The Last to Vanish(76)

The only place left to check was the closet, on the opposite end of the room, and the longer I searched, the more guilty I felt.

But I was so close now.

I opened the closet door, the hinge crying. Her clothes—khakis and flowing tops in blues and greens—hung from the bars that spanned the three walls. Hiking shoes and sneakers and her walking stick leaning in the corner. And there, along the back wall, were the stacks of boxes, all with Vincent’s name.

A brown corner was poking out from behind the stack—the edge of a frame. The same style that matched the other pictures that lined the walls of the inn.

This was the frame she’d removed, claiming it was damaged, that it needed to be replaced.

But here it was, and when I turned it over, everything appeared exactly as it always had. There must’ve been a reason she didn’t want these blueprints out there anymore.

This time, I knew exactly what I was looking for. The basement. I ran my finger down the protective glass over the blueprints, followed the path of the hall, the juncture to the two lower-level apartments. And then the closets. They were labeled: Closet A, Closet B. Both with the same dimensions—

“Can I help you with something, Abigail?”

I dropped the frame, the corner smashing into the wood floor, a collision I felt in the reverberation of the floorboards.

God, she moved so quietly. I turned around slowly. Celeste stood at the entrance of the room, piercing green eyes, waiting for an answer.





CHAPTER 20


THERE WERE TIMES, WHEN I first arrived, that I was afraid of Celeste. Not because of what I thought she could do physically, but because of how much of my life was in her hands, how much of my future at her whims. I was intimidated by her expectations of me, and her presence, this person who was so clearly revered by everyone around us. Whose opinion of you could lead the way for others.

I’d come to learn that her praise was unspoken; it was given, instead, in the decisions she left in my hands, the property she left in my care. To be loved by Celeste was a feat. But maybe it had kept me from seeing the truth about this place. About her.

“I was looking for this.” I picked up the framed blueprint and held it out to Celeste, because the truth was the safest answer.

She frowned. “Yes, I can see that. You could’ve asked me, you know.”

I couldn’t get a deep breath, couldn’t slow my heart, but I wasn’t afraid. Maybe I should’ve been, but I still couldn’t make it fit. Celeste, who had been my place of safety. I couldn’t surrender that, not after all we had been through.

I needed to ask. And it felt like she was finally giving me permission to do so. “Celeste,” I began, “what did you do?”

She stared at me, as if trying to read what I was really asking. She pressed her lips together. “Come out here, Abigail,” she said. “Come out where we can talk.”

I followed her into the main living area of the carriage home. She pulled out a chair at the dining room table, wooden legs scratching against the floor. “Come sit. I need to sit. I’m very tired,” she said.

I slowly pulled out the chair across from her, placed the framed blueprint at my feet. It did not escape my notice that the pile of papers sat between us. A physical promise: Look. Look what I am trying to do for you—

And yet.

And yet.

“You took that picture, Celeste.” There were no good answers, because I could feel my eyes tearing even as I said it. This person who had taken me in, made me a part of this world, become my family—all the good things about this place, because of her. “At the tavern. The logo from this inn, you can see it in the reflection. It had to be you.”

And still, I wanted her to deny it. I was waiting for it: What picture? What logo? No, that’s not possible, dear.

Instead, she let out a long sigh, her head dropping onto her hands, and she looked so old, so frail, suddenly. So incapable of any of this. “I always knew this day was coming. I wondered,” she said, “how long it would be. Who it would be.”

“Celeste,” I said, and I was begging now, begging for it to be a misunderstanding. Wanted her to say that I was wrong, that it was not her in the photo, that there were others who had worked at the inn and Rochelle was wrong. That she had not been the fifth member of their trek. But she did no such thing.

And so I repeated the only question that mattered: “What did you do?”

“You have to understand,” she said, and I could feel that she was pleading with me, too. To believe her, or to understand, or just to listen. But she stopped whatever thought she’d begun, shook her head, took a deep breath. “Everything happened so fast. It felt like forever, but it was so fast.”

“What?” I asked. “What was fast?” My voice was too high, too tight, and I felt my hands balling into fists under the table.

“Okay,” she said, as if coming to terms with something for herself. “The beginning was an accident,” she said, and my ears started ringing.

“An accident,” I repeated, imagining a way to make it okay. A slip into the ravine, like Rochelle had said. Someone tripping, and a hand, reaching out for another—a terrible, horrific accident.

Her hand was shaking as she reached for me, but my arms stayed in my lap, under the table.

She took a deep breath, started again. “That’s not the beginning, really. The beginning, well. It started in town, where I met them. There was something off from the start. With their entire dynamic. It was like they didn’t really want to be here.”