They scour the entire house to make sure Lee isn’t somewhere they missed. Grace steps onto the back deck and looks for clues. She urges Carol and Alice to call Lee too, just in case Lee is only screening her calls.
She shakes out the blankets, searches under the chairs for Lee’s phone, and then bumps into the blue recycling bin behind her. Maybe her phone fell in when she got up last night? She turns, crouches down, and rummages through it. The bottle of wine they had is there, and under a stack of newspapers is the other one. The truth slams into her as she stands, numb and unblinking. The bottle was unopened when she went inside. She’s positive. “Carol?”
“Yeah?” She pokes her head out the back door.
Grace raises both bottles. “We only drank one of these last night, right?”
Carol squints. “The bin was empty except for the newspaper. I’m sure of it, because I didn’t know if I could put glass in there. Why?”
Grace thinks of Lee out here, alone. She wouldn’t have. Maybe she was tempted but just dumped it out. Grace notices the screw top back on the bottle. If it had been unopened, it wouldn’t be empty. Grace gnaws the inside of her cheek.
“Do you really think she drank it?” Carol asks.
“Hey, you guys ready? Marge said she’ll call if Lee shows up before we get back.” Alice pulls on a light jacket and motions for them to follow. Grace lowers the bottles back into the recycling bin and joins Alice and Carol.
New worries fester along with Lee’s absence. Did their fight cause a slip from sobriety, or was it the memory of her assault? They set out in the direction of the sirens, curious passersby popping their heads out of their homes or standing to gossip in the street about what’s going on. The cool morning wind whips across their bodies.
“Windy,” Alice mumbles, trying to keep the conversation light.
Carol joins in, but Grace’s mind is elsewhere. Her skin drains of color with every step, and Alice, sensing her unease, latches onto her. “It’s going to be fine. I promise. You’ll see. This has nothing to do with Lee. It can’t possibly.”
She doesn’t know what is possible or not possible. Maybe Lee called an Uber to run an errand in the city center, Carol suggests. Maybe she’s journaling in a park somewhere, or off on a walk on the opposite end of town, Alice adds. Maybe her phone is off. Even as Grace calculates the different possibilities, none of them seems like a logical explanation for where she might be.
They all link arms as they round the corner to the start of the trail, a barrage of police cars, barking dogs, and one lone ambulance with its siren light shooting around in a silent circle. Grace searches for a dead body or crime scene tape. None. A small whoosh of air escapes her lungs.
Two officers sip coffee by their patrol cars. She turns to the girls. “Stay here, okay? I’ll find out what’s happening.”
“Why don’t you let us come with you?” Carol asks.
“No, it’s fine. I just want to ask, then we can keep searching.”
She crunches toward them, snapping twigs and leaves under overused tennis shoes. She stares between them, not knowing which one to address. “Excuse me, officers?”
The taller one looks down at her. “Ma’am?”
“May I ask what happened here?” Grace considers his answer: what she will do, how her body will respond, what words she’ll say.
“We don’t know all the details.” He sniffs and looks at his partner. “Found a hiker at the bottom of the path.”
“A hiker?” Icy fingers of dread began to peck her spine like a piano. No, no, no.
“It appears someone fell off the mountain.”
“Man or woman?” Everything in Grace begs for the right answer. It feels as if her entire life depends on it.
“Woman.”
Crushing grief pierces the flesh of her chest and rips. She sucks cold air, the woods around her starting to spin. Her hand finds its way to her belly and then up to her forehead, which is clammy and growing wet. “And this person is…?” She waits for the reassurance that the woman—not Lee—is fine. That whoever fell is alive. That she is a survivor.
The officer clears his throat and the other one motions behind him. “Ma’am, we need to keep this area clear, so if you wouldn’t mind…” He motions her along, like she is nothing more than a nosy neighbor clinging to small-town gossip.
Grace chooses her next words carefully. She focuses on her breath, on the officers’ faces, on the truth. “I understand, but here’s the thing. My friends and I are here on vacation, and we’re worried because we can’t find our friend. We’re staying over at Arbor House, but she didn’t come home last night. She’s not there and she’s not answering her phone, so we’re just worried that she might have…” She can’t finish the sentence. Might have hiked. Might have fallen. Might have died.
