Page 2 of The Last to Vanish
The name didn’t ring a bell.
“Sure thing, Mr. Clarke. Let’s see what I can do for you.”
Cutter’s Pass was a seasonal, small-town haven: river guides and zip lines; a well-maintained campground a half mile outside downtown; horseback tours and an abundance of hiking trails forking off into the surrounding mountains. There were three types of visitorswe typically got at the inn. The high-end vacationers who wanted a taste of rustic without actually roughing it; the hikers who thought they were ready to rough it, and discovered they were not, asking for a cabin, or any availabilityplease; and the tourists who came for our eerie history, our notoriety—usually groups of friends who asked a lot of questions and drank a lot of beer at the tavern down the road and stumbled in late, laughing and clinging to one another, like they had escaped something. They always seemed surprised by the reality of Cutter’s Pass—that it was more REI and craft beer, overpriced farmers’ markets and upscale accommodations, less whatever stereotype of Appalachia had taken root in their heads.
From the way this man was looking around the place, and his questionable story, I would’ve put my money on category three. Except. That familiar gesture. That dimple when he smiled.
I slid a sheet of paper in front of him. “All right,” I said, “jot down your license plate so we don’t tow you.”
He blinked twice, mouth slightly open, a single drop of rain trailing along the edge of his jaw, toward the scar. “Tow me?”
“Lots of people try to park here to get to the mountain,” I explained. “The spots are for guests.”
“Oh, um, I don’t know it by heart…”
God, he was bad at this.
“Make and color, then,” I said. “And state, if you remember that.” I smiled at him, and he laughed.
“I do,” he said. I watched as he scrawled downAudi, black. Maryland.I felt myself holding my breath. It clicked, where I’d seen him, why he looked so familiar. The family picture with the joint statement. The reward offered in a long-shot plea for help.
I tried to keep my smile in place: cordial, careful. “Maryland, huh? Long way from home,” I said.
“Yes, well, next time I’ll stick to a beach vacation. Lesson learned.”
He was charming, which almost made up for the lack of plan, but wouldn’t get him very far here.
I felt for him, really. I’d been an outsider for years; to those who’d grown up here, I probably still was.
“Any preference on room?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, narrowing his eyes, looking toward the balcony of the second floor, just beyond the dome of the lobby. “I… I wouldn’t know.”
My heart was too soft, I knew this. I unlocked the display case on the wall behind me and took the key off the hook for Cabin Four. I knew what he wanted; what he was here for. “You look just like him,” I said.
His entire body deflated, almost like he was making himself prostrate, his forehead down to the counter between us before he stood again, as if he were unveiling someone new.
“I’m sorry,” he said, face contorted into a grimace. It was the first time I believed him.
“No,” I said. “I get it. Really. I understand. I would do the same.”
He pulled a wallet out of his back pocket, took a deep breath in and out, started again. “Trey West,” he said, leaving a pause for me to fill. A question, an offering.
“Abby,” I said.
“Abby,” he repeated, turning over his license, a credit card. “I’m not good at pretending. It’s a relief.”
It was his brother, Landon, who was good at that. We didn’t know he was a journalist when he came to stay. We’d thought he was trying his hand at writing a book, that he was on a personal retreat, that he needed the peace and quiet, the lack of distractions, the ambiance—that’s what he’d told us. We’d thought he was here to get away from something. Not that he was here for something instead. But those things were hard to differentiate on the surface. It wasn’t until he disappeared that we knew the truth.
I didn’t know what Trey was looking for all these months later. Whether he thought there was still something worth finding, that the police and the searchers had all missed; whether he was here to pay his respects, hoping for some sort of closure.
Closure was a hard thing to come by here.
“It’s not what I expected,” Trey said as I charged the night to his card.
I wasn’t sure whether he meant the inn or the entire town. The road into town climbed up for a stretch of miles before swerving down again, narrowing as it dipped from the mountains into the valley, vegetation pushing closer and creeping over the guardrails. It was a drive you didn’t want to do at night, riding the brakes as the curves grew tighter, branches arcing over the pavement. But then the trees opened up, and Cutter’s Pass presented itself, a lost city. A found oasis.
“It never is,” I said. There was always a slight disorientation when you arrived, nothing quite as expected from the drive in. The inn appeared older than it was from the outside, with the weatherworn cabins set back from the main three-story structure, and the forest steadily encroaching over the cleared acreage, but that was just how fast nature worked. Inside, the fireplace was gas; the logs, just for show; the antique locks on all the guest room doors could be overridden with an electronic badge.
