by Kara Thomas
I’m not sure it’s a good enough reason to trust him, but someone else needs to know what happened in that office at the police station. How McAuliffe completely dismissed me, refused to tell me what he knows about what happened between me and the redheaded man on the mountain.
If the sheriff is going to keep shit from me, I don’t have to keep my half-assed promise not to tell anyone about the hiker.
“Something weird happened earlier,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper, even though we’re several hundred feet away from the house.
As I describe what happened outside 84 Phoenicia Road, the conversation in the sheriff’s office, Amos freezes, oars hovering above the surface of the lake. “Wait. What did the guy look like?”
“Red hair, beard, mid-thirties probably.”
“You saw him while you were hiking?” Amos asks.
“I don’t remember where I saw him, but McAuliffe said he was on Bobcat Mountain too and he saw us.”
I close my eyes, the sun turning the inside of my lids orange. I let the tape from Friday night roll in my memory: that humiliating conversation with Jesse on the dock, retreating to the house in shame. Everything after that is a darkened tunnel, and the redheaded man’s face is already disappearing down it.
I open my eyes to Amos’s probing stare. “You’re sure you didn’t know him? Or maybe you’d seen him before you got to the mountain?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember anything that happened Saturday morning. Unless maybe I saw him Friday—” I stop short, a memory clawing its way to the surface of my brain.
The redheaded man in the Merry Mackerel—the one in the Confederate flag T-shirt. The man outside the house in Grist Mill had a Confederate flag decal in the back of his truck.
“Oh God.” I lean forward and cover my mouth. Had the man in the Merry Mackerel had a beard?
Yes—maybe? No, he definitely did have a beard. I can see him now, chalking the tip of his pool cue, listening as I gave the bartender the address of the lake house.
Kat hadn’t wanted me to go inside and ask for directions. I swallow down the anxiety clogging my throat, push away the idea that all of this could be my fault because I was loud and careless.
“Claire.” Amos leans in. “What’s the matter?”
“We stopped for directions Friday night—there was this guy in the bar, watching me. What if he was the same guy who was on Bobcat Mountain?” I say. “He could have followed us—I have to tell McAuliffe.”
Amos scratches the corner of his mouth. His voice is quiet when he finally responds. “If I tell you something, promise not to spread it around?”
I nod.
“When I was handing out flyers this morning, some guy at the deli kind of bugged out when he heard me say Bobcat Mountain.” Amos lets the tips of the oars drag across the surface of the lake until the canoe slows to a coast. “He said last fall, his daughter and her friends were camping at Devil’s Peak when some crackhead with a knife tried to rob them.”
I swallow. “Were they hurt?”
“The guy didn’t get the chance. Some hikers were passing through and scared him off.”
“Did they ever get the guy?”
“That’s the fucked-up part,” Amos says. “The girl’s father told me that he doesn’t think the sheriff’s department ever even looked for the guy.”
“What the hell? Why not?”
Amos shrugs. “I mean, he gave me an earful, but the gist of it is, he thinks McAuliffe only cares about being able to brag about how safe Sunfish Creek is so he can keep getting reelected.”
Fear flips my stomach; of course McAuliffe wants to believe Jesse is responsible for whatever happened on that mountain. An out-of-towner killing his girlfriend and himself with a tragic tumble off Devil’s Peak is much easier for his constituents to swallow than the idea of some bogeyman lurking in the woods.
“Claire!”
My name echoes through the trees circling the lake. Frantic, angry. I follow the sound to my dad, standing at the end of the lake house dock.
“Fuck,” I say.
Amos rows us over to the dock, his strokes urgent. My dad is watching us, arms folded across his chest, looking on the verge of having an aneurism.
When the canoe is close enough to the dock that he doesn’t have to shout for us to hear him, Dad says, “Where the hell were you?”
My heartbeat picks up. I’ve never heard my father utter anything more severe than a heck or a gosh dangit.
“We’ve been right here, on the lake,” I say as Amos hops out of the canoe. He grabs the front and drags the boat onto the shore so I can scramble out.
Dad stares at me, the tips of his ears red. “You left your phone in the house. Do you have any idea—”
Amos steps into my dad’s view. “I’m sorry, Mr. Keough. It was my idea.”
Dad stares at Amos, his face softening a bit. He’s not going to rip me a new one in front of an audience. “I—I would have appreciated you letting me know where you were going.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just needed to get out of the house.”
I look from Dad’s strained expression to the space in the driveway where Mr. Marcotte’s car was fifteen minutes ago. Why was my dad so anxious to find me? My blood drains to my toes, and the words spill out of me: “Did they find something?”
“No—Kat’s parents had to go to the sheriff’s station to identify some things,” Dad says, watching Amos head back up to the lake house, throwing an apologetic glance at me over his shoulder.
When Amos is out of earshot, Dad exhales. “Go to the car. I’ll go get our stuff and meet you there.”
“What?”
“We’re going home, Claire.”
“Is this all because I left the house for like ten minutes?”