The officers straighten, as if she’s said the right thing. “Can you describe her, please? Your friend?”
“She’s about your height, kind of tall, jet black hair, thin … she was wearing a green hoodie. And black nail polish. She also had on striped knee-high socks.”
The officers swivel their heads toward each other, their eyes confirming what she already knows. They look at the ground, the bottoms of their coffee cups, then somewhere toward the vicinity of her face, but never quite make eye contact.
Grace’s legs start to shake, her heart knifed into a million bloody pieces. “Oh God, please. It can’t be her.” She grips the officer’s arm until his flesh bulges between her fingers. Lee’s outraged face from the night before sears her mind. How hurt she was. How devastated from the news. That tenuous exchange. Their last conversation.
The officer steps back. She releases his arm in apology. “She has a son. He’s … he needs her. We need her. We’re all mothers. We’re just here on vacation. We’ve been here for less than two days. It can’t be her. It can’t.” The rush of words crashes toward them.
“Ma’am, let’s not jump to any conclusions. Can you come with us for a moment?” The other officer supports her elbow and ushers her a few feet away toward the trail.
Grace finds Carol’s and Alice’s expectant faces somewhere behind her. She tries to steady her features, to make them impassive, to emit total control with her eyes and lips, but she can’t. Alice screams, and Carol’s arms shoot around her as she collapses to the ground. This can’t be happening. This isn’t happening.
Grace chomps through the crispy leaves and bramble, praying for a miracle. She marches past hushed whispers, officials, and walkie-talkies spouting off commands. The air grows cooler as she nears the start of the path, snarled with overgrown trees. Just yesterday, she was giggling and joking with her friends, only thinking of vacation. Her baby. Luca. Noah. Her confession. Their growing family. Her best friend being mad at her.
Now, near a batch of trees, she spots a corpse under a dark rubber sheet. The outline of a petite body rises beneath it, all the swells and bumps that compose a human. She halts, steadies herself, and swallows the cottony dryness of dread. How many times has she seen this exact scenario on television? How many nights have she and Lee spent together, sprawled on her crumb-infested sofa, eating snacks, not even blinking as someone gets murdered or dies from some untimely accident? They’ve all been desensitized to scenes like this, and yet, this is real. This is happening.
The officers talk as Grace edges forward. She waits for someone to tell her to stop, or that she can’t be here. She drops to her knees at the edge of the sheet. The earth soaks through her running pants.
An arm appears out of nowhere to peel back the sheet, inch by inch. Grace holds her breath. The face is marred and covered by dark hair and blood. At first, despite the horror, she exhales. This former person can’t be Lee. The features are almost indistinguishable, the neck broken, the body’s limbs crooked and limp. The coroner or whoever it is—detective? investigator?—pinches the saggy flesh of the corpse’s cheeks and turns its face upward, and that’s it: beneath all that death, there she is. The eyes, the locket that bears a picture of Mason, bunched in knotted chain around her neck, the black fingernails angled back, as if she’d been clawing for help, and the green hoodie, now blood-soaked, hiding fragments of her dear, dead friend.
She nods, mouth behind cold hands, the tears coming before she can talk, scream, or wail. She bobs her head once, twice. Her friends riot toward her, a stampede of fear, emotion, and disbelief exploding beneath the soles of their shoes.
Alice skids to a stop next to Grace, tossing out a primal scream. She collapses over Lee’s chest and squeezes. Grace hears things pop and squish as the investigator pulls her off and tells her she cannot touch evidence. Lee isn’t Lee. She is evidence. Carol stands at the edge behind them, unable to move, her face a ghost of surprise.
Grace replays the previous night’s events. Only Grace knows about Lee’s confession, but what about the rest? Had her disappointment about Noah caused her to drink, to hike, and ultimately fall? The sobering question slams into her before she can stop it: could she have jumped?
The contrasting thoughts clamp down, and she doesn’t know what to say or how to abate the guilt. As Grace stands, her body stiffens, and a dreaded truth repeats itself over and over in her head: You told her about the baby. You told her about Noah. You told her everything, and now Lee is dead.