The Last to Vanish(42)

She’d told me it wasn’t my fault that she was missing, that I didn’t owe her anything, that I’d done nothing wrong, and I believed her—because I wanted it to be true.

But I knew that the story told about Farrah Jordan’s disappearance was wrong at the core. Farrah Jordan knew exactly who we were, what this place was. She had not stumbled upon the town of Cutter’s Pass by accident, drawn in by the beauty. No, she was lured in by something else. The fleeting memory of Alice Kelly.

She knew exactly where she was.

In the three years since, I’d gone to great lengths not to send anyone away who set foot in the inn. Not hikers, coming down from the mountain. Not sightseers, interested in warming up around the fire. And not Trey West.



* * *



THE LOBBY OF THE inn was vacant when I returned from a walk of the perimeter, but there was a blue plate on the registration desk. Dinner, from Georgia. She always left me a plate if she was cooking, saying it was just easier to make enough for two. Breaded chicken and asparagus with a creamy sauce that smelled decadent, on one of the blue ceramic dishes from her kitchen. Her apartment always smelled like fresh cooking, or flowers. Like a home.

I walked around to the other side of the desk, saw a wineglass with a heavy pour of red. I wouldn’t normally drink while on the clock, but after the last few days, I let myself relax the rules I’d set for myself.

I took a sip, and it was definitely not the inn-purchased wine to which I was accustomed. I imagined Georgia at a kitchen stool, setting a place for herself, an open bottle beside her. I imagined the dinners she had enjoyed in her past, the person she used to be, before her father died.

And then I pictured Farrah, the ghost of her, standing at the base of the stairs, watching me. Like she was waiting for me to pay attention, to be honest. To find her.



* * *



I WAITED UNTIL I was sure the guests were all back in their rooms, and the inn was more or less closed up for the night, before opening the password-protected folder on the lobby computer. Before looking at those photos again, carefully this time, by myself.

I pictured Sheriff Stamer viewing these images, checking the settings, and wondered what it was he saw in them. The story he told himself about this place. The images themselves were flat, definitive—pointing to a specific place and time.

And finally I put my finger on why they’d felt so unsettling. It was for what they weren’t: They didn’t feel like Farrah’s work. The photos were markers, but they weren’t art.

Farrah had a public Instagram account, which she had updated every so often with a new landscape photo. It had been untouched since a month before her disappearance.

I went to the back office with my phone, slowly waiting for the inn’s account to load. Then I searched for Farrah’s account, which I’d done with less frequency in the last year. But in the months after her disappearance, I’d come often, hoping to find a deeper understanding.

Though there was a lot of variety to her photos—mountains and beaches and desert, and even one of a suburban backyard—the one consistent feature seemed to be how she drew in color, so different from the snow-blanched images on the flash drive. On her Instagram page, I had always felt a focus to her images. A purpose.

That’s what was missing. The intention behind these images. Of course, these were just a series of shots, lots of images from which she might have chosen only one to work on. But the photos of Cutter’s Pass seemed to have a different purpose.

I flipped from her images to the grid of photos she was tagged in, the one place I could find candid shots of her smiling. Something I’d never seen in person.

Perhaps the most unsettling thing was how the number of tagged images kept growing, in the years after her disappearance. Her friends and her students sharing old photos, making her appear so alive. Like she had continued to exist, in a second, secret life.

The most recent new photos she was tagged in were related to the Landon West case. There were several from newspaper articles that shared all of their photos side by side, Landon and Farrah and Alice Kelly and the Fraternity Four. It was the third such post that gave me pause, because of the username.

AliceKellyWasHere

I clicked over to her profile. The description read:

In memory of my beautiful sister, Ali

Love always, from Quinn

The description jarred me. My beautiful sister, Ali. A side of Alice Kelly none of us had ever known. What a baby sister might’ve called her. The user photo showed a younger version of Alice Kelly, face turned down toward a much younger girl—Quinn, I assumed. Both with dark auburn curls piled into high ponytails.

The most recent post was added only three days earlier, and it was a series of photos beginning with a shot of Alice Kelly getting ready for a hike, framed by the woods behind her. She seemed younger than the year she went missing, more carefree somehow. The caption read: Can’t believe it’s almost the 10 year anniversary. Miss you every day.

I took her in. Her beaming smile, her hands on the straps of her pack, a flash of bright orange running down the center. A sudden chill started at the base of my spine.

I scrolled to the next image and was confronted with the haunting image of Alice Kelly walking into the woods. She had turned to peer over her shoulder, looking back at the camera.

The phone slipped from my hand, ricocheted on the table, a clattering that broke the silence, broke everything.