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Brian noticed the lid first. “What is that?”
Alice’s brow furrowed. “Where is my wet cloth?”
Josie raised the lid in front of her. “Alice, step away from Nicola.”
Slowly, Alice stood and backed away, joining Sandrine on the other side of the room from Nicola and Brian. They were much closer to the door than the others. Josie was in the center of the room with her back to the bathroom.
Nicola scowled at Josie. “Just what the hell are you doing?”
Josie’s heart began to gallop. “You two did not get mauled by a bear.”
Brian laughed. Nicola held her arm out. It had stopped bleeding. “Then what the hell is this?”
Josie’s knuckles were white from gripping the lid so hard. “Those wounds are not consistent with a bear attack. They’re too clean to have come from a bear. I’ve seen that bear’s claws and his teeth up close. If you’d been attacked by a bear—even just a swipe—you’d have larger, messier, more jagged gashes.”
Alice said, “Then how did they get hurt? Wait, did you do this to yourselves? To each other? To trick us? Why would you do that?”
Josie took a step closer to them, brandishing the lid. “We’re going to leave. Do not follow us.”
“Why should we leave?” Sandrine said. “They’re the ones who broke in. They should leave us in peace. They could have any other cabin. They don’t need to be here.”
Brian didn’t stand up but he raised both hands, palms outward in a gesture of surrender. “Just calm down. We’re not going to hurt you.”
Sandrine surged forward and pointed to the door. She screamed. Josie winced at the pitch of her voice. It was unnatural coming from her after how calm and seemingly filled with inner peace she had been all week. “Get out! Get out this instant! You’re not welcome here! I don’t want you here!”
“Oh shut up!” Nicola hollered back. “You selfish bitch! After what you did to me, do you think I care about what you want?”
“Oh God,” said Alice. “Please don’t start. Sandrine is right. You shouldn’t be here, and we shouldn’t have to leave. Just go. Take one of the other cabins and wait for rescue. Please.”
“Selfish?” Sandrine said, a hint of indignation in her voice. “What I ‘did to’ you? I have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t even know I had siblings! How could I have done something to you?”
“You are such a liar,” Nicola said, staggering to her feet. “You have always known about me!”
Sandrine shook her head. “No, no. I didn’t know that my mother was having all these children and giving them up.”
Josie held the toilet lid in front of her and moved closer to the door, positioning herself so that she was between Nicola and Sandrine. Brian remained seated. Had she overestimated the threat? No, she was certain that their wounds were self-inflicted. They’d wanted to get into this cabin for some reason.
“Maybe you didn’t know about Bradley or Tara,” Nicola said. “But you knew about me. You knew about me!”
Why would they want to go to such lengths to get into this cabin?
Sandrine, said Mett’s ghost voice.This one is pretty obvious.
They were still trying to get something from her. Some sort of information.
“I didn’t know about any of you!” Sandrine insisted.
“Stop lying!” Nicola shrieked. “You knew! You knew about me!”
Josie started making calculations based on the information that Gretchen had sent her. The age difference between Nicola and Sandrine was the biggest but Sandrine would still have been eighteen or nineteen when Nicola was born.
Brian had said that Nicola had found someone on her father’s side who remembered him. That person also remembered Delilah and that she had had an older daughter. What had Sandrine told Josie about Delilah?
Near the end, she was destitute.She married a carpenter. Claimed that she actually loved him and that she was done being in the public eye.
Josie lowered the lid. “Sandrine, did you ever meet the carpenter?”
Nicola’s body went still. She glanced back at Brian, who was watching the entire exchange with interest. Alice moved a few inches away from Sandrine but kept staring at her.
