My stomach kept dipping, my head spinning, like I’d been dreaming of the winding road. The sickening swerve of the van. The crash. The fall.
I jolted awake, struggling to orient myself to the present time and place. The bed seemed to be moving, as if I were still adrift in a current.
I was no longer in the aqua room at The Shallows, but an unfamiliar, nondescript rectangle. The dimly lit hotel room had two full-size beds with scratchy sheets, and a churning air-conditioning unit that sounded like something had come loose inside. And yet, I realized it was maybe the best sleep I’d had all week. Even Grace, closer to the rattling unit, was still sleeping, though sunlight was streaking through the gap in the heavy curtains, inching closer to her face.
We’d seen the sign for the hotel right off the highway exit, with several fast-food options connected via parking lot access.
I fumbled for my phone charging beside me—this early, it was automatically set to do not disturb. I had six missed calls from Russ, and a string of texts of escalating concern. I snuck into the bathroom and tried calling him back, but it went straight to voicemail. I knew he had a full day of classes on Fridays, so I sent a quick text: Stopped at a hotel on my way home. Sorry, was driving and then sleeping. See you soon.
Both Grace and I had collapsed as soon as we got into our room, from exhaustion, remnants of adrenaline, lingering fear. I’d checked on Ian’s phone, buried deep in my luggage, as if it may have disappeared between there and here—but it was still safe in my possession.
Neither of us had called the others. It was like we were operating under the same unspoken dilemma: unsure who among them we could fully trust.
And so we were here, tucked safely away, momentarily off-grid. But I was increasingly worried about Amaya. Her phone still wasn’t receiving messages. The fact that someone was watching the house, and she had been all alone, rattled me. She may have taken refuge at the motel through the storm, but the fact that she hadn’t checked in when she must’ve known we’d be concerned was out of character. She cared too deeply to leave us like this.
Everyone I wanted to speak to was frustratingly unreachable.
I took a quick shower. When I got out, Grace still hadn’t stirred, so I slipped out of the room to find the complimentary coffee promised at check-in. Grace had paid for the double room, and I had promised to take her wherever she decided to go today.
The lobby was eerily quiet for a Friday morning around rush hour. Just a silent news program playing over the coffee bar, and the sound of the receptionist typing away at the computer.
I was filling the second cup for Grace when I felt the presence of someone standing just behind me, impatiently shuffling back and forth. I moved over to give the other person access to the coffee dispensers, and cut my eyes briefly to the side. It was a stranger: a man in a dark blue polo straining over his stomach; he had work boots and a crisp baseball cap and a gentle accent as he said, “Mornin,’ miss.”
I smiled and tried to make myself relax: lower the shoulders, breathe from the gut. Part of me had expected Oliver or Joshua or Brody. I even thought of Will, the memory of headlights in the rearview mirror following us out of town. I found the paranoia difficult to shake, even on this side of the last bridge.
I repeated to myself: We made it. We’re safe.
In the elevator, I focused my to-do list down to its most essential items for today: drop Grace wherever she needed to be; head home. Anything else could come later.
With the two cups of coffee balanced in one hand, I slid the key into the hotel door, then came face-to-face with Grace, who was partly inside the closet by the entrance.
“Hi!” she said, too cheerful. “Oh, is that for me?”
But I was distracted by the fact that she was hovering over my luggage, open on the stand in the closet. “Are you looking for something?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, one side of her mouth pulled into a coy grin. “Face wash. I think I left mine in the rush last night.”
“In the bathroom,” I said, but she didn’t back away from the closet, didn’t move to take the coffee from my hand.
Instead, she cleared her throat and reached an arm into my bag. “Is this it?” she asked, pulling out Ian’s phone, as if it had just been lying there, when it had actually been buried under a layer of clothing.
The fact that she had it now made me think she’d been looking specifically for it.
I swallowed, nodding, desperately wanting it back in my possession.
“And you just found it? On the beach?” She turned it over in her hands, looking at the new screen, the scratched backing.
“Yeah,” I said. I placed the cups on the nearest shelf, hands itching for the phone.
She frowned. “I’ve been thinking about that. About why someone might’ve had it… Like, if it somehow got left behind… or.” She shrugged, though her eyes were latched onto mine.
Left behind. Meaning, when Oliver moved his body. A shudder rolled through me, a violent wave of nausea, picturing Ian, in that house, in Oliver’s room. Dead.
And now Grace seemed to be asking whether I thought the phone accidentally got left behind in the house three months earlier for someone else to find, or whether someone took it with them after Ian’s death, and then brought it back. Either way, someone must’ve known exactly what they had.
“Oliver?” I asked. He was a risk-taker, in business, and in life. Had won big only by making big moves. Was this nothing more than another risk worth taking for him?
Grace tipped her head. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I just knew I had to get out of that house. Could you access anything on it?”
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t really work anymore.” I cleared my throat. “Just receives and sends calls and texts. Everything else I tried to open needed a password.”
