The Last to Vanish(75)

“Harris, it’s Abby,” I said. “We’re having some more issues with the phones at the inn. I checked that juncture box, but it all looks okay. I must be missing something. Hate to bother you on a weekend, but it’s not just the lobby phone. It’s also my apartment. I’m not sure how widespread the issue is. If you get a chance, can you give me a call, walk me through it?”

I wasn’t holding out luck for a response anytime soon. He was probably enjoying the day with Samantha and Elsie, probably drove out with them to Springwood, staying far away from this place—he knew better, after all.

I peered over my shoulder again, expecting to see Celeste still watching. I’d felt her eyes, the entire call. Except I must’ve been imagining it, because there was no one at the glass window.

A car pulled up the road, turning into the inn’s parking lot. New guests, checking in, probably. Celeste would be occupied.

There were some things I wouldn’t have considered doing, hours earlier. There were some things I wouldn’t have considered, hours earlier. But I knew I had one single opportunity right now, and I needed to take it.

I checked over my shoulder one last time, making sure I was alone. And then I headed for the carriage house. I needed to see what she’d taken from the storage area, what was so important to have Cory bring to her home—I needed to be sure.

As I took the narrow steps up from the garage-level entrance, I tried to picture it: the Fraternity Four and Celeste. This person who knew every inch of the mountain like the back of her hand. I pictured her as she was in the photos in the hallway of the inn, youthful, adventurous, someone who could see a vision through to completion.

Would she have met them at the tavern? Would she have taken their picture, and then taken them into the woods? And then what? Who was this person whom I’d respected and idolized and taken such solace in?

The door at the top of the steps had an old dead bolt, though I couldn’t remember a time when Celeste locked her door. She had always made me feel safe here, by her own lack of concern.

I turned the knob now, and it opened easily. As if there was nothing to hide. Nothing to fear. Though I knew that wasn’t true.

It had been a while since I’d been to the upper level of Celeste’s carriage house. When I’d first arrived, we’d had Sunday dinners together, and I could feel the loss of her husband still heavy in the places he’d once occupied. I’d helped her move some of his things out, storing them in the basement. Leaving space for her to exist without the specter of him everywhere.

It was a small living area, but she said it was all she needed—she had the entire mountain, after all. White angled walls, exposed beams across the ceiling, and a brick fireplace, centered between the couch and the lounge chair, which no one seemed to use and must’ve belonged to Vincent. The bedroom was through a single doorway to my left.

The kitchen was closest to the entrance. Appliances along the wall, a rectangular wooden table in the middle. That table now was covered with papers, one of the storage boxes open and resting on a spindled wooden chair.

I didn’t have to look very far at all.

I held my breath, bracing myself for what I would find. But the documents appeared old. I picked up the closest paper, and it was a deed of trust. A document declaring who this property belonged to—with both names listed as owners: Vincent Farley and Celeste Farley.

Okay. So these were the papers in Vincent’s things that she’d been looking for. This didn’t look like something secretive. These were just documents about the inn. Legal paperwork; our history.

Below, there was a larger stack of papers bound in a rubber band, and I recognized it—a will. Thinking it was Vincent’s, I picked it up. But this belonged to Celeste. It was thick, and seemed to be awaiting signatures, but the thing that caught my eye, as I flipped through the pages with no understanding of what I was looking for, was the same thing that caught my eye in Landon West’s journal, and in the Edge’s ledger: my name.

I stopped at the page, reading closer. Reading again. It seemed that Celeste was trying to add me as an owner of the inn. That she was going to leave this place to me.

I sucked in a breath, and this time, I pictured everything I had always believed her to be: a parent figure, when I had no parent left. Someone who loved, most of all: this mountain, this place, and me.

I wanted to sit with this, stop digging—but this wasn’t what I’d come for.

I dropped the stack, piecing through the other papers, searching for the blueprints. There was nothing here but legal documents and financial statements about the founding of the inn—its accounts, the permits. There were no blueprints or architectural notes here.

I didn’t see the other boxes, but I was sure Cory had brought more over. I knew they were here, from their absence in the storage closet. But there was nothing else in the living area. Just this single box.

I crossed the room quickly, heading for her bedroom. Inside, her queen-size bed was neatly made, the surfaces of her furniture clean and bare.

No boxes here, either.

Just a framed photo on the dresser of her and Vincent, hiking sticks in hand, from long ago. There were trees on either side of them, open air and the mountain ridge in the distance—the same overlook I’d showed Trey on our hike. Standing beside Celeste, Vincent looked so at home, so outdoorsy and capable, not at all like the man Rochelle remembered growing up.