Page 48 of The Last to Vanish
I pulled into the employee parking area and drove to the end, parking Georgia’s car exactly where she’d left it, beside my own. And then I sat there, staring at the bag, wondering what to do with it. I gave real consideration to grabbing the rest of my things and going. Just going, and going, to a new place, a next place.
It had been so long since my arrival in Cutter’s Pass—I’d barely been an adult, barely had a plan. Celeste had given me an opportunity, a purpose, ahome, and I’d fallen into a daily rhythm, a comfortable existence. But it had been so long since I considered what I was doing here, why I was staying. Whether I should—
I heard steps in gravel, saw long legs in the rearview mirror, and barely had time to prepare before Georgia was knocking at the driver’s side window, bent down, peering inside. I turned off the car engine, tried not to focus on the bag beside me—everything inside, that Georgia had presumably hidden inside a locker. All the things Georgia knew.
“Hey,” she said as soon as I had one foot on the gravel drive. “I saw you pull up. I’ve been waiting for you to get back.”
“Okay, hold on, let me just put my stuff away—”
“Celeste is in the lobby with a guest.”
I let out a relieved breath. This wasn’t about the locker or the camera or the journal belonging to Landon West. Still, I felt Georgia hovering as I pulled the bag out of the passenger seat, and she frowned.
“I’ll be right in,” I said, turning away from her, afraid of my face giving anything away.
“Abby,” she said, taking a step closer. When I looked over, she was holding out her hand, and I realized she was waiting for her car keys. “What were you doing?”
I waited until I was sure my hand was still, my breathingleveled, as I dropped the car keys into her open palm. “Running errands,” I said. “Like I told you.” Thinking,I dare you to ask more. I dare you to ask again.
I started heading for the employee entrance, and she called after me. “Aren’t you coming?” She stuck out one hip, hand resting on it. Looked over her shoulder. “Celeste was asking for you.”
“I’ll be up in a minute. Just let me get changed.”
Back in my apartment, I locked the door behind me, felt the adrenaline catching up with me in a steep wave—a shudder rolling through me. I hadn’t eaten all day, but my stomach churned, felt ready to turn over. I needed to stash this bag until later. And this was the only place I felt safe enough to do it. There weren’t many places to hide things here—built-in shelves in the closets and built-in cabinets and a built-in dresser and armoire.
I reached for the coat closet, because it was the closest door, and because I understood the best place to hide something was in plain sight, where you wouldn’t know there was anything worth looking at, or for. Then I changed as quickly as I could, pulling my hair into a bun now that it was dry, slipping on my work shoes.
Just a part of the landscape of Cutter’s Pass. Just Abby from the inn, currently needed in the lobby.
CELESTE NEEDED ME, ITseemed, to move the Lorenzos to a different floor—the cut on Mrs. Lorenzo’s knee from the hike had indeed needed stitches, and now the steps were proving too much—and apparently I was the only one able to do it.
“Georgia said you lost the binder?” Celeste said, joining me behind the registration desk, speaking low and only to me. It was no longerwebutmewho had lost things, who was not careful.
“Yes,” I said, “but it’s nothing we can’t replicate.”
She raised her eyebrows at the question neither of us wouldvoice:Did someone take it?I could think of only one person, and I didn’t like what that would mean. Whether he was checking up on the things I had told him. Whether he thought there were things we weren’t saying.
“Georgia said we needed to check with you, that you were taking reservations by hand. We didn’t want to cause any issues, you see,” Celeste explained. I wondered what else Georgia had said, but she was currently stacking a pile of fresh towels on the nearby bench, avoiding my gaze.
I checked the computer for current room occupancy—we had one couple due to check in, but an upper room would be seen as an upgrade from the ground-floor room that we referred to as the Outcrop, as if it were a secret home built into the side of a mountain, and not a corner room with slanting ceilings and low natural light.
I gritted my teeth, entered the new information. “Georgia,” I said without making eye contact, “let’s get Forest View One turned over before check-in time.” Then, to Celeste, “The Outcrop is ready for the Lorenzos.”
And then they both left, my shift officially beginning in the absence of anyone else.
ROCHELLE HAD SAID THEravine was full of bones, and sometimes it felt like the whole town was. That I would live here and die here and disappear with all the rest, indistinguishable.
Recently, I had started to feel trapped. That this place was a prison, instead of a sanctuary. A car that was not in my name, and a home that came with the job—everything tangled together, holding me here.
But in other ways, I felt the immortality of the place. The way the names were remembered. The mystery of it, bigger than any one person. The way Jack called meAbby from the inn, and I’dbecome a part of this town, had a role in it that would endure, like the photos that lined our walls. I could picture myself there, alongside Celeste, alongside Vincent. Could picture the people who would come after, taking a closer look, wondering at the mystery of who I used to be. True proof of life.
I disappeared into the back office, where the service was best, and sent the picture I’d taken earlier in the week to Sloane—with the fog lifting off the mountain, eerie and haunting. A reminder that I was here, should someone come looking.
I felt so close to the bones of this place. Something horrible was happening here. Something baser, more disturbing, inescapable.
What had truly happened here was not the same as the mysteries or rumors told at the tavern, or the picture on the wall over the bar, or the last image planted in our collective mind by sheer force of rumor: Farrah Jordan, at the trailhead, staring off into the woods; Alice Kelly, walking out the front door of the tavern, disappearing into the busy evening rush; the Fraternity Four, walking down the middle of the street, the mountain looming in the distance, with the setting sun.
Those images weren’t real. Reality was Farrah standing over me in the inn, asking about Alice Kelly. Reality was the photos posted by Alice’s sister, trying to keep her memory alive, reminding us who she really was. I wanted—needed—more.
