The Last to Vanish(62)

“I told her to watch herself,” Cory said.

“You threatened Georgia? You didn’t know anything was connected until after Landon West disappeared.”

“Yeah, well, I was right, wasn’t I? You don’t come here for no reason when you have all that money. She’s fucking loaded, you know.”

“She wanted a fresh start,” I said, but there was no conviction behind my words.

Cory rolled his eyes. “She found that camera and took it to a journalist. Not you. Not Celeste. Not the sheriff. Them.” Them. The people on the outside. And we were on the inside. Finally, I was a part of this place.

Cory took a deep breath, shook his head. “You trust too easily. You want to assume the best. You want to believe that nothing can hurt you here. But it isn’t true.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?” He looked at that book again.

I felt the emotion rising up, and I wasn’t sure if it was anger or embarrassment or fear. “Did Celeste ask you to get a feel for me, too?”

“No,” he said slowly. “Why would she do that?”

We were too close—the closest we’d been in years. In the way we were standing, in the questions we were brushing up against. The things that we almost said.

Finally, he was the one to break the silence.

“I’ll tell you something real, Abby.” His voice was so low, I almost didn’t hear.

I nodded, an unbreakable truce forming between us. A trust by necessity.

He ran his hand down his face, dragging the skin, so he looked sickly, older. “Alice. I didn’t see her.”

“You already said that—”

“No.” He closed his eyes. “I didn’t see her at all.”

He covered his mouth with the back of his hand, and I could practically feel the breath, like his hand was my own, hot and afraid, something finally rising to the surface of him.

“That night, I was working, we all were. I was nineteen,” he said, as if this would absolve him. As if being a teenager absolved all of us of our youth. “There were so many people in and out of the tavern, it was Labor Day weekend. And I was drinking, behind the bar.”

He shook his head, like clearing a thought.

“The next day, the sheriff came around, showing her picture. Said she’d been heading this way, had gone missing. And I don’t know, I just said, yeah, she was here.”

He must’ve seen my expression, because he said, “You don’t know what it was like, growing up in a place like this. With that picture over the bar, always. People telling stories, looking at you. Every single person in town who was alive then was questioned. Every. Single. One. How do you defend yourself, in something like this? So I just said it. It was an impulse. She was here, and I thought she called a cab.”

“She wasn’t there?”

“I don’t know, Abby. Because after I said it, others said it, too. My parents, they backed me up, said, yeah, she was there. They said they saw her, too. And suddenly it was like I had manifested it.” He ran his hand back through his hair, roughly. Looked away. “We don’t talk about it. We never did. You can’t ask something like that. Ever.” And I thought I understood. Do you really want the answer to that? That your parents didn’t see her, but thought you might’ve had something to do with her disappearance—and covered for you? Was that any better to believe?

“Jesus Christ.” I pinched the top of my nose, trying to recalibrate. Maybe Alice Kelly had never made it to the tavern at all. Maybe she had only made it as far as this inn—

I opened my eyes to the sound of him tearing a page from the book. But it was only the page with my name. The question marks. “We’re getting older, Abby,” he said. “Do you ever think about what comes next?”

I couldn’t. I was stuck. In a way, so was he—his name tied and tangled with this place.

“We need to burn this.”

We did, we needed to burn it. And he was symbolically starting with mine, as a way for me to agree.

I watched as he turned on the stove. The click click click of the gas, the flame catching. A promise, a bond. He held the corner of the page to the flame, and the ink was illuminated through the other side of the white page.

“Stop,” I said, lunging for the paper, extinguishing it with the base of my hand. There was a momentary delay before the pain set in—

“What the hell?” he asked.

I turned the page over, for him to see. One corner charred, and eaten away. But the rest, clearly visible. The words that Landon had written, circled in black ink. Something I’d never seen before, never heard—and I’d been listening for it. Not in a drunken slip, or a far-fetched rumor, or a careful whisper.

It said, with clarity: THE FRATERNITY FIVE





PART 4


The Fraternity Four

Date missing: June 6, 1997

Last seen: Cutter’s Pass, North Carolina

Corner of Main Street and Mountain Pass





CHAPTER 16


THE FRATERNITY FOUR. HOW often had I heard that phrase? Always four. Neil and Jerome and Toby and Brian. Never any indication that it had been anything other. Year after year, these four had traveled together. In every picture shown from their prior adventures, it had always just been them.