We lay in silence for a bit, but I could tell Mason was still awake.
“Mase?” I said, keeping my voice down. “Do you really think . . .”
I paused.
“Think what?” he said.
“Just, that Sadie’s . . . that there’s a chance we’ll find her?”
“That’s why we’re out here,” he answered. “Isn’t it?”
I wriggled uncomfortably. There was something weird about his tone of voice. It was sort of . . . bitter. Cold. “Sure,” I said. “I guess.”
For a moment there was just the sound of the others breathing.
“I never believed what people were saying, you know,” I said eventually, because I figured maybe that was why he sounded pissed-off, and also because I’d been wanting to say it for a while. “Not even for a minute.”
“What part of what people were saying?”
I was lying on my back, staring up at the canopy, which looked like cracks in the dark blue sky. I glanced toward Mason, and realized he was looking right at me.
“Just . . . that you had anything to do with it,” I said. “With whatever happened to Sadie.” And I meant what I said, at the time.
“Yeah?” said Mason. He didn’t sound convinced.
“Yeah,” I told him. “And none of the others did either. Not really. Not even Luke.”
Mason didn’t respond.
“Do you . . .” I turned slightly away. “Do you miss her?” I asked him.
It was stupid, really. I’d only carried on talking because I wanted to hear someone’s voice, and because I was worried about everyone else falling asleep before me. And I don’t know what I expected Mason to say. Not what he came back with, anyway.
“Do you?” he said. Although maybe it wasn’t what he said, more the way he said it. Sort of accusing, you know? Which, looking back, should have been, like, a clue or something. My first hint about what he was really up to.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.
“I was just asking,” said Mason. “That’s all. The same way you asked me.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“But what?”
I paused again. “Of course I miss her,” I told him. “How could I not?”
Mason didn’t say anything, and I was beginning to wish I hadn’t started the conversation in the first place.
“I wouldn’t have wished this, you know,” I said. “If that’s what you’re thinking.”
I turned toward him. He was still looking at me, watching me, and I didn’t like the expression in his eyes.
“Mase? Truly. I wouldn’t have.”
Now he was the one to turn away.
“Anyway,” I said. “Don’t you think . . .”
“Think what?”
“That Sadie had changed,” I said, because I’d been dying to say that, too. “Just lately, I mean. Over the summer in particular. Since that night on the beach.”
I meant that night I was talking about earlier, with the wine, in the sand dunes, when Mason and Sadie had ended up having an argument, and Mason had stormed off in a strop.
“Changed?” said Mason, and I could tell he was suddenly all ears. “Like how?”
“Just . . . I don’t know. She didn’t seem different to you?”
“No, she didn’t seem different. She was just Sadie. Just the same Sadie she’s always been. As beautiful, as kind, as funny . . .”
His voice kind of trailed off, and I could hear how much he loved her.
“Yeah, well,” I said, knowing I should shut the hell up. “Maybe you didn’t know her as well as you think you did.”
I rolled away, and I could feel Mason watching me again. I kept waiting for him to say something, to ask me what I’d meant. But instead he just stayed quiet.
I don’t know how much time passed after that. I’m pretty sure I heard Mason get up, but I refused to turn and look. Instead I just lay there listening, because the woods had suddenly come alive. There were all sorts of noises in the undergrowth. Up in the trees, too. Owls and stuff. Bats. All the other things that only come out at night. I wouldn’t have minded so much if Abi had been awake, because I knew she would have been more afraid than I was. As it was, it was just me and my imagination, and I was convinced I’d be lying there the entire night.
I wasn’t, of course. I fell asleep soon after. I remember thinking about Sadie, and that stream, and thinking the sound of it was like the sound of Sadie’s voice. But then I guess I drifted off. At one point I woke and thought I saw a figure watching us from the tree line, but when I rubbed my eyes and looked again, there was no one there. Then, later, I was sure I heard someone crying, but that could just as easily have been a dream.
In the end I guess I slept more deeply than I realized. I didn’t feel the cold, and I didn’t notice when the dark gave way to the morning gray. In fact, I’d probably have slept longer, if I hadn’t been woken by a scream.
FULL DARK, NO stars. Just the rain slashing at the curtainless window, the light from the streetlamps along the harbor walkway refracting sharply in the broken beads of water.
Sitting in one of two chairs positioned in the alcove, Fleet turned his wedding band over between his fingers. The color of the metal wasn’t dissimilar to the fiery glow that was leaking through the window, though the ring itself was more scratched than Fleet had realized. As a symbol of his and Holly’s marriage, perhaps it was fitting that it should be so scarred. Even the shape of the ring seemed emblematic. The loop was supposed to represent eternity, but futility, in their case, seemed more fitting. Hadn’t their arguments always gone round in circles? And no matter how many times they’d sought to resolve things, they’d always ended