She sighed. “I wish I knew what Ian was doing there.” She turned the phone over again, then pressed the power button, like she was checking my claim for herself.
My shoulders tightened, eyes burning with tears. “Like I said, it doesn’t really work.” I took the phone from her hand, relieved that she didn’t resist.
“What are you going to do with it?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
She widened her eyes, and she seemed even closer. “Be careful, Cassidy. If anyone finds out you have this, the first question they’re going to ask is why.”
Her gaze held mine, until I had to look away first. She’d just walked me through how improbable it all sounded. Just found it on the beach. Three months after he died.
I didn’t like the way she was questioning me, like she was suspicious. This was the subtle way we accused one another, never outright, always in subtext. Be careful, Cassidy.
I suddenly didn’t want to be in this hotel anymore, in the middle of nowhere, when no one knew I was here. Just like the paranoia of discovering that camera, and the realization that someone had been watching us.
I zipped up my luggage and waited for Grace to back away. “Have you thought about where you want me to drop you off?” I asked.
Finally, she stepped backward, toward the entrance of our bathroom. “Actually, I was thinking, we’re only two hours from home.”
Home, she said, like it was mine as much as hers. The small town of Long Brook, claiming us both.
“Would it be on your way to drop me at my parents’ place? I can figure out what to do from there.”
“Sure,” I said, though a buzzing had immediately started in my ears.
I didn’t go back there anymore. Not since my parents moved my freshman year of college. Long Brook wasn’t far out of the way, though—less than two hours from where I now lived, just south of Charlotte.
“I’ll be ready to go in ten,” she said, then closed the bathroom door.
To the sound of the running water, I plugged Ian’s phone into my charger. Wondering why all of his earlier texts and calls were wiped. Wondering if this was part of Oliver’s plan, deleting the evidence of his involvement, wherever it might be—photos, texts, call log. I wondered how many secrets Oliver was keeping.
As soon as the shower turned off, I tucked the phone back into my bag, double-checking the outlets for any cables left behind.
“Are you ready?” she asked a minute later, gathering up her things.
“All set,” I said.
From the parking lot, I could hear the sound of cars on the highway. The air was so much thicker inland, a humidity that got caught in the trees, a heat absorbed into the pavement.
In the morning sun, the light shimmered off the surface of the road, like water. A mirage where we were complicit, and driving straight for it.
On this empty stretch of highway, it felt like you could see forever.
Grace spent half the drive looking out the window, forehead resting on the passenger window, and the other half checking her phone.
“Have you heard from any of the others?” I asked, when I noticed her checking it one more time.
“No. But if they’re all driving, I guess we probably won’t…”
Still, she seemed concerned enough to keep checking. But she was approaching the situation like I might: carefully and quietly.
“Grace,” I said cautiously. “Do you think someone else knows? About the others?”
Even as I said it, I hoped she would pretend I was asking something else. Let her ignore the question. Let us go back to a decade of avoidance and lies. We had been so lucky—not only that we had survived, but that the river had washed away our collective crimes. It had destroyed any evidence of our actions, any timeline of events. There was nothing to suspect. No reason to think a sign of injury was anything but from the crash itself, shattered glass and twisted metal. No way to know where—or for how long—others might’ve survived. The force of that water superseded all that had come before.
She lifted her head from the window, slowly pivoted my way. “What,” she said in a voice I barely recognized. “Do you think they scratched the details into the rocks? Think they had time to leave a note? Maybe a quick: Ben was here?”
My eyes widened, shocked by her tone. Shocked, because it was how Josh might’ve said it instead, crass and callous.
“No,” I said, “but I think there’s a reason everybody lied about it then.” Or rather, Josh lied, and we agreed, in our silence. We were complicit from that very first moment. “What do you think would happen if the truth came out now? After all this time?”
“We’re not sociopaths, Cass. We did what we had to do to survive, no one would fault us for that. What was the other option? What good would it have done to stay?” She lowered her voice. “Or to say we had to leave them. Do you think their families would rather think that? That they almost made it?” She sounded like she’d told herself this story before. Like she’d had plenty of practice justifying it to herself. Or to someone else. “It’s the kinder thing, in the long run, for them to think it was quick.”
“Do you really think,” I began, “that we did it out of kindness?”
She shifted in her seat, took a slow and calming breath. Centering herself, grounding herself. “It’s been ten years, Cassidy. A decade. We’re all different people now.”
“Exactly, it’s been a decade. So what’s the point? Someone knows something they think matters, Grace. Or they wouldn’t be contacting us ten years later. They wouldn’t be”—I waved my arm around uselessly—“leaving cameras in the house where we’re staying.”
What could be worthy of a tell-all, if there was nothing new to tell? Who were the producers? What was the angle? Why else would they be interested in something that happened ten years earlier? We went off the road, and a bunch of innocent young people died. It was a tragedy you didn’t want to look at too closely, if you didn’t have to. No, they knew there was something here. Something deeper, darker, more damning.
