The Last to Vanish(51)
“It’s all right. A busy time of year.” I shifted on my feet, easing toward the exit again.
“He mentioned you had some issues up there.” She looked over her shoulder, into the living room. “You’re not worried?”
My eyes met hers, and I wondered what exactly Harris had told her—how worried he had been, that he hadn’t quite let on.
“The missing journalist,” she added when I didn’t respond, keeping her voice low, in case Elsie was listening—though she was currently sitting less than a foot from the flat-screen TV.
“No, I mean, yes, it’s horrible.” I shook my head.
She nodded slowly. “It’s always a visitor, right?” The corner of her mouth twitched. “Everyone in that town acts like it’s fine. It’s not fine.”
I shook my head. “No,” I repeated. “It’s not fine.”
“What do you make of it?” she asked, biting the side of her thumbnail.
I shook my head rapidly, because I didn’t have an answer. Because that’s why I was here, with Alice’s bag in the back seat of my car. “I don’t know,” I said. The most honest thing I could say.
She sighed, looking around the place. “Living here was supposed to be temporary,” she said. “Then there was always a reason to keep staying… But after that journalist…” She pressed her thin lips together. “I want to go, and Harris promised we would, but do you think he ever can, really? When all his business was built up around the people there?”
I noticed she called Cutter’s Pass there. That she saw herself as an outsider as well.
“It’s a nice place to live,” I said, because what could one say when standing in a family home, at the edge of the place that had slowly become my own over the last decade.
She laughed, then stopped. “Okay,” she said, drawing out the word. “How long does it take, to feel like that?” she asked, and then she added, “It’s just, I’ve been here over four years, and everyone’s friendly, but…”
I grimaced. “Yeah, it takes a little while to get a feel for everyone…”
“Harris tells me I should go to Springwood for anything I need. Not that I know many people there either…”
The question she was asking: Was there something, really, to fear in Cutter’s Pass? No wonder she was lonely out here. It helped in this place to have someone vouch for you. Harris should’ve been enough. Everyone called him in for business, from the sheriff’s office to the elementary school, but otherwise he was kept at arm’s length, too. And he kept us the same. But I had a feeling Harris knew more about this place than he let on—something he wanted to protect his wife from, and I was disturbing that.
I was struck suddenly with the realization that I shouldn’t have come here.
“I have to go. Will you tell Harris I stopped by?” I asked, trying to make a polite exit.
Just then, I saw Harris’s work van pull up the gravel drive. “There he is,” Samantha said with a smile.
“Thanks,” I said, hand on the doorknob. “I don’t want to take any more of your time.”
“Listen,” she said, “we should go out sometime, when Harris isn’t busy. Maybe even drive out to Springwood for an evening?” she added with a nervous laugh.
I nodded. “I’d love that. Harris has my number.” I made myself smile as I turned away, striding as quickly as I could down her front porch without raising suspicion.
I wanted to ask Harris some questions that would not put his wife any more at ease. And I didn’t think he’d be honest in front of her, knowing what I knew now—how much she already wanted to move on. They were both stuck, with this land, with what he’d built from it. But it came at a price, and she was the one currently paying it.
* * *
HARRIS WAS WALKING OUT of the stand-alone garage when I caught up with him. He was eyeing the unfamiliar car in his drive, trying to reconcile it with me.
“Well, this is a surprise,” he called. And then his smile faltered. “Everything okay at the inn?”
“Sorry, I tried to call first. And then I was driving by,” I said, uselessly waving my arms at nothing.
He slid his phone out of his back pocket. “Must’ve been in a dead zone.” He frowned. “There’s nothing from you.”
“I didn’t leave a message. It was more a personal question I was hoping you could answer,” I said, peering over my shoulder at his house. Picturing his wife peering back out. I shifted so my back was to the house.
“All right,” he said slowly.
“The phone lines,” I said, and his gaze also drifted to his home, to his wife and daughter, and I wondered if he feared for their safety more than he’d told Samantha. Whether he hid his concerns, knowing how his livelihood was also tied to this place.
He squinted against the morning sun, hand over his eyes to shield the glare. “What about them.”
“You made a comment—” I shook my head. “I felt like you thought Cory could’ve had something to do with it, and I was just wondering… why you thought that.”
He stared at me, silent, trying to read something behind the question.
I shut my eyes, tried again. “I know you grew up here. That you might know something I don’t. I do know he used to work at the inn.” Here it came, I had to ask. “Did he live there when Alice Kelly disappeared?”