“No, of course not.” Dad exhales. “Mom got you a neurologist appointment for tomorrow afternoon.”
Tomorrow afternoon. Twenty-four hours from now. It doesn’t explain why he’s so urgent to leave Sunfish Creek this second.
No—this is about what happened in McAuliffe’s office.
“The sheriff said not to leave,” I croak.
“He has no reason to keep us here. You’ve told him everything you know. I just want us home,” Dad says, his voice soft.
Home is Jesse tucked into the corner of my basement couch, Twizzler hanging out of his mouth, arguing with me about whether it’s an unfair advantage for me to use Kirby in every Smash Bros. match. Home is Kat surprising me at work with a rainbow Italian ice on her walk home from Nina’s Sweets, the kids she babysits over the summer in tow.
I don’t want to go home if they’re not there. But I can’t be here, either.
I look up, see my father’s outstretched hand. I slip mine in it, let him lead me to the driveway.
He opens the passenger door of the Civic and I duck in. There are dozens of questions on the tip of my tongue; questions I don’t really want the answer to. Does he know Kat’s father thinks I’m lying? Are we leaving because of what McAuliffe said about the man on the mountain? Why does it feel like we’re running away?
I buckle my seat belt, my heart battering my ribs beneath the strap. When I look up, I spot Amos in the bay window.
He nods at me as if to say Get out while you have the chance.
NOW
We get caught up in the summer traffic funneling through New York City. I spend the trip on my phone, waiting for an update about how today’s search of Bobcat Mountain went. The Sunfish Creek sheriff’s department is holding a press conference, but I can’t get a strong enough connection to stream it.
I refresh CNN’s live blog of the search coverage, now updated with bullet points from McAuliffe’s press conference.
No sign of missing teenaged couple as search stretches i
nto fourth day
Forensic examination of Kat Marcotte’s car underway
Former US Representative Marian Sullivan-Marcotte announces $100,000 reward for information regarding granddaughter’s disappearance
Eventually, the sight of the words on my screen make me so carsick I have to put it away and recline my seat.
I wake to the Civic rolling to a stop, and blink until our house comes into focus, my mother standing behind the glass door. The sky is swirling blue and gray; the time on my dad’s dash reads 7:17.
P.M., I remind myself. It doesn’t feel possible I was in Sunfish Creek earlier today. Sitting in the sheriff’s office, out on the lake with Amos. There is a heaviness in my limbs, my eyelids, as if I’d lived a hundred days since waking up this morning.
I weakly return my mother’s hug and slip into the bathroom. Scroll through my phone while I pee, eyes still bleary from my car snooze.
Seeing Ben Filipoff’s name in my text inbox nearly makes me fall off the toilet.
Hey…I know I’m the last person you probably want to hear from right now, but I wanted to see how you’re holding up. I guess you’re not coming tn.
I glance at the time on my phone. The graduation ceremony began over an hour ago. A shudder moves through me, to the tips of my toes. With no school this week, no one would have noticed that I’ve been MIA since Kat and Jesse went missing. But tonight—my empty chair at graduation—of course, Ben wants to know why.
I think about what I want to say. I am not okay at all. Everything is so fucked up and I’m not supposed to talk about it.
I swallow, type, send:
I’m okay.
Ben starts typing, stops. Just when I think the conversation is going to end there, he replies.
Where have you been? I stopped by your house a couple times Monday but no one was home.
A knock at the bathroom door, followed by my mother’s voice. “Claire? You okay?”
“Yeah.” I flush, turn on the tap in the bathroom sink with trembling hands. Sometimes I think there is a third testicle where Ben’s brain should be, but he’s not stupid. It’s only a matter of time before the gossip starts and he figures out I wasn’t here last weekend because I was in Sunfish Creek.
Maybe Ben’s already figured it out. He knew about the trip, because he was supposed to come with us. For all he knows, I went anyway, despite our breakup.
I inhale, type out a response.
I went with Kat and Jesse to Sunfish Creek.
What???
Yeah.
I don’t remember Saturday. We were hiking and I hit my head bad…I just got out of the hospital yesterday.
I slip across the hall, into my room, shutting out the sounds of my parents murmuring in the kitchen. I kick off my shoes, plop down on my bed as Ben replies to my message.
Jesus, Claire.
So you have no idea what happened to them??
I burrow under my covers, I swallow the anxiety knotting up in my throat. I think of the reporters packing the parking lot at the sheriff’s office when Dad and I got there…the gossip that must have been flowing through Stellato’s when I didn’t show up for work….Brookport is a small town, and there are no secrets.
Soon everyone will know I was with them on the mountain. They’ll want the answer to the question I can’t answer, the only question that matters now.
Why did I make it back, and they didn’t?
* * *
—
A knock on my door yanks me to consciousness.
My curtains. My bed. The comfort that it brings me dissolves immediately.
I’m home. I came home from Sunfish Creek without Kat and Jesse.
