The Last to Vanish(48)

“Well, please do share, Abby. What brings you to my door on this beautiful Saturday morning?” He leaned against the back of his sofa, all nonchalant, without a care in the world.

“I want to ask you something. And I need you to answer me this time.”

“You need me to answer,” he repeated, slowly, like he could already sense it. I could see his demeanor changing, in the tensing of his shoulders, the shuttering of his features.

“I need you to tell me about Alice Kelly,” I said.

He stayed still, hand tightening on the furniture, staring at me. “Jesus, Abby, not this again.” I’d asked too much, that’s what he’d told me back when we were together. He’d said he was going to start charging me, if all I wanted was the same thing as the trauma tourists.

Now he continued to say nothing, a tangible distance growing. Didn’t even try to make light of it, how he might’ve long ago: You won’t find any secrets here.

No, this time, the question was too direct, too dangerous. I wondered if he knew what I was really asking: How long ago had Cory lived in my apartment, in the room next door to where I’d discovered Alice Kelly’s bag?

Now I imagined Cory at the bar with her, after she called for a cab, saying, I work at the inn, convincing her to come back. I imagined him pushing her, pushing me—

“Tell me what happened back then,” I said—I was practically begging him; had hoped our past had counted for something. But now I was wondering if he was afraid to answer. “I wasn’t here for it, and the story doesn’t make sense.” Not anymore. Her bag, at the inn.

“I don’t know what you want from me. Or why you’re so obsessed with her story. I don’t know anything about Alice Kelly that you don’t already know.”

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, caught the scent of hazelnut coffee, was transported back to lazy mornings a decade earlier. But then I thought of Cory in the basement. Cory, always with a way in. The phone lines, tampered with. I knew he held his secrets close, but hadn’t considered that he could’ve been involved. I didn’t know what he was protecting and couldn’t stop my mind from chasing it down, imagining the possibilities—a danger here that I hadn’t been aware of.

“Tell me something real, Cory. Please. I think you owe me at least that.”

He flinched, and I knew I’d made a mistake. That Cory didn’t believe he owed me anything. That, in his mind, I was the one who had changed. “Tell me something real, Abby.”

I felt the anger surging, alongside the fear—at Cory, at this entire town, at all the ways people talked around and over the fact that there was something very wrong at the core.

“Fine, you want something real, Cory? Come see.”

I stormed out the front door and felt him following behind, the same way I believed he would follow after me the day I left him. Though in his mind, maybe I hadn’t. It was not the last time I ever ended up back with him in the basement of the inn; it would get so quiet down there, time passing, and sometimes I had to do something just to remind myself I was still here. A different sort of proof of life. But from that day, I understood what Cory Shiles cared about most of all.

I threw open the back door of Georgia’s car and pulled out that hiking pack, my throat threatening to close. All the emotion, too close to the surface.

“You want something real?” I said, hearing the crack in my voice, forcing it back. “Here. I’ve been using her bag for the last decade.”

Cory held the bag tentatively in his hands, face contorted in confusion, before raising his gaze back to me. “I don’t know what you’re saying. This is your bag.”

I took out my cell, pulled up that Instagram page again: AliceKellyWasHere, and found the photo of Alice Kelly, walking into the woods.

“Look,” I said, thrusting my phone in his face. “Look.”

“Okay,” he said, frowning. “So it’s the same type of bag.”

“No, Cory, for the love of God, look at it.” I took the bag back from him, put the phone in his hand. Watched as his thick fingers zoomed in on the picture, his brow furrowing. “The label. The zipper. Do you see.”

I watched as his eyes switched from the phone to the bag in my hands. Back and forth, back and forth. And then I watched as his throat moved. His face settled into something impassive, closing off. His hand dropped to the side. He had seen it. I was sure.

“I found the pack at the inn, Cory. How did it get to the inn?”

He handed the phone back to me. “I don’t know,” he said.

“I’ve been carrying it around, with no idea, all these years…”

He placed his hands on my shoulders, and it was only then I could feel that one of us was shaking.

“Cory,” I said, just barely over a whisper. “Tell me. Please.”

He took a step back, looked down at me. “You think I hurt her?”

I took too long to answer. “No,” I said. “Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be here asking you about it now, would I?”

He took a long, slow breath, gaze to the side, into the trees, where I could hear the wind coming before I felt it. Just when I thought he was going to tell me something, the secret of Cutter’s Pass, he shook his head. “She… I have no idea how this fucking bag got to the inn, but you should get rid of it, Abby.”