by Micol Ostow
“So you weren’t assigned the reenactment?”
She raised her eyebrows. “That was always more Melanie’s thing, all along. I mean, we’re in Drama Club together, but she was the one who took it seriously. Without Mel around, I just didn’t see the point.”
“You know,” I said, trying to sound more casual and less abrupt, though it definitely wasn’t working, “I saw you talking to Theo last night. At the town hall.”
“Lucky you.” She gave me a look. “We’re friends. We talk.”
“The thing is,” I went on, “lots of people—Theo included, as a matter of fact—feel really strongly about the festival being called off. Especially if going ahead with it might result in the kidnapped girls not coming back. But you didn’t say anything last night.”
“A lot of people ‘didn’t say anything’ last night. Almost the whole town came out. If everyone had decided to say something, we’d still be there now.” Anna crossed her arms over her chest, defensive.
“True,” I said. “But there’s also the small, pesky fact that Melanie’s locker is completely emptied out, while Daisy’s is exactly the mess it was the last time she dumped her stuff in it.”
“Please tell me you’re going somewhere with this,” she said. “Just because I’m not into Naming Day doesn’t mean I’m excited to be sitting here having you go all Poirot-in-the-last-chapter-of-the-book exposition-y on me. If I wanted this I’d be binge-watching a crime procedural on Netflix right now.”
Ouch. I waited as she fidgeted, pursing her lips. But she didn’t close the door in my face, which was as much encouragement as I needed right now.
“So, here’s the thing,” I said, forging ahead. “The lockers look different, Daisy left a note, and Daisy’s family and friends are all totally upset that the fest hasn’t been canceled. You, on the other hand, were totally cool, calm, and collected last night, and even seemed to talk Theo down from his soapbox.”
“And based on the manic gleam in your eye, I’m guessing you think this ‘means something.’ ” She made air quotes with her fingers, hooking them into sarcastic little claws.
“Their disappearances may have been linked in some kind of thematic way,” I said, “but the circumstances were completely different. I’m sure of it. And I’m guessing you are too. Because you know something. You wouldn’t be so blasé if you didn’t. And whatever it is you know, you told Theo. That’s how you were able to get him out of the town hall last night when he was winding up to make an even bigger scene.”
She rolled her eyes and gave an enormous sigh, putting a hand on one hip and surveying me. “Okay,” she said slowly. “Let’s be clear: I’m not confirming—or denying—any of this random conspiracy theory.”
“Crystal clear. And super helpful.”
She shook her head. “What are the odds of you leaving here without getting what you want?”
I gave her my brightest smile. “Three guesses.”
“Ugh.” She groaned and pushed the door open wider, beckoning me. “Fine, come inside.”
I stepped into the hallway. “Should I close the door behind me?”
She shook her head. “No, just wait here for a second. I have to get my bag.” She disappeared down the hallway.
“Road trip?” I called after. “Where to?”
Her voice drifted toward me from another room, disembodied. “You’ll see,” she said. “I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”
And then she was back, in front of me, bag slung over her shoulder, waving a set of car keys. “I’m driving. You can follow me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Dunes Motel was a good ninety minutes outside of Horseshoe Bay, far enough from any view of the ocean to be ironically named, and definitely not in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way either. It was a run-down, ramshackle one-story building, a main office with a weathered sign hanging at an awkward angle in the middle and flanked by five rooms on either side. There were two cars parked in the lot. One was a hatchback that had seen better days—probably around the same time that the motel had been in its prime. The other was one I recognized … from the high school parking lot.
I got out of my car and stalked to Anna as she pulled into a parking spot right beside room number three … and that incredibly familiar car. A sinking feeling came over me as she slowly rolled down her window.
“You knew,” I said accusingly. My voice was flat. “You knew she was here all this time, and you didn’t say anything. What the hell were you thinking?” I couldn’t believe it. And I was all too aware that while I was chasing down a fake crisis, the clock was ticking on my friend’s real-life threat.
“Look”—she shrugged—“I’m not my friend’s keeper. She asked me to stay quiet. So why don’t you get off my back and confront her yourself?”
I gritted my teeth. “Lead the way.”
Anna led the way on the short walk to Melanie’s motel room, but she stepped aside to let me do the honors when it was time to knock. I held up a fist to rap—ready to bang that door down—then turned to Anna. “Is she expecting us?”
Anna shook her head. “There was no way she’d answer the door if she knew I’d brought you here. You’ve kind of got a reputation as, you know … a snoop. No offense.”
“None taken.” It’s actually a compliment. And I totally am a snoop. I knocked.
“Who is it?” After a beat, Melanie’s voice echoed out to us, suspicious.
I looked at Anna.
“Mel, it’s me,” she said, stepping closer to the door.
“Uh, okay …” After another minute, I heard the click of a chain lock, and then the door swung open.
It was my second house call of the day. And Melanie seemed about as thrilled to see me as Anna had. Less so.
Girl, you have no idea. If Melanie’s disappearance wasn’t linked to Daisy’s, then Daisy was in way more danger than I could have imagined. I didn’t have time for these dead ends.
