The Last to Vanish(68)

She frowned at the empty spot in her driveway. “Is she coming back?”

I let out a sharp laugh. “Doubtful, considering she left behind her key and employee badge.” I pressed my palm against my mouth, trying to choke back the emotion.

“Okay, come in. Come inside,” she said, one arm reaching for me, gesturing me toward the door.

My throat was tight with anger, with panic. I shook my head quickly. “There’s no one at the inn. I have to—”

“It can wait. Everything can wait. Abigail, come.”

I exhaled slowly, then stepped inside the first-floor entrance, a narrow, dimly lit foyer with a door to the side, leading to the garage, with Vincent’s truck. A set of steps led up to her second-floor living quarters, behind us. “Did she say anything?” Celeste asked. “Are we sure she’s okay?”

“She didn’t say anything, no. But everything’s gone.”

“We should tell Patrick, he’ll be here in just a moment—”

“She left a note, Celeste. It just said sorry. I don’t think…” How to explain, that Georgia had not been who we thought she was? I started again. “I think you were right about Georgia, all along,” I said.

Realization dawned on her face. She nodded once. “She left, then.” It was dark in the downstairs entryway, and the morning light out the doorway was almost blinding in contrast. “The last few months have been hard on her,” Celeste said. She looked like she was going to say more, but she cut herself off. Then she lowered her voice, added, “She was never cut out for a place like this, Abby.”

Her compliment, in the silence that followed: You are.

A car pulled down the employee drive, and I thought, for one hopeful moment, that it was Georgia, coming back. But instead I recognized the sheriff’s blue Honda. He stepped out, wearing slacks and a short-sleeve button-down. Same boots, though. “You about ready, Celeste?” he called.

“Just a minute, Patrick,” she called. Sheriff Stamer picked her up for church most Sundays, brought her back home after, too. He’d been a part of the orbit of this inn since I arrived, bound to its history in his own way.

“You’re going?” I asked. Sometimes I couldn’t understand how she just continued on, but then, she’d been through more, lost people before—people she’d cared about.

“It’ll just be an hour or so. If you can set up breakfast, I’ll handle the afternoon, okay? The inn will not fall apart, I promise.”

I nodded, still trying to process—Georgia was gone, and it was just me and Celeste again.

She slipped a bag onto her shoulder. “Just put up the sign if you need a break. Let’s just do what we can in the meantime. I’ll ask around for someone to cover the shifts. We’ll hire someone. Don’t worry, there’s always a new batch of kids looking for work.” She squeezed my arm once, a small reassuring smile. “We’ve done this before, you and me.”

In the early days of my arrival—but that was winter, low season—the two of us were able to make it work with the help of the community, who had all rallied around Celeste after Vincent’s death. They’d taken shifts, fixed things that needed fixing, didn’t wait for her to ask for help. The sheriff had sent Rochelle over to get the computer system organized. I could still feel the ghost of her in the process and spreadsheets that we continued to use, ten years later.

“Come now,” she said, stepping out into the morning light, waving to the sheriff, who was leaning back against his blue sedan, one leg crossed behind the other, the vision of casual—as if there was nothing at all to be concerned about here.

He acted like I wasn’t even there as he opened the passenger side door for Celeste, patting the metal roof once after he closed the door. Then his gaze drifted to me, and he nodded once—“Have a good day, Abby”—like he had only just seen me there, before sliding into his seat.



* * *



TREY WEST DIDN’T COME in for breakfast. There were two more couples checking out, two more couples who wanted me to make sure to thank Georgia for her advice, and I nodded, feeling a pang. Not for her, but for the person I thought her to be. Then I wondered about the person she thought I was, too. When she’d arrived, she saw me as a part of this place—the inn and the town. She never saw me as an outsider here.

Maybe, in hindsight, that’s what kept her from trusting me, too.

After the guests checked out, there was a lull—and I used the time to take a break in my apartment. I was tempted to bring Landon West’s journal upstairs with me, to keep it on me, but I was afraid of seeing Trey, that he would be able to sense it. I decided I had no intention of that journal ever leaving the confines of my apartment again. For a moment, I understood Georgia hiding all of this in the locker. There was this feeling that nothing was safe here. Not in the basement of the inn, not behind locked doors. Hadn’t Cory already shown me how easily others could get in? The past always had a thousand ways in.

I took pictures of the pages of the notebook with my phone to piece through while I waited for Celeste to relieve me.

I couldn’t stop thinking of the last words he’d written: The Fraternity Five

I couldn’t stop hearing the knock on his cabin door, during his last recording.

Everything was in my hands now. The power of it all, to hold the information. To decide.