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“Yes.” Eddie’s voice was calm as he agreed with me. “That was insane.”
“So?” I asked him. “What now? Where do we go?”
He shook his head. “We don’t have much choice about where we go right now, April.”
“What do you mean? Why not?”
He pointed to a sign that flew by out the window. “Because apparently, we’re driving back to Coldlake Falls.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
By two o’clock in the morning, the rain had tapered off. It pattered gently against the window of our bedroom in Rose’s B and B.
We’d come back to Rose’s, exhausted and confused, because we couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. She had answered the door with a frown, given us an inhospitable grunt in greeting, and said, “You may as well come in.” Then she’d gone to her own room and hadn’t asked any questions.
So we were back on the bed with the blue bedspread. After we undressed, Eddie fell asleep almost immediately, which was surprising. He was curled up next to me as I lay on my back, his arm around me. Even in sleep, his body was tense. He’d barely spoken since we came back to Rose’s. He’d gone deep inside himself to somewhere I couldn’t follow.
I stroked his hair gently as he slept. I stared at the ceiling.
I was past the point of questioning what we’d seen. We had seen it. The question was, why?
I was sure that everyone who drove on that road didn’t see what we had. Maybe no one had ever seen it, and Eddie and I were the first.
The Lost Girl, according to the legend, had haunted the road for years, even decades. And yet no one else had seen the bright light and the girl running down the road. No one else had seen and heard her screaming and begging for help. Gretchen had said something about feeling the Lost Girl’s presence, seeing a light in the trees, and hearing her calling. There was nothing in the legend about a girl screaming for help as she ran.
So Eddie and I had been chosen, perhaps. I’d never believed in ghosts before, but that didn’t matter. I believed in the lights I’d seen. I believed in the girl who had gripped Eddie’s hand and tried to pull him from the car. I had gotten this far in life by being practical, by dealing with what was right in front of my face without dithering. So now I believed in ghosts. Or at least I believed in this ghost.
What do you want? I asked her in my head. Everyone had a scheme, something they were trying to get. Ghosts didn’t have to be any different. If a ghost stopped your car in the road, then she wanted something. It was the only logic that made sense.
Maybe she had wanted to kill us.
Maybe she had wanted to tell us something.
Maybe she had wanted us not to leave town.
Maybe there was something here for Eddie and me. Something we hadn’t found yet or couldn’t see.
We hadn’t made any plans before Eddie fell asleep. The smartest thing to do was get up in the morning and try to leave town again. Take another route. She couldn’t stop us every time, could she?
I tried to picture the Lost Girl’s face. I had seen her so clearly, but now that I tried to recall her in my memory, I couldn’t put the details together. I remembered the dark eyes that seemed to encompass everything and her long hair parted in the middle. Everything else was like a photo that had been damaged while it was being developed—it was there, but it wasn’t.
Gretchen had said that the Lost Girl was found by the side of the road, and she’d never been identified. She’d been dead a long time, Gretchen had said. Left in a ditch to rot. The ultimate indignity.
If I were her, I would be angry, too.
Eddie shifted, but he didn’t wake. I stroked my fingers along the warm skin of his temple. Eddie never slept deeply, the relaxed sleep of the untroubled. I had known him a long time before I truly understood how much he suffered in silence, how much he kept tamped down every day.
He had told me a few details of his experience in Iraq. He’d been shot at. He’d said there were homemade bombs that could tear a man to pieces. There were long, dull periods of waiting and routine. Lots of what happened, he said, didn’t make the news. He’d been very clear about that. Don’t believe the news, April. The news is only what they want you to see.
Whatever he saw behind his eyelids at night rarely left him alone. Tonight had only made it worse.
I saw a lot of things, too, when I closed my eyes, that I would rather not see. Maybe everyone did. But Eddie and I had seen more than most.
We were going to see more bad things before this was over. But even so, I didn’t think we were going to leave town tomorrow.
If we do this, I thought into the darkness, we do it on my terms. And if we do it, you owe me. Do you hear me? I don’t care if you’re dead. This was supposed to be my honeymoon. You owe me.
The Lost Girl didn’t answer.
