The Last to Vanish(35)

But then he started pulling away, and I realized he was a walled thing all of his own. That, if I asked him something, anything real about Cutter’s Pass—What was it like, when Alice Kelly went missing? What do you think happened to the Fraternity Four?—he would tell me nothing more than the lines I’d heard him give to paying customers. If he knew things, he wouldn’t tell me, saying only, when I pressed, You won’t find any secrets here, with a sly grin, like it was all in jest. And I realized that Cutter’s Pass would only exist for you in the parts you were here for, and the rest would remain an impenetrable history. I’d learned I’d find more camaraderie and friendship in those that were like me—not from here.

It took the last two disappearances to make me feel like one of them, and only because I was here when they happened. To understand that the truth was something you couldn’t just explain to someone else, but had to experience for yourself, come to terms with in your own way.

By then, I had let Cory go. Unsettled by the lightness with which he approached everything. The carefree surface, the exterior charm. He capitalized on the disappearances, accepted the mysteries as something not too serious. He made all stories seem trivial, even mine. He had a distinct lack of gravity, in a way that felt unsustainable.

But Cory was never something that could slip into the past. In a way, I felt like Cory was a part of this place, set deep in its foundation. Something that would always be a part of me, whether we were together or not.

And then last year, a week after Georgia’s arrival, I saw him in the basement again, standing near that back entrance, like he was waiting for her to find him there. A rehearsed move in a play. And I’d recast our entire history, every memory. Whatever spell remained was then finally and permanently broken. I imagined the people who had come before me, the history that had once existed but remained beyond my reach. The secrets Cory knew, and kept.



* * *



AFTER I’D FINISHED MY shower and threw on my work clothes, I still heard him in that storage room. But I passed without saying goodbye as I exited. It didn’t matter whether I locked up behind me. In the end, you had to choose to trust Cory, to believe his intentions.

I found out later that Cory had worked here once. When he’d wanted out of his parents’ house, before he could afford his own place—he’d come here, to Celeste and Vincent. Had lived in the very same apartment that Celeste gave me later. Of course he knew how to get in.

I had thought of what Celeste had told me, about needing to discover what’s most important to people to know how to navigate them. I could never figure it out, with him. And it was then I understood the problem with Cory: The one thing he was most interested in was himself.



* * *



IF CORY LACKED A sense of gravity, then Trey West was the opposite, standing in the parking lot as I backed my car up the slope of the employee drive. He was a black hole, a pull I couldn’t resist and didn’t want to, for fear I might miss something. I was starting to believe that the answers to this place somehow lay within him. That, despite Celeste’s disapproval and Cory’s warning, this was the way to find them.

I lowered the window, called his name, watched as he tried to place me in context again. I was dressed for work now, hair pulled back tightly, in the hand-me-down car from Celeste.

My own car had only lasted my first winter here. By the time the next fall was approaching—the leaves changing colors, crisp and swirling in the wind, brittle under our steps—the battery was on its way out, and the tires needed replacing, and my car, the very last thing that had once belonged to my mother, was dying. I didn’t want to admit it. Of all the things I had lost, the car shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. It was just a car, and it had gotten me here, but it wouldn’t change the past. It was the insult of it—just one more thing—and after the engine sputtered, I’d slammed a door, kicked a tire, felt my eyes burning with tears in frustration.

And then Celeste was there, outside the carriage house, watching closely. What’s the matter? she asked.

I gestured to the car wordlessly, thinking of how I would need to call someone to tow it to the shop just out of town, tell me how much I’d owe this time.

She stepped closer as I was mentally tallying the money in my bank account, adding up my upcoming pay, when she handed me the keys to her car, her fingers shaking gently. I don’t need these.

I didn’t understand at first. Said, I’ll have it back in an hour.

No, she said, Abigail, I don’t need it. Everything I need is here, and besides, I can roll out Vincent’s old truck if I ever truly need it, see if it starts. She tried to make a joke to cover the gravity of the moment. She was still holding that key in her hand, extended my way. A gift, an offering.

But it was a question as much as an offer. And when I raised my hand out to hers, closing my fist around the metal key, it was also an answer. A promise that I would stay.

Celeste seemed to understand my attachment to my mother’s old car and offered to drag it into the garage, join the graveyard of unused vehicles, along with Vincent’s truck. When I arrived, that truck had sat, unused and unlocked, at the top of the lot, a perpetual reminder. Which somehow seemed worse than a car that wouldn’t start. I had moved it to the garage myself for her, before the high season. She didn’t want to part with Vincent’s truck, just as much as I didn’t want to part with this.