What Lies in the Woods(9)

“As opposed to how you always take perfect care of yourself?” she asked, giving me a skeptical look.

“Oh, shut up,” I told her, and she laughed, her chin tilting up to bare her long neck, eyes flashing. She was beautiful in these moments, our Olivia.

“Liv! I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages,” Cass declared when we made it back to the kitchen, and I caught her giving Olivia the same appraising once-over that I had. She swept in for a hug, neatly plucking Liv from my side. “How does this keep happening when we live practically next door to each other? Can I get the two of you anything? Water? Have you eaten?”

Her voice was too bright, her smile too wide. Her anxiety thrummed behind the words. My own nerves were strained, ready to snap, but we both knew better than to push Liv. It would only make her shut down.

“Nothing, thank you,” Olivia said. She bit her lip, fingers fidgeting with the seam of her jeans.

“Why don’t we all sit down, and you can tell us what this is about,” I said gently.

Olivia took one of the stools, and I sat next to her. Cass stood on the other side of the island, arms crossed loosely. I could tell she was restraining the urge to go into mother hen mode—she’d always been protective of us, the first to step up when we needed rescuing. Between the two of us, we’d kept her busy over the years.

Olivia took a breath. She ran her hands over each other as she talked, her tone animated and excited. “I know that we’ve all tried to put what happened that summer behind us,” she started. “There are things we haven’t talked about. And I understand why we couldn’t. But that’s changed, hasn’t it? Stahl is dead now. He won’t—he can’t—get out.” She faltered and looked up at us.

I put my hand over Liv’s, wordlessly urging her to continue. She tucked her hair nervously behind her ears and pushed up her glasses, a tic that made her seem for an instant like she was eleven again.

“I started looking for her three years ago,” Olivia said, speaking rapidly. “At first I couldn’t find anything. But a few months ago I got lucky. I found her. I found Persephone.” She looked at us triumphantly.

“What is there to find?” Cass asked roughly. “She’s right where we left her.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Olivia said, shaking her head rapidly. “I— I—”

“You found out who she was,” I said. Olivia nodded, grateful, and smiled.

Cass scrubbed at that same spot on the granite with the side of her thumb. Her jaw was so tight a tendon flared. “We shouldn’t be talking about this.”

Olivia’s smile collapsed into a small frown. “She has a family. People who have been looking for her. They deserve to know what happened to—”

“Stop,” Cass said, looking up abruptly. Her eyes were bright with unspent tears. “Stop. We agreed we wouldn’t talk about it. About her. Not ever.”

“We were eleven,” I said. Eleven, and terrified of what would happen to us if we told anyone about Persephone. It wasn’t just about people finding out that we’d kept her a secret. There was the trial, too.

The police and the prosecutors had hammered it into us: if the jury had any reason to think we were wrong, if we gave the defense any way to make us seem unreliable, Stahl would get away with what he’d done—to me, and to all those women. I remembered being convinced that if we made a single mistake, he would get out and he would come after us. I’d had nightmares for years, waking up certain he was in my room, about to finish me off.

If they’d known the truth about Persephone, they would have thought we were strange, wicked little beasts—and we were. What little girl isn’t? Of course we’d kept quiet.

We’d never told a soul about what lay in the woods, about those beautiful bones.

“We owe her,” Olivia said stubbornly.

“We don’t owe her a thing. We didn’t have anything to do with…” Cass gestured broadly. “Any of that.”

“Which means there’s no reason not to tell,” I pointed out, though my stomach was clenched with dread. I didn’t want to know Persephone’s name. I didn’t want to know who she had been.

Cass bit her lip. “It’s been over two decades. If anyone was waiting for Persephone to come home, they’ve given up by now. Is it really going to help anyone, after all these years?”

“Wouldn’t you want to know? What if Amanda was the one who’d gone missing?” Olivia asked.

Cass covered her eyes with her hand. “Fuck. Of course I would. But, Liv, it’s not that simple. What do you think Amanda’s life is going to be like if this comes out? It would ruin me. People aren’t going to want to hold their business retreat at a lodge owned by a woman who hid a body for twenty years. And good luck booking any weddings, Naomi.”

“It’s not going to be like that,” Olivia said, tone turning desperate.

“God, I sound awful. Worrying about money, when…” Cass’s voice choked off. “But seriously, Liv. What do you think happens when people start asking questions? I don’t think any of us wants the world to know exactly what happened in those woods. Or after,” she added softly, pinning me with a level look.

“Maybe it’s time they did,” I replied, voice hollow.