“Hey,” I said. “Got a minute?”
Without waiting for a response, I sidled my way in.
The Dune Motel being the furthest thing from a luxury resort, her room would have been stuffy and dismal even if a teen girl hadn’t been holing up in it for several days like a recluse tertiary character from a CW drama. The one small window was covered with a blackout shade that didn’t fully retract, eliminating the possibility of any natural light finding its way into the space, and the walls were covered in wood paneling that was cracked and splintering. The carpet was industrial-grade, in a shade that I think is actually known as “motel putty.” Mysterious stains dotted it, creating an unpleasant connect-the-dots effect leading from the bed to the bathroom.
I wasn’t eager to see the bathroom.
I sat in the tiny chair wedged up against the wall, just beneath the window. “What’s up?” I asked brightly.
Melanie gave a huff and collapsed on the bed, arranging her willowy limbs so she looked like a graceful if put-upon praying mantis in her den. She was wearing a tracksuit that would have been cute if it weren’t clear that she’d been wearing it nonstop since she’d first checked in. There was a stain on the corner of one of its pockets—probably coffee, judging by the various abandoned Styrofoam cups littered across all the available surfaces.
She looked at Anna. “I can’t believe you brought her here.”
Anna rolled her eyes, defensive. “She figured it out. And, I mean, you’re seeing the news. You’ve got your phone.”
“You’ve got your phone?” I asked. “How have you not been tracked?” Even if she’d turned location services off, a cursory Google search would have revealed plenty of talented hackers out there who would have been able to trace her if she’d kept her phone around.
“I’ve got a phone,” she replied. “I know you think you’re the only one who knows how to be sneaky, but I’m smart too.”
“Clearly,” I said, gesturing to the squalid scene around us. “So, that brings us to my next question: What the hell?”
She laughed. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“People are worried about you!” I said, frustrated. “If you’re seeing the news, then you know: My friend is missing too. And it’s looking like she was taken, not just voluntarily staging the world’s most depressing personal retreat. You set something in motion, Melanie. Something big.”
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “I didn’t set anything in motion. The raven set it all off. I just capitalized on the chaos.”
“But why?”
“You don’t get it!” she exploded.
“Try me.”
“Look, you’ve got that perfect family—parents who love you, who support you no matter what you do. I mean, you’re always sneaking around putting your nose into everything, half the town can’t stand you for it—”
“Thanks?”
“—and your parents, they’re like, whatever. They don’t care. I mean, they even have your back.”
“And yours don’t?”
She glanced down at the carpet, rubbed her toe over a dime-size spot on the floor. “They’re not horrible people or anything. They didn’t, like, abuse me or anything like that. But they don’t understand me.”
I leaned forward in my chair. “Let me get this straight,” I started, my voice trembling with repressed rage. “You staged your own kidnapping and set the whole town on a frantic manhunt because your parents just don’t understand you?” I was practically spitting. “Melanie, my friend is actually missing! Do you get that?”
“See!” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “I knew you wouldn’t get it! It’s more than just, you know, stupid angst. I want to be an actress! Like for real, in the movies. And I think I have what it takes.”
“Oh, I’ve seen you perform,” I said. “But … you’d go to these lengths?”
“She’s passionate,” Anna added. She was seated next to Melanie at the edge of the twin bed, and she put a hand on her friend’s shoulder now, comforting her.
“I want to go to acting school, out in California. But my parents want me to join my father’s law firm.”
“You’re seventeen,” I pointed out. And I had no time for her drama right now. “You have time to figure this stuff out without, I don’t know, triggering an Amber Alert.”
“They want me to go to school here in the northeast, come home on weekends to help out in the office, get exposed to it. I’m supposed to declare prelaw, and then I’m supposed to go to Harvard Law after I graduate, just like my dad did, and join the firm as soon as I take the bar. He even knows which office will eventually be mine. It’s all planned out.”
“That sounds … stressful,” I admitted. “But … this?” I looked around the room, watching dust motes catch in the few random spots of light that had woven their way in. “You couldn’t have just talked to them?”
“She tried,” Anna said. “Believe me.”
“You have no idea how hard I tried,” Melanie said. “It wasn’t happening. And graduation is in a few months.” She crossed her legs, shuffling back on the bed to get more comfortable. “I got into all the drama schools I applied to, you know. And I put a deposit down and everything. With my own savings, because I couldn’t tell my parents about it. And then I got the letters from the schools they were looking at, the ones they’d forced me to apply to.”
“You were rejected?” I asked.
“Of course not!” she sputtered. “That’s the thing—I don’t get rejected! I got into them all! And then they picked which one I was going to, like I wasn’t even a person with thoughts or opinions of my own.”
The anger and frustration I’d been feeling since I came in began to melt away, giving way to a fresh wave of urgency and fear for Daisy. Melanie’s song was a variant on the poor-little-rich-girl refrain, sure, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t valid. This sounded rough. And as someone who did have parents in my corner every step of the way, like Melanie had said, I couldn’t even imagine how she’d coped. It was amazing she hadn’t snapped sooner.
