Page 69 of The Last to Vanish
She put up a hand as she saw my expression, the question she knew was coming. “Itwas,” she said, “and also, it wasn’t. Something must’ve happened on their last trip. I didn’t know them, so it was hard to put my finger on it then. I could only read between the lines of the conversations. It seemed that Brian hadn’t been doing well, over the year. Since college, really. Getting more reckless, with the drugs, with his activities. Jerome, the one from DC, he hiked up with me for part of it, filled me in a little while the others trailed behind. Brian had been a serious athlete, went to college for baseball even, but nothing came of that. There was a hole to fill. An adrenaline void. I think the trip was really a push to get him help. Sort of like an intervention.”
“An intervention?” Of all the things she could’ve said, that was one I hadn’t imagined.
“Yeah, came as quite the surprise to Brian, too. I don’t know the details, but the others started broaching it slowly as we hiked. But they hadn’t planned it, not really. Notwell. It became my understanding that, whatever had happened the year before, most of them had decided not to go away again that summer. Brian kept bringing it up, like he’d won an argument, saying,See, I knew you guys couldn’t stay away. I knew you’d come around.I think the hike was Toby’s idea, though. He seemed closest to Brian, mentioned getting together with Brian the month before, when he was passing through Chicago. I think Toby had reached out to the others after he saw how bad things truly were, and they threw the trip together impulsively to get him alone, away from anything else. To help him.”
It explained how, afterward, no one could be sure who had planned it, only that it wasn’t Brian this time. That Jerome had bought his tickets last minute, and Neil had told his boss it was a family emergency. Because itwas, in a way. They were a found family, even for all their differences. Four people who had stucktogether through all of it—from middle school to adulthood. Who saw the changes each summer, Brian growing worse. He was in need, and they all came.
“We only made it to Shallow Falls,” she said. “We stopped to rest. It was too dark, I told them, to go any farther. The ravine was a killer, and there was some argument over that. Brian, again, wanted to press on. Whatever was waiting for him that night, it was like he could feel it. And he was trying to outrun it.”
I imagined them, at the open expanse at the base of the falls, at the center of a funneling. Celeste convincing them this was far enough, with the ravine ahead. I imagined the accident coming: A slip. A fall. The beginning of the end—
“Things really started escalating then,” she said, and her hands ran down her long braid. She wasn’t looking at me anymore—it was like she wasthere, twenty-five years earlier. “They kept saying to Brian that he wasn’t himself, that he wasn’t listening. That he was going to get them hurt, or worse. And then Toby, he was going through Brian’s bag, to see what he brought—drugs, I assumed. And Brian was telling him to stop, and then Toby—he pulled out a gun from somewhere inside Brian’s bag.” My head shot up. “And then he was yelling,Why do you have a gun? Why the hell did you bring a gun on a camping trip, Brian?”
Celeste’s eyes were closed, but I could see them moving back and forth under her eyelids, as if she were watching the scene unfold.
And then her eyes shot open. “It was dark. It was dark, and it was hard to see what was happening. But there was a struggle—Brian, lunging for the gun, Toby, pulling back. And then it happened.” Her throat moved as she swallowed, the words quiet, raspy. “A quick,crack, and the shot had gone right through Toby’s chest. Right there.” She gripped her heart, like she could stop it.
I wasn’t breathing. I felt like I was there, so close, standing where Celeste stood, reaching out and trying to stop it.
“You think everything goes silent after a shot. But that’s not what happens. The woods came alive, instead. The animals, the birds. Everything was moving. Running. It was hard to know where to go. What to do.”
I closed my eyes, willed her to run.
“Everything happened so fast after that. So fast,” she repeated, in a whisper. “Brian had his head in his hands, and Jerome took that as his cue to rush him—but he turned, quick.Bam.”
I felt the jolt with each word. Saw Jerome fall, eyes wide in shock and confusion.
“And then it was just me and Neil, and both of us, we were the smallest ones. Neil had his hands up, so I did the same. Neither of us made a move, and then Neil started talking, just low and calm.Brian, it’s okay, put the gun down.And of course Brian couldn’t put the gun down, he knew there was no going back. Two dead, and we were witnesses. I was just terrified. I didn’t see a way out. But Neil kept going, like maybe it could still work.”
The terror was in the room with us now. The truth, not at all what I’d thought. Not at all what I wanted to hear. I wanted to tell her to stop, but I couldn’t. Not now.
“I think about that a lot. The hope he still had, when I knew it was too late.” She breathed in slowly, and I could hear the shudder of her exhale. “He tried to humanize himself. That’s what you’re supposed to do, you know.Please, Brian, he said.It’s me.He was smart. It makes it harder to pull a trigger when you’re putting a human face to it. When you’re not just reacting to someone in a physical struggle, but making a choice. It’s a different type of killing, you know. He did his best,” she said, reaching for me across the table. And this time, I let her. “He really did his best.”
She put her cold hand on my arm, a faint tremble to it. “He said,Please, Brian, I have a daughter.” The room hollowed, and my ears were ringing, and I couldn’t hear her say it. But she continued.“Brian didn’t believe him. He said,You do not.” She was looking at me now, asking me to see it with her. “But Neil kept going. He said,I do, and I haven’t even met her yet. But her mom lives in Tennessee, and I send them money when I can.He said,I have a daughter, and she’s beautiful, and her name is Abigail Lovett.”
PART 5
Abby Lovett
Date of arrival in Cutter’s Pass:January 7, 2013
First seen:Main Street, outside the Last Stop Tavern
CHAPTER 21
SHE KNEW.I COULDN’Tget the words out—couldn’t ask how, or when, orwhy.
Every memory, every interaction, my understanding of her, ofus—everything was realigning. Of course Celeste had known. Celeste had known of my connection to the Fraternity Four before even I did.
My mother’s fixation on the Alice Kelly case was not about Alice Kelly at all. It wasn’t that she saw her as some manifestation of her fear—a girl about to be abandoned, set to navigate the rest of her life alone. It was about the location:There’s something wrong about that place, she’d said, her hand gripping mine between us on the couch.
It was the place where my mother’s entire life had forked, though she’d never stepped foot there. It was the place that both of our lives had forked, though I’d never known it.
She told me once, and only once.Your father was Neil Smith. He was part of the Fraternity Four.They were the last words of record of Tasha Lovett. Before I’d lost her to the drugs, and then the cancer, a day later.
The facts she had told me about my father before then had notbeen lies. Notreally. She’d said,It was a short-term thing. She’d said,I told him about you after you were born, and he sent us money. He wanted a better life for you.She’d said,But then he disappeared.
I didn’t press her on it; a disappearance to me back then was a very different thing. As far as I was concerned, my father had made a choice, to leave us. To leave me behind, in the past. She let me believe that; and I was not interested in a person who had no interest in me.
