Page 45 of The Last to Vanish
There was a young deputy, out of uniform, jogging diagonally across the street through a gap in the traffic. There was Marina, trailing behind Cory’s two dogs, unleashed, weaving through the visitors on the path toward the Last Stop.
There was Rochelle, striding down the street in the opposite direction, tapping her knuckles against the large glass window of the Edge, smiling at someone inside. And then there was Jack, backing out the entrance with the cardboard display, coy smile and words I couldn’t make out.
I imagined the Fraternity Four walking down the center of this road in that famous picture that now hung behind the bar at the Last Stop. Alice Kelly, walking out of that swinging door. Farrah Jordan, in the very spot Jack was now standing, asking for directions.
A flash of red of a visitor’s T-shirt, and my heart leaped into my throat, picturing her instead.
Jack was placing their chalkboard easel sign on the sidewalk, advertising their services. I’d watched him do this several times aday—changing out the offerings based on the time, the season, the crowd. Now there were three lines of writing, in different colors of chalk:Coffee, in purple, with a picture of a mug, steam rising;Gear, in green, a rudimentary tent drawn beside it, a triangle of sticks;Lockers, in white, with an accompanying sketch of a key.
I was still staring at that sign when the car behind me tapped its horn, nudging me on now that the traffic had moved half a block forward.
I raised my hand as I eased my foot off the brake. But my mind kept circling back to that chalkboard display.
A locker. A key.
Instead of continuing on to Mountain Pass, where the road inclined toward the inn, I turned left at the Last Stop Tavern. I circled in a loop around downtown, to my hidden parking spot.
But when I pulled in toward the dead end, I discovered I wasn’t the only one here. Now there was a black Audi in my spot, Maryland plates. Trey West’s, pulled all the way forward until the bumper brushed up against the foliage.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was watching me, somehow, even though he’d been here first. That he was checking up on the things I said. That I was not the one in control right now, and maybe never had been.
I angled in just behind him, off the road. Maybe he was visiting the sheriff again, with follow-up questions. Maybe he was seeing what information he could pull from the rest of the locals. Maybe my imagination was getting the best of me, and he was just visiting the Last Stop, or CJ’s Hideaway, or one of the other restaurant establishments, venturing into town for a lunch of his own.
But the not knowing made me nervous. Made me wonder what he was up to, and what he hadn’t told me.
I turned off the car, and held the key chain in my hands again, staring at the small key.
I’d seen Jack and other employees hand these to hikers passing through, who were looking to store their nonessentials. I’d seen hikers handing these keys back to whoever was working on the other side of the desk, restocking supplies they’d shipped in advance, for their long-distance Appalachian treks.
This was a key to a locker inside the Edge.
I almost backed out of the alley and kept on driving to the inn. I almost let it go. Georgia’s private life was her own. But then I thought: She had an apartment with a key, where she could presumably store whatever she needed.
I had not seen Cory for all he was, and it had me reassessing everyone. Everything I had imagined, about what brought people to this place.
It would just take a moment. She never had to know.
CHAPTER 14
THE FRONT ENTRANCE TOthe Edge didn’t have a bell or chime, but it was still impossible to enter without being noticed. There was an assortment of gear and snacks hanging on the closest wall, and anytime the door opened, it set things in motion—a crinkling of wrappers, a creaking of hooks and hinges.
There were several tourists inside, spinning racks, piecing through the water bottles with hiking mottos and hats with brand logos, moving with a distinct lack of purpose. Jack was at the counter, and the coffee was brewing behind him. He raised his head before the door had even finished swinging shut behind me.
“Morning,” he called, which is what he generally used as greeting until deep into the afternoon here, when he could justify a transition toEvening. Jack smiled at me with the one he reserved for visitors, friendly but lacking in connection. But his expression shifted as I approached, as he put me in context—without the uniform, without the hairstyle—and he said with a deeper smile, deeper voice, “Well, hey there, Abby from the inn.”
Jack had called me this ever since we’d first met, at the happy hour when Celeste had introduced me to them all—the people of Cutter’s Pass who were about my age, and would continue to livehere alongside me. He continued to call me that a decade later. We never got any closer, even when I’d been with Cory.
He greeted everyone who wasn’t from Cutter’s Pass with an honorific, something for him to remember—or maybe to remind us instead that we came with qualifications. The owner of the vacation rental storefront around the corner was stillBrad from New York, even though his parents had moved here when he was in high school, and he’d graduated alongside Jack and Cory.
“Morning, Jack,” I said. I couldn’t bring myself to return the banter. Especially because I couldn’t pin him down:Jack from the Edge? Jack with the van? Jack of the woods?“You still in town for a while?”
“Yeah, here till September. Then I’m on for a bunch of school programs,” he said. The coffee machine behind him buzzed, and he turned around to remove a pot.
Jack was a permanent fixture here, just like Cory.
His younger sister Jamie, on the other hand, had gotten out as soon as she could. I’d met her once at the tavern, back when I’d first arrived, and she’d leaned in a little too close, whispered too loud, smelled too strongly of vodka for a seventeen-year-old still trying to find herself in a place where everyone knew exactly who she was.Don’t stay too long, whatever you do. The longer you’re here, the harder it is to get out.
The Oliviers were a prime example of people raised in the same environment headed in opposing directions. But lest anyone think otherwise, Jack was great at his job—any job, actually, this particular one included. He could upsell any of these products, though he rarely used them himself, just by his air of authenticity.