“So you ran away,” I offered.
“Well, that was the plan,” she said. “As soon as that bird hit the window, I knew: This was my chance. Vanish, blame it on the curse, make it super dramatic and cinematic. I’d be Internet famous, and then resurface in LA free of my parents’ judgment. Live my dream.”
“Okay, I hear you. But it’s still a long way to go for a little autonomy.”
“Do you think they’d pay tuition if I didn’t go to one of their schools? No, I had to make my own smoke and mirrors so that once I got out to California, I could support myself.”
“Then why are you still here?” I asked. “There must be crappy motels between here and LA. Ones farther from home, where it would be way less likely for your parents to find you.”
“Duh,” she said. “But, yeah, that’s the thing: I was only supposed to be here for a night. To regroup, you know? And then … I don’t know, after that first night, it was harder than I expected to actually do it. To full-on take the plunge.”
“You need to go home,” I told her. “Whatever you may think about your parents, they’re worried about you. And I’m sorry, but it’s really screwing with the Naming Day investigations that your disappearance is tied up with them. I mean, you don’t want to be even a little bit responsible for us never finding Daisy, right? And McGinnis could really use another witness to give information about the whole thing with the raven… .”
I trailed off, an image from my nightmares flashing in my head.
The wide-planked floor. The flapping of wings.
Obedience.
I gasped, standing up.
“I have to go,” I said, short.
“Seriously?” Anna asked.
“Seriously,” I said. “I just remembered something. Something important.”
* * *
I sat in my car and pulled my phone out, my heart hammering. Quickly, I called up the photo I’d taken of the note Daisy’s kidnappers left for Lena. It looked nondescript, sure … but I pinched at the screen, blowing the image up … until: There it was.
In the corner, torn.
A sliver of red.
The same shade as … a robin redbreast.
The pieces slid into place like a slot machine coming to rest. Jackpot.
The raven.
My nightmare.
Daisy’s mother, cold and haughty, wearing a robin scarf.
It made sense.
PART FOUR THE RESCUE
These people, they cling to their hopes. To their facts. To their rational explanations. A curse? Never.
Even after an unexplainable float malfunction that left three high school students maimed for life, they still clung to facts.
Even after the year the lighthouse went up in flames.
Even after the year an unseasonable hurricane preempted the celebration and left the town hall in tatters.
Coincidence. Freak accident. Fluke. All of these episodes, these incidents, were waved away, explained easily enough. All of them could be easily connected to the known and real world.
But I’m here to remind them of the truth. To show them otherwise. To make clear that facts and explanations aren’t the only things lurking in the shadows, here in Horseshoe Bay.
The girl will leave no stone unturned.
But she will soon believe.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The drive was twisty, the road unpaved for a good two miles before I even got up to the property. The land itself wouldn’t have been found on any GPS system. If you didn’t know about it, you wouldn’t know about it.
But I knew.
It had been a long time since I’d been here, and I’d only been once, but I knew it.
I’d only needed the buzz of finding Melanie and her small nudge about the raven to finally jostle loose that memory that had been swirling around in the depths of my subconscious, taunting me.
OAKLAND GREEN. The sign was only there if you knew to look for it, the outlin
e of an oak leaf etched into wood and nailed to a low tree trunk lining the edge of a rural road. This was the deep woods of Maine, well beyond Stone Ridge or even the summer camp territory.
This was where Daisy’s family lived.
I’d been here once before—very young, one summer break, my parents packing a small bag for me and dropping me here so I could have a long weekend with Daisy on the family estate. Her mother used this farm for bird-watching, her favorite hobby. The estate was sprawling with buildings in varying states of dilapidation, many of which were off-limits to Daisy and me. Not that I particularly wanted to roam far beyond the main farmhouse—the trees surrounding the property were dense, meant to shield the Dewitts from the rest of the town, I realized later, and they were menacing.
Even when I was younger, before I’d honed my most keen detective instincts, I knew the Dewitts had secrets.
There were birds everywhere. Which seemed normal for a rural farm surrounded by forest, but as Daisy and I played on the wooden swing set in the backyard I couldn’t stop myself from looking over my shoulder, on edge, thinking about where they could be hovering. Watching.
That night, during a summer lightning storm, an unkindness of ravens had become agitated, and they’d flapped and squawked and flailed against the window of the room where Daisy and I had rolled out our sleeping bags. While she’d slept soundly, I’d watched, frozen in fear as their wings rattled the glass, like something out of a Gothic horror story. And I’d never been a child who scared easily.
The next morning, it had all felt like a bad dream. At the breakfast table, Daisy was bright-eyed and chatty, mentioning nothing about a disturbance. I simply nodded and grimaced my way through my bowl of stale cornflakes.
And I never went back to the farm again.
* * *
Out of context, the memory seems innocuous enough—a bizarre brush with wildlife in a rural-adjacent Maine town isn’t unheard-of. Not many people would make the connection to a note-bearing raven more than a decade later.