The Last to Vanish(49)

He reached for it, and I pulled it back, our eyes locking over top. He was stronger, we both knew it. We also both knew what it would mean if he took it.

“Abby, seriously. This is bad. This is dangerous.”

“I’ve been using it for ten years,” I said, my voice cracking, as if I were laying claim to it, not just afraid of losing it. Something that I thought would disappear if I let it out of my sight now.

Just then, there was a rumble of tires over gravel at the entrance to his driveway, and he let go of the bag. I put it in the back seat of Georgia’s car and watched as a truck came into view. The navy pickup I’d often see in the back lot of the Last Stop.

“My parents were planning to stop by,” he said under his breath.

They were hard to make out clearly as they crossed the makeshift wooden bridge, pulling into the spot beside mine. Marina exited the vehicle first, face tight, looking between us before she pasted on a smile. “Hi there, Abby. We weren’t expecting you this morning.”

“I was just stopping by,” I said so they would know I hadn’t spent the night here. Marina and Ray had both warmed up to me after Cory and I had cooled, when I was just someone working at the inn, Celeste’s niece, coordinating an order with the Last Stop. I was an outsider to Cutter’s Pass. There were some things still off-limits to me, and it seemed they thought their son was one of them.

“She was just dropping off some extra paint they had at the inn,” Cory said as Ray closed the driver’s side door. Both Marina and Ray wore jeans and sneakers and T-shirts with the Last Stop name.

“Well, that was very kind of you, dear. You look like…” She trailed off, but I knew what I looked like. I looked too close to the person I was when I arrived a decade earlier. Unfinished, ungrounded. A little reckless and rough around the edges.

Ray opened the tailgate of the pickup and pulled out a box.

“Let me help you, Dad,” Cory said, taking the box from him. Something shifted inside, and it sounded breakable. “Tiles,” Cory explained. “For the bathroom.”

“Have you seen inside?” Ray asked, obvious pride on his face.

“I did. It looks great.”

He slid another box to the edge of the truck. “Got these at cost from a site that had extra.”

“Is that Georgia’s car, hon?” Marina asked, eyes narrowed at the silver SUV.

“Yes,” I said. “Mine wouldn’t start this morning.”

Cory hadn’t even asked. And I realized he rarely asked a question of me, because to do so would be opening himself up to the same.

“Did Cory offer to take a look at it for you?” Ray asked.

Cory’s dark-eyed gaze settled on mine. “Yeah, let me know when it’s a good time to come by.”

Ray sensed something off, his movements slowing. “If he can’t help, we’ve got a good mechanic, Abby, he’ll do right by you.”

“Thanks, Ray. It probably just needs a jump. I was just in a rush this morning. Don’t worry about it.”

But Marina was looking into the back window of Georgia’s car, at the backpack lying across the bench seat. Orange thread visible, missing label, makeshift zipper. The bag they’d probably seen me with many times before.

“Well, don’t let us keep you, Abby.” She gave me her familiar gap-toothed smile, but something felt forced in it. “I’ll be up again for happy hour this evening. The other night was a nice change of pace for me.”

I walked around Georgia’s car, opened the driver’s side door. “See you soon, then,” I said.

Cory nodded at me as I slid into the seat. I watched as they entered Cory’s house, his dad with a hand on his shoulder, a feeling in my chest I had to fight down.



* * *



I STARTED THE CAR, letting the working AC blast from every vent before shifting into reverse and carefully maneuvering backward over the wooden bridge, Cory’s house slowly disappearing behind the trees.

I pulled out onto the road, angled back toward town, then idled on the shoulder.

Alice’s bag was visible in my rearview mirror, and I imagined her sitting back there now, eyes reflecting in the mirror. What next?

This town was a vault, and I’d been here too long to see it from the outside in any longer. But I still felt a distance, in the way Marina looked at me, in the things Cory wouldn’t say. Everyone closing ranks, keeping their mouths shut, faces placid and impenetrable.

If I asked Celeste when Cory had last worked at the inn, I’d already know her response: Why do we need to know that? And as eagerly as Rochelle took in information, she doled it out deliberately, like it was a power she wielded. Jack had been here back then, too, but he was a part of their circle—a group I could never quite crack. Sheriff Stamer was as good as family, would never say anything that had the potential to harm someone he cared about.

There was only one person who knew Cory back then who I thought might tell me honestly. Harris had gone to school with them all—with Cory and Jack and Rochelle—their grades overlapping, their pasts seen through a shared filter. And unlike them, he’d left this place for a time.

Cory had stayed in town, working for his parents. Jack had put his skills and passion into a way he could sustain himself, doing the things he loved. Rochelle took courses in the summers but continued to work in the sheriff’s office, her job advancing along with her. But Harris—he kept himself apart from them. He’d always lived outside the town boundary, and he had left. I knew this, because I was here when he’d returned.