Page 41 of The Last to Vanish
“You want something real?” I said, hearing the crack in my voice, forcing it back. “Here. I’ve been using her bag for the last decade.”
Cory held the bag tentatively in his hands, face contorted in confusion, before raising his gaze back to me. “I don’t know what you’re saying. This isyourbag.”
I took out my cell, pulled up that Instagram page again:AliceKellyWasHere, and found the photo of Alice Kelly, walking into the woods.
“Look,” I said, thrusting my phone in his face.“Look.”
“Okay,” he said, frowning. “So it’s the same type of bag.”
“No, Cory, for the love of God,lookat it.” I took the bag back from him, put the phone in his hand. Watched as his thick fingers zoomed in on the picture, his brow furrowing. “The label. The zipper. Do you see.”
I watched as his eyes switched from the phone to the bag in my hands. Back and forth, back and forth. And then I watched as his throat moved. His face settled into something impassive, closing off. His hand dropped to the side. He had seen it. I was sure.
“I found the pack at the inn, Cory. How did it get to the inn?”
He handed the phone back to me. “I don’t know,” he said.
“I’ve been carrying it around, with no idea, all these years…”
He placed his hands on my shoulders, and it was only then I could feel that one of us was shaking.
“Cory,” I said, just barely over a whisper. “Tell me. Please.”
He took a step back, looked down at me. “You think I hurt her?”
I took too long to answer. “No,” I said. “Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be here asking you about it now, would I?”
He took a long, slow breath, gaze to the side, into the trees,where I could hear the wind coming before I felt it. Just when I thought he was going to tell me something, the secret of Cutter’s Pass, he shook his head. “She… I have no idea how this fucking bag got to the inn, but you should get rid of it, Abby.”
He reached for it, and I pulled it back, our eyes locking over top. He was stronger, we both knew it. We also both knew what it would mean if he took it.
“Abby, seriously. This is bad. This is dangerous.”
“I’ve been using it forten years,” I said, my voice cracking, as if I were laying claim to it, not just afraid of losing it. Something that I thought would disappear if I let it out of my sight now.
Just then, there was a rumble of tires over gravel at the entrance to his driveway, and he let go of the bag. I put it in the back seat of Georgia’s car and watched as a truck came into view. The navy pickup I’d often see in the back lot of the Last Stop.
“My parents were planning to stop by,” he said under his breath.
They were hard to make out clearly as they crossed the makeshift wooden bridge, pulling into the spot beside mine. Marina exited the vehicle first, face tight, looking between us before she pasted on a smile. “Hi there, Abby. We weren’t expecting you this morning.”
“I was just stopping by,” I said so they would know I hadn’t spent the night here. Marina and Ray had both warmed up to me after Cory and I had cooled, when I was just someone working at the inn, Celeste’s niece, coordinating an order with the Last Stop. I was an outsider to Cutter’s Pass. There were some things still off-limits to me, and it seemed they thought their son was one of them.
“She was just dropping off some extra paint they had at the inn,” Cory said as Ray closed the driver’s side door. Both Marina and Ray wore jeans and sneakers and T-shirts with the Last Stop name.
“Well, that was very kind of you, dear. You look like…” She trailed off, but I knew what I looked like. I looked too close to the person I was when I arrived a decade earlier. Unfinished, ungrounded. A little reckless and rough around the edges.
Ray opened the tailgate of the pickup and pulled out a box.
“Let me help you, Dad,” Cory said, taking the box from him. Something shifted inside, and it sounded breakable. “Tiles,” Cory explained. “For the bathroom.”
“Have you seen inside?” Ray asked, obvious pride on his face.
“I did. It looks great.”
He slid another box to the edge of the truck. “Got these at cost from a site that had extra.”
“Is that Georgia’s car, hon?” Marina asked, eyes narrowed at the silver SUV.
