Page 79 of The Last to Vanish
“Well,” she said, her words weighted with everything between them, “it can wait.”
She had that kind of power.
THE QUESTIONS STRETCHED DEEPinto the night, after we made it down to the station, and there was a recorder positioned between me and the sheriff, dark circles under his eyes. Wanting me to walk him through it again, but I was tired, and so was he. Finally, he pressed “stop,” leaned back in his chair.
“Stop holding back, Abby,” he said, as if he knew there were pieces missing, people I was protecting. “How did you know?” Things I wouldn’t give him.
“I told you, the picture with Alice, from her sister. Harris told me everything. Trey heard us outside. Harris practically admitted that he hurt Landon, that he’d gotten too close.”
“But before that.” The journal, he meant. The locker with my name. The secrets I would keep.
“Maybe if you hadn’t been so afraid of digging, this wouldn’t have happened,” I said, and he looked at me sternly.
“You know who I am,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
“It doesn’t have to be part of this.” He gestured to the recording.
“I know who you are, too.”
He continued to stare, hollows under his eyes, a reddish-gray stubble running down his jaw. “I don’t know what you mean, Abby.”
“Where are they buried,” I whispered, leaning forward. “Please.”
His throat moved, and I thought he’d pretend not to know what I was asking, and maybe he would’ve if he’d slept, if he wasn’t so tired, if he hadn’t just realized there were likely three victims buried nearby. “I don’t know,” he began, voice scratching.
But his eyes were still locked on mine, deciding. He dropped his voice even lower, even though it was just the two of us now. “The scene. The bullets. The gun.” His throat moved. “I did that. But the rest?” He shook his head, closed his eyes, like he never wanted to look again. “Only Vincent knows,” he said. “And he’s gone.”
I opened my mouth, closed it again. I couldn’t imagine it, didn’t see how it was possible for one person to handle that, all alone. But right then, I could choose to let it go, choose to leave it with him.
A history, wiped clean.
The sheriff opened his eyes again, then raised them to mine, in question. We stared at each other for a long moment.
He pressed “record” again.
LATER THAT NIGHT, AFTERthe interviews, Trey was waiting for me. I saw him in the headlights of the car, where he was sitting on a log, in the dark, at the edge of the lot. He ran his hand through his hair as I approached.
“You okay?” I asked. I pictured him again, gun held over Harris. I wondered if he regretted his choice. If he was playing it back through, imagining pulling the trigger instead. Whether I would’ve backed him up, said he’d had to do it—
He stood, the sound of his steps in the gravel cutting through the night. “The journal,” he said, voice low. “I want it.”
He’d heard me, the things I’d said to Harris when I tried to escape outside. Trey had been drawn outside by the lack of lights, the feeling ofwrong; the locked door of the inn, knowing something was happening. He had been waiting and listening in the dark.
But I couldn’t give him the phone, the journal. They had to go. The photo over the bar, even.
“It’s already gone. There was nothing in there for you,” I said.
“Why are you protecting them?”
But how to even begin; it would take ten years to make him understand.
“Good night, Trey.” Goodbye, I meant.
I KNEW WHAT Iwould do, as soon as it was safe to do it. I’d light a fire for the guests in the pit out back, and when they went inside, I would watch as it all turned to ash, bit by bit.
Reshape our history, the whispered path it takes. I had the power to change it. Smooth it flat, something safe to look at. Something we could all be okay with.
I’d watch as the smoke drifted up over the mountain, and I would watch as it disappeared, into nothing.
