when Cass opened the door.

She was wearing a cream silk shell and black slacks, her makeup subdued but precise, and at my greeting she raised her perfectly penciled eyebrows. “Missing? We saw her yesterday.”

“And now she’s gone. She left the house before dawn and she’s not answering her phone.”

“That’s not exactly unusual for Liv,” Cass pointed out. “Come inside, will you? I’ve been at the lodge since the crack of dawn and I haven’t even gotten any coffee yet.”

I followed her in. She paced into the kitchen, where she’d been in the middle of making herself a latte. She poured the steamed milk into the mug, her back to me, as she spoke. “Liv hares off sometimes. Especially when things get intense.”

“This is different,” I said.

“Why?” she asked. She turned, propping her hip against the counter. She blew gently on her coffee and watched me over the rim of the mug. “What makes it different?”

“She left me this message.” I held out my phone and played the message for her on speaker. “She said she lied. Not us. Just her,” I said when it was done.

“What could that mean?” Cass asked. “Did she lie to us yesterday?”

The promise was a private thing. Cass had always been the together one. We were her beloved disasters, but there were things she didn’t understand. “We have this thing,” I explained reluctantly. “I tell her that I’ll be here tomorrow, and she says she will, too. When we’re having a hard time. It’s a promise. To at least make it one more day.”

“I didn’t know that.” Cass set the mug down carefully, adjusting it by the handle so it sat just so. Her voice was brittle, almost wounded. I wished I knew how to explain that it wasn’t a secret we kept from her—not really. It was only that Cass was someone who needed to fix things—and sometimes Liv and I, we just needed to be broken together.

“We’ve got to find her, Cass. We have to go out there. To the Grotto,” I said. She flinched.

“Why? You don’t think Liv went back, do you? You don’t think—she wouldn’t have done something to herself there?” Her voice was frayed at the edges.

“She had a bunch of photos of the woods. Like landmarks, so she could find her way. I think she’s been out there more than once,” I said. “Have you been back?”

“I tried once,” Cassidy said cautiously. “After Amanda was born. I guess—I don’t know. I wanted to tell her about it, for some reason.”

“You wanted to tell Amanda?” I asked, confused.

Cass flushed. “I wanted to tell Persephone about Amanda,” she corrected. “I don’t know why, I just did. But I couldn’t find it. Her. Everything looked different.”

“Then we don’t even know if she’s still there,” I said.

“Of course she’s still there. Where the fuck else would she be?” Cassidy snapped.

“Okay,” I said, letting her anger slice into me. I could take it, and if I didn’t put up a fight it would spend itself sooner. And sure enough, her shoulders slumped, and she put her hands over her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is all so fucked up.”

“We have to go make sure Liv isn’t there,” I said.

“I have a meeting,” Cass objected, but her voice was faltering, and she played with her necklace absently. That wasn’t a refusal, not from Cass. When she was saying no, you knew it. It was the yeses that were harder to suss out.

“Surely you have underlings by now,” I said, making a joking compliment of it. No demands for Cass. I was starting to remember how this worked.

“Percy,” she said, and there was that little nose-scrunch again. “He’s like an Energizer Bunny duct-taped to a wolverine. I’m pretty sure he’s planning to off me and run the lodge himself.” She laughed, but it was a little awkward, like she’d realized halfway through that this probably wasn’t the best time to be joking about murder. She cleared her throat. “I’ll have him take the meeting. With what I’ve got on the guy, he can’t say no to me.” She flashed her teeth, and I managed a smile in return.

And that was that. She’d made her decision, and it was really her idea, not mine at all.

Cass went upstairs to change and call Percy. She returned in more suitable clothes—better suited than my own jeans and sweatshirt, in fact, but I hadn’t expected to be doing any hiking when I packed. She made a few attempts at small talk, asking after Mitch and business before we petered out into silence. At least it was only a few minutes’ drive to where we were going. I pulled off at the Pond Loop trailhead this time. The trail had been built after I moved away, but if it went to the pond, it would put us close to the Grotto.

“I really don’t remember where to go,” Cass said nervously.

“We have a map,” I reminded her. I took the photos out of my pocket and fanned them, finding one that had a sliver of road. “We just passed this tree. Come on.”