Another knock before my mother steps into my room, struggling with the clasp on her bracelet. “How did you sleep?”
If Mom is getting ready to leave for work, it must be around eight in the morning, which means I slept for thirteen straight hours. I sit up and crack my neck. “Have you heard anything?” I ask.
Mom shakes her head; the bracelet slips off her wrist. She bends to peel it from my carpet and sighs. “I don’t think you should be alone today. Are you sure you don’t want Dad to stay home from work?”
“Dad’s already missed enough work for me.”
I didn’t mean it like that, but Mom looks hurt.
“Well, try to keep busy,” she says. “Maybe clean up this disaster of a room. Dad will be home a little early to take you to Dr. Wen’s.”
She closes the door and I roll over, away from the sunlight streaming in my window. The thought of having the same conversation with my father before he leaves for work is so exhausting that I pretend to be asleep when his knock at my door comes half an hour later.
When I hear the purr of his engine leaving the driveway, I grab my phone and head into the kitchen.
Dad left out a mug of coffee for me; I nuke it in the microwave before making my way to the living room. I dump my phone and mug onto the coffee table, kneel before the couch in order to excavate the television remote from between the cushions.
I flip through the channels, the caffeine hitting my bloodstream only making the edge to my mood worse. All week, I wanted nothing more than to be alone—away from prodding doctors and nurses, to sleep without my father hovering over me, able to read the news without Kat’s parents lurking nearby—but now that I’m by myself, I feel ready to jump out of my skin at every noise around me.
A doorbell in a commercial. The rumble of the garbage truck outside.
I hold one hand over my rapidly beating heart, lower the volume on the TV with the other. My mother watches everything with the sound blasting; I picture her in this exact spot, alone each night while Dad and I were in Sunfish Creek, with a nudge of guilt.
My heartbeat goes still when the news program returns from the commercial break.
It’s them.
Of course, it’s them—this is the local news, and nothing fucking happens around here. The granddaughter of our former congresswoman going missing definitely ranks higher than a drunken crash on the LIE or an upcoming pet adoption drive.
There they are—a photo of Kat and Jesse, hovering next to the face of Deanna Demarco, our local news anchor. I have to turn the volume back up in order to hear over the thrum of adrenaline in my ears.
“In Sunfish Creek, the search for two teens from Brookport is entering its fifth day—”
Deanna Demarco and the News 12 studio give way to a video montage. A chopper view of Bobcat Mountain, emergency vehicles blocking off a parking lot. The camera pans to a man standing in the lot, arms crossed over his chest.
Mr. Marcotte.
“Earlier this morning, News Twelve spoke with the father of missing teen Katherine Marcotte, who has been on the ground with searchers every day since his daughter and her boyfriend, Jesse Salpietro, did not return from a camping trip at Devil’s Peak.”
A male voice offscreen says, “Mr. Marcotte, what can you tell us about the search?” The chyron at the bottom of the screen reads: johnathan marcotte—missing teen’s father and son of congresswoman marian sullivan-marcotte.
Mr. Marcotte leans into the News 12 microphone jammed in his face, wipes sweat off his brow. “There’s still a lot of ground to cover. A lot of it is unsearchable by foot. But I’m not giving up hope.”
“But what about the time that has passed—do you think, if Kat is hurt and lost somewhere, the odds just simply aren’t in her favor?”
Mr. Marcotte lifts his eyes to the camera. He blinks back tears, swallows. “If anyone can beat impossible odds, it’s my daughter.”
The screen cuts to the scene in the parking lot of Bobcat Mountain. Emergency vehicles,
lights flashing: Sheriff McAuliffe is standing outside one, hands on his hips, defiantly staring down the camera crew crowding him. In the distance, the sun is rising into a pink-and-orange sky over the mountain.
Deanna Demarco’s voice-over informs us: “This morning, the Sunfish Creek sheriff addressed reporters prior to the search.”
McAuliffe clears his throat. “I’ve been asked to provide an update—all I can reveal about today’s agenda is that we will be focusing on the area below Devil’s Peak.”
My head goes hollow. Below Devil’s Peak—he means the bottom of the ledge.
I was right. He thinks Kat and Jesse went tumbling over it.
On the coffee table, my phone rattles. I lunge for it, open the text with trembling fingers.
The sender isn’t in my contacts, and I don’t recognize their number.
hey
Another message sprouts under it:
It’s Amos
My heart knocks around in my chest as I absorb this. Amos Fornier, casually texting me hey. I let my thumb hover over the keys for a moment before I type back hey, hit send. I drum my fingertips against my lips, waiting for Amos’s response.
On the TV, Deanna Demarco has moved onto something other than Kat and Jesse. Her chattering in my head is too much; I turn the TV off as Amos texts me back.
just wanted to see how ur doing
I pull my feet up onto the couch, tuck them under my body.
Okay, I guess
I want to ask how he got my number, or if he’s heard anything. But the ellipsis appears, signaling that Amos is typing. My fingers go still; I watch the screen, letting him steer the conversation.