The Last to Vanish(44)

The story had slipped from the news as the months stretched on, but whenever Cutter’s Pass was mentioned, I heard my mother’s warning: There’s something not right about that place. Ironic that I’d come here and found some solace here after her death.

This was the context, the history, I had arrived in. This place that was still reeling from Alice Kelly’s disappearance. A reckoning that had never quite happened. A brief destabilization. There had been no answers. No tangible connections made between the cases. No sign of her. No sign of any of them.

Not until this backpack, which I had carried for years, unaware. This backpack, which had somehow made it to the basement where I slept, where I lived. So that now I saw her here in my half dream, auburn hair in a ponytail, dirt across her freckled cheek, eyes wide, and hands gripping the straps of that bag as she stood at the end of the hall of this basement—

A ringing phone brought me back to the surface—at least, I thought it was a ringing phone. By the time I was fully awake, the ringing had stopped. It could’ve been part of the dream about Alice.

I pushed myself up off the floor, a crick in my neck from how I’d fallen asleep, my head resting on the pack, as if I’d conjured her in the dream, breathing in the scent of earth and the forest. My mouth tasted like stale wine and I still wore my uniform from the day before, stiff and uncomfortable.

The sun was streaming through the gap in the blinds of my living room—I couldn’t tell what time it was, only that I’d slept later than usual. I felt disoriented, confused, my entire frame of existence splintered beneath my feet.

I walked through the bedroom into the bathroom, where I stripped off yesterday’s clothes and stood in water set too hot, letting the steam fill my lungs. There was a tremor in my hands—like when I’d last had a fever, and Celeste kept coming down to check on me, bringing me soup, resting the back of her hand against my forehead. She’d even called in a doctor, who declared it the flu, said all we could do was wait for the fever to break. It was the one time I’d seen Celeste look truly afraid. She’d stayed on the couch so she could keep a close watch. Something I thought I’d never experience again, after losing my mother.

For a long time, I wasn’t afraid of what had happened to Alice Kelly. Because in my mind, I imagined her as someone like me, with nothing holding her in one place any longer. Because, as people soon discovered: She did not have a test the next day, as she’d told her friends; she did not have cause to rush back to school—these were lies.

I believed, strongly, what I had told Trey during our hike. That some people didn’t want to be found. And I’d believed Alice had run. Why else concoct the story she had told the other hikers on the ridge that day. I believed that she had taken stock of her life and decided to change course. I believed if there was a secret kept in Cutter’s Pass, it was this. I had wondered, back then, if maybe they had all left.

But that story wasn’t true. Her bag had been in the basement of this inn, all along.

And suddenly, everything circled back to this place. I could see the ghosts of all of them: Landon, Farrah, and now—Alice.

The woods were not the tie, as much as Trey wanted to believe it. Both Landon West and Farrah Jordan had passed through this inn for a reason. Looking for something. Looking for someone. And now I had evidence that Alice Kelly might’ve passed through here, too.

I felt like I had when I was standing at the base of the falls yesterday, like I was at the center of a funneling.

The Passage Inn—this was the center.

Alice Kelly’s bag had been in the lost and found bin, in the basement of the inn, just waiting for me to find it. And there were only so many people who could tell me how it had gotten here.



* * *



THE PHONE WAS RINGING again as I exited the bathroom.

“Hey,” Georgia said when I answered. “Sorry to wake you. I just wanted to check. Make sure you were okay—”

“I’m fine,” I said, clearing my throat, clearing the fog from my head. I checked the time, already nine, long enough that I’d typically be up, but not late enough for Georgia to be concerned. “What’s going on?”

A pause. “It’s just, the back office was open this morning, and the dishes were out, and… I’m sorry, my mind jumped to the worst possibility.” She laughed to herself, high-pitched and fake.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry. I came down for something last night and meant to go back upstairs to lock up, and I fell asleep. I think the wine got the best of me. I’ll come clean up, it was delicious by the way, thank you—”

“Oh, no, it’s fine, I’ve got it.” I could still hear her breathing, too close to the phone. “I’m having some trouble finding the binder, though. Do you remember where you left it?”

I stared at my reflection in the bedroom mirror as we spoke. The hollows under my eyes and the sharp jut of my collarbone, the birds taking flight.

This place felt, for the first time, like quicksand.

“I’ll be right up,” I told her, throwing on a crew neck T-shirt and jean shorts, no time to dry my hair. Besides, I wasn’t planning to spend the morning at the inn.



* * *



UPSTAIRS, BREAKFAST WAS IN full swing, and I barreled out of the employee doorway into the hall without looking where I was going, colliding with a man carrying a plate.