“She never should’ve been out on that road. If I’d opened the door, if I’d let her inside…”
I have a feeling that refusing to open that door isn’t the only regret that’s been tormenting her over the years. If she’d called the police the first time Tom Woods left her alone, all the women who followed her would still be alive.
“You broke the tablet, too, didn’t you?” I ask. “To give her a head start before anyone could call the police.”
“She’s probably long gone by now. I couldn’t give her what she wanted, but I could at least give her that.” Greer stands, brushing the dust off the back of her jeans. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here.” She tilts her head toward the open door, where the sun is climbing across the milky-gray sky.
I scramble to my feet. “What time is it? When’s the bus leaving?”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re not taking the bus back. Connor’s escorting the others to the airport, then coming back to pick us up.”
So, I won’t be catching my flight. “Are you going to call the police?” I ask. What I really want to know is if she’s going to stop Connor from turning over all the evidence he’s collected linking me to the crime. Greer might be convinced of my innocence, but I’d still make a convenient scapegoat.
She tugs her jacket tighter around her. “Don’t know. It feels wrong not reporting a murder, but at the same time, turning someone like Audrey, who was the victim of a violent crime, in to law enforcement seems even worse.”
“So, you’re going to tell Connor the truth? About who she really is?”
“I don’t see any other option. If I don’t explain why she came to the lodge this weekend, he’ll keep believing you’re the one to blame.”
“I’m surprised he let you come out here alone, what with me being a dangerous murderer and everything.”
She saunters to the corner of the shack and collects the axe. “Letme. As if he could stop me.” My eyebrow lifts, and she reluctantly admits, “He thinks I’m still at the lodge, sleeping in until he returns with the rental car.”
We step into the clearing; the fog has transformed the trees into little more than shreds of shadow. She rubs the back of her neck. “I wanted to ask, since we have to rebook your flight anyway, how would you feel about maybe sticking around for a few weeks?”
Does she want me available in case the police have any questions? She must notice my apprehension because she adds, “I was thinking we could take that trip to California after the hearing, put those playlists we made to good use. I mean, that’sifyou don’t need to get home right away…”
We stare at each other in the thin sunlight. She’s beautiful. So beautiful, like a canvas that’s been stretched in a hurry, with crooked staples running every which way along the wooden frame because you can’t wait to start painting. Beautiful like a pencil gone dull from sketching, so you can’t quite get the details right, but at the same time, you can’t bring yourself to lift the tip from the paper. I want nothing more than to push my flight back for weeks, months, years, if it means getting to spend that time with her. But can I really overlook all the lies she’s told? Part of me feels like I don’t know her; the other feels like she couldn’t possibly know me. I used to think we were just the same, she and I, because of our fathers, but none of that was true.
“Let’s just get through today,” I say, then feel guilty when she immediately deflates.
“Yeah, sure.” She props the axe against the shack, bends down to pick up the padlock and chain. “Let me just—”
It’s not until she straightens that we both notice the utility knife sticking out of the door, pinning down a postcard, its corners lifting and falling in the breeze. Almost like it’s breathing. The picture on the front is of an old-fashioned bridge, the wordsRED RIVERprinted across the bottom. It’s impossibly narrow, a single lane barely large enough for a truck. Or a coach bus. “Wait.” I lean forward. “Is that—”
She yanks the blade loose and drops the knife to the ground. A dark red splatter slashes across the address lines and the square in the corner, reserved for a stamp.
Blood.
“Is that the bridge we crossed to get here?”
Greer’s fingers tighten around the postcard, notching little divots in the paper. “My mom gave this to me before she left. She told me it was the most beautiful place she’d ever seen. She wanted to take me here one day.”
Greer hitchhiked across the country to reach that bridge, and when she finally did, more than a decade later, she bought property from where she’d always be able to see it. Where she could always feel close to her mother.
Where she’d always be reminded of how close she’d come to losing everything.
She folds the postcard and tucks it into her pocket. “This was in my car.”
“So, Audrey left it here for us?”
“No.” She picks up the axe. “She left it here forme. She wants me to come to the bridge.”
“You’re not going, though, right?”
When Greer’s eyes rise to meet mine, their steely determination gives me my answer.
“You can’t,” I argue. “She’s unstable. Who knows what she’s capable of.”
