Page 7 of The Last to Vanish
My heart stilled, and I walked quietly in that direction, careful not to give myself away. The person stood, and I caught a clearer glimpse—a familiar, slightly hunched figure: Celeste.
She raised a hand as I approached, waiting for me to close the distance. The Celeste I knew looked much different from the Celeste in the photos that hung from the inn. As if, when she’d molded this place to her liking, it had molded her in return. The windswept brown hair now heavily laced through with gray, like the fog rolling through. Calloused hands and nails kept short, everything about her efficient. She projected a steadiness, a seriousness.
“Good morning, Celeste,” I said as I approached the back garden gate. Celeste was even shorter than I was, with hair falling to her midback. Up close, she had wide-set features, striking green eyes, and a downturned mouth that gave her an air of gravity. She was also generous and protective, with a wild and unrestrained laugh if you could surprise her into it, and the three great loves of her life were: this inn, her husband Vincent, and the mountain, inthat order. Her husband had died a decade earlier, in the year before I arrived, so the mountain was bumped up a spot. She was up and on that trail more mornings than not, at dawn, like there was something new to discover each day.
But she wasn’t wearing her hiking boots this morning. Just khakis and a brown T-shirt and dark sneakers, which were currently toeing the mud in front of her.
“Someone left a cigarette out here, can you believe it?” she said with her trademark raspy voice. “Look around at this place.” She held her arms out wide. “How fast do they think it would take for everything to burn?”
Judging by the mud, and by the water I felt under the soles of my shoes as I approached, I didn’t think there was much of a fire hazard right now, but that was beside the point. She was probably more upset about the lack of courtesy, the fact that someone had encroached so far onto the territory she considered her own. Though there was nothing to designate it as such.
“We can put up a sign,” I said, not for the first time.
Celeste frowned, lines deepening between her eyes, around the corners of her mouth. “We don’t need signs, just common sense.” Then her focus shifted to somewhere over my shoulder. “Tell me about our mystery guest,” she said.
I smiled tightly. Celeste was probably out here waiting for me, for this very purpose. I ran through the possibilities of how she had heard so quickly: Georgia, even though I thought she would’ve left that up to me; Cory, who could’ve called her directly; or someone down at the tavern, who had heard about it from him. A place like this, a place with our type of history, information had a way of moving fast through the channel of people who had lived here forever.
“He’s in Cabin Four,” I answered.
“I see.” I heard it in her voice: A disappointment. A warning. “And tell me,” she said, turning back toward her house. “Is he leaving today?”
I fell into stride beside her. “I think, but I’m not sure.” I had charged a single night to his credit card, but had not confirmed. Maybe I didn’t want to know the answer.
“Well, let’s go ahead and be sure, dear.” Celeste attempted to soften her critiques by including herself in them.We should be more careful with the glass; andWe don’t want to upset the guests; andLet’s try to keep up. Thedearwas new. It didn’t sound particularly gentle, but I took what I could get. Celeste didn’t give a compliment that hadn’t been earned, and often not even then. But I felt them in the things she entrusted to my care.
“Of course,” I said.
She stopped just outside the small gated garden at the back of the carriage house. “We could even find out what he wanted, while we were at it.”
“We will,” I said, my hand resting on a white picket fence.
That got a begrudging rise of the corner of her mouth, before she reached a hand over mine. “We need to be careful, Abigail,” she said, which she only called me when she was serious, commanding my attention, pronouncing each syllable carefully.
No one else ever called me that, not even my own mother when she’d been angry. But Celeste had taken up the practice in the way a parent might. It was less tied to her mood or any transgression I had committed, and more a warning she was trying to impart. She’d used it over the years, when I’d head out late after a shift to meet up with Sloane, or a short-term fling with a seasonal worker:Good night, Abigail.When a group was getting too rowdy at happy hour, an energy buzzing, a tension in the air:Let’s start closing up, Abigail.And now,We need to be careful, Abigail,as if I had failed to notice something important.
Family members, she had once told me, put everyone on edge, more than most. They shook and rattled, driven more by desperation than logic. Compelled by something deeper. You could never be sure what they wanted, exactly—if they even knew themselves. It made them reckless, unpredictable.
Though four months had passed since Landon’s disappearance, the chaos of the investigation was still fresh. The publicity. The blame. I’d had to let all calls go to voice mail for weeks. I’d had to lock the comments on our social media accounts for far longer. But we had survived it. Still, I understood: This was supposed to be behind us.
“Celeste,” I said. “He’s probably just here to see it for himself. Everything’s okay.” I pictured him waking up and looking out the back window of the cabin this morning, straight to the mountain, breathing the crisp morning air, understanding the pull Landon must’ve felt. Watching as the ghost of his brother stepped into the trees, wishing he could go back and stop him—but accepting he could not. I couldn’t imagine him staying for long. I pictured him packing his bag, tossing it into his trunk, driving away, back to the life that was waiting for him.
“I hope so,” she said with a pointed look toward the cabin path on the other side of the grounds. She squeezed my hand once before releasing me.
I turned back as she opened her garden gate, the white pickets scratching against the brick path inside. “And let’s keep Georgia out of it,” she called after me.
I raised a hand in understanding. Georgia had been the one to find Landon West’s things, had been the one first interviewed by the sheriff, and more. It took a solid month for her to stop jumping whenever someone called her name. For her not to pale at the sight of an empty room. For her not to check and recheck the guest list, walking by the rooms at night, listening for movement within.For a time, I was worried she might leave over it. She didn’t. Still, she shouldn’t have to face it all over again.
I knew in Celeste’s mind, this was my mistake. I had misjudged the threat here. And it was therefore my job to fix it.
THE CABINS WERE SILENT.I trekked carefully to the grounds around back, where the lawn gave way to forest, but none of the occupants were out here, either. Cabin One had been rented as a home base by two women who were serious hikers while they took a few camping routes, so they weren’t planning to be here every day. And Trey either was still sleeping or had already vacated Cabin Four, having experienced whatever it was he was hoping for.
Celeste was less inclined than I was to take people at their word, trusting actions above all else. She’d watched over my work closely during my first months here. It took a while to see it not as a slight against me, but an indicator of how much she cared. The time she put into me was because she thought I was worth it, and I’d spent the years since trying to prove her right.
I felt borderline hopeful as I followed the path, now unlit, back toward the parking lot. Until I saw his black Audi in the same spot. I circled it slowly, getting a better look this time: mud-streaked tires from his drive in last night; a dent in the passenger door and a series of scratches on the back bumper; tinted windows, so I couldn’t see much of anything that might be worth seeing inside.
The birds were calling, and so were the insects, and it wouldn’t be long until he was up, if he was like a normal person, accustomed to the dark shades and insulation of home. Instead of circling around back to our private entrance, I entered the innthrough the lobby, where I was greeted by the sound of utensils on plates, the low shuffling of footsteps and clothing and voices, and Georgia behind the front desk, highlighter in hand, tracing a route on a map for an older couple in hiking gear—the Shermans, in Mountain View Two, here for three nights and making the most of every hour. They each had one of our walking sticks in hand, and I waited for them to head off before joining Georgia behind the desk.
“He hasn’t checked out,” she said, practically reading my mind.
