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“I get it,” I say. It’s becoming a pattern to reveal too much to Will.
His flashlight catches something dark and fast moving. “We definitely did not pass this stream.”
“No, but I see a light over there.” I point just over the next grove of trees to a soft outdoor light from the seasonal houses. Somehow we walked to the other side of the lake. “We can cross over to there and call an Uber to bring us to our cars.”
“Better than turning around and becoming bear food.” Will shoves his phone into his pocket, leaving only the moonlight to see by. He puts the toe of his sneaker on a mostly dry rock in the water’s path and reaches for a branch hanging over the other side of the stream. He tests the branch by pulling on it twice, and when he’s sure it won’t break, he pulls himself to the other side with impressive agility.
He holds on to another branch, leans forward, and extends a hand to me.
“I don’t need help,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “But my mother would eviscerate me if she knew I didn’t offer you a hand.”
I take his hand. “My mom might eviscerate me for letting you help me. After my dad left, she made sure Tessa and I were completely self-sufficient.”
“She did a good job,” he says, releasing me. “I’d probably still be walking in circles in the dark if not for you. She must be proud.”
“I think she’s more worried than proud.” Again, it’s more than I should admit. “She’d probably try to ground me if she knew I went to Maeve’s.”
“Well, your secret’s safe with me,” he says. His breath travels along my cheek, and electricity registers across every nerve ending like it did when our hands touched over that bottle of wine. Like then, the urge to flee drowns out every other thought.
Unlike then, I’m not quite ready to walk away.
12
WILL
Time bends backward as I enter my mother’s living room and note the couch against the wall, the bookcase stacked with romance novels kitty-corner by the window, and the photos of a happy family of four on the mantel. It’s the house I grew up in—only smaller, shrunken to fit inside an apartment annexed to the Inn.
I make my way toward the bedroom and pause by the guest room, although that’s a generous way to describe the alcove my mother made up with a bed and two dressers—one for Darren’s clothes and one for mine.
She was always ready to welcome us back. Neither of us bothered to come.
I breathe through the sudden tightness in the back of my throat.
My mother’s choices are hers, just as mine are mine.
In the bedroom, my mother’s closet doors hang open. Dresses, blazers, and linen pants hang in the closet, which are hopefully a sign that my mother plans to return, even if the number of empty hangers is greater.
A fine layer of dust coats my mother’s jewelry box, which rests, as it always has, on top of her dresser. All her costume jewelry is stored inside. Her most special jewelry is safely tucked beneath a false bottom—not exactly high-tech security, but it’s Kingsette.
A ballerina springs to life when I open the box. A few cracked notes echo through the abandoned room, and a shiver runs down my spine.
Get it together.
All the recent talk of dead grandmothers and spirits has my wild imagination running in overdrive.
I release a breath I didn’t realize I was holding and use the velvet pull to reveal the false bottom. My mother’s diamond earrings. A pin I made her for her thirty-first birthday that readsBESTMOMEVER, and my mother’s emergency twenty-dollar bill.
The ring should be there. She never wore it. She was too afraid of losing it or damaging it.
My pulse ticks up, even though the rational part of my brain is already listing the reasons the absence of the ring proves nothing except that my mother was not acting like herself.
She was acting like someone who had nothing left to lose.
It’s more familiar than I’d like to admit.
A knock cracks on the other side of the office door not five minutes after I sat down at my desk. It’s thrown open before I can say, “Come in.”