“But even if anyone suspects something, don’t you see?” she said. “They need us to confirm. Without us, there’s nothing to go on. Nothing.”
“Unless it’s one of us. And then, they’re already talking.”
I thought of Amaya and Josh, at the library dedication ceremony. The press that must’ve been there. The families of the dead, coming face-to-face with the survivors. A terrible collision. Secrets spilling over, seeping out.
She twisted so she was facing me. “You need to forgive yourself. I mean it. Listen, Clara got stuck. I should’ve seen it, should’ve noticed sooner… She got stuck on this, and now she’s gone, with the rest of them.” She placed a hand on my arm. “If I can do it, so can you.” I heard the echo of her words from a session, carrying up the steps: You are not the worst thing you’ve ever done.
I swallowed nothing, picturing Clara on the precipice. Standing in the dark, at the edge, unsteady on her feet. Eyes closed, hearing those screams, calling her back. Calling us all back—
“Something happened out there,” I said.
Grace remained silent, but I felt her attention now, the way I’d always hoped to command a room. Finally, I had her.
“Ben was fine, and then he wasn’t,” I continued. I saw him then, in the dark. Lying on the rocks, hands pressed to his stomach, the shock in his eyes.
“He was alive when we left. We’re not killers, Cassidy,” she said.
But that was not true. That was not entirely true.
Grace had cast blame, set something in motion, and someone had acted on it.
And that was the secret: there was a killer among us, we were pretty sure. Not just killing by neglect, by leaving, by refusing to look back. And not just by recklessly drawing cards and sending someone into the river before that. But intentionally, with a knife in their hand. It was one of us. There was no way around it: it had to be one of us.
It was a dangerous thing, to go looking. To ask, to unwind it, to try to figure it out. We weren’t supposed to reopen the past.
We had been complicit in leaving the others behind. We had been complicit in sending Jason into the water, to his death. We had become complicit in the cover-up of a crime the moment we decided not to speak up. And now we were all bound by it.
This was our pact, really, when it came down to it, what showing up every year really meant: I promise not to dig. I promise not to go back.
How quickly an accusation could turn against you if you faltered. We knew how it worked—you wanted to be on the side with the numbers.
But I never knew, exactly, why we had stayed silent: Was it because we were ashamed we left them, or because we’d voted to send someone into the river, or because of Ben?
I waited. But she looked straight ahead, the vision of calm.
“No one could find the knife after,” I said.
And in the moments and days and weeks that followed, at funeral after funeral, I kept circling back, approaching my memories from every direction, trying to understand. I’d wake in the middle of the night, still tasting river water, still seeing their eyes glowing in Oliver’s flashlight. It was a nightmare that had followed me out, and I couldn’t escape.
“So what, Cassidy? I lost everything I brought on that trip too. It’s probably somewhere in the river, with the rest of it.”
“What is it that you think they’re after, Grace? They asked Oliver to describe the knife, did you know that?”
“Yeah, well, it’s gone, Cassidy, and no one knows what happened. It might’ve turned out exactly the same no matter what we did or didn’t do,” she reiterated, as if I were too close to cracking, and needed the next line to deliver. A warning. A subtle reminder.
“It’s going to come out,” I said. Couldn’t she feel it, simmering underneath? Ten years, and the night was still coming for us all. Clara, Ian. We had never fully escaped, and we couldn’t contain it any longer.
“No,” she said, very calmly, very Grace. “I don’t think it will.” As if she was willfully disbelieving. She leaned forward. “You’re gonna miss the turn, Cass.”
“Jesus.” I veered quickly, crossing over a lane, cutting off a silver SUV as they leaned on the horn.
How many times had I purposely driven past, purposely averted my eyes from the sign for the Long Brook exit, my instinct always to keep my distance.
How many times had I imagined those chapel bells chiming—one for each of the lives who had been lost that night. I could hear the ghost of that echo as I crossed the town line. Imagined Clara standing in the courtyard on the one-year anniversary, the vibration resonating in her bones; something she couldn’t shake after. For the rest of us, a danger we were careful to avoid, taking ourselves far, far away, to the coast, over a series of bridges, where the sound of the waves could drown out the sound of the bells.
The town now took on the quality of a dream, hazy around the edges—recognizable, but not quite the same. Everything was just slightly askew from my memory. The familiar location of a box store, now with a different name. A burst of wildflowers in the median, where there had been only dirt and untamed grass before.
“Take a left at the next light,” Grace said, peering out the window. “My parents moved.” As if I had ever been invited to her other house. As if we’d been friends.
“They’re in a retirement community,” she continued. “All cookie-cutter and quiet. Everything looks the same. There’s no evidence of my existence.” She laughed once, but I recognized the flatness of her tone.
“Mine moved away years ago,” I said. “My oldest brother got married, had a kid. They’re up in Connecticut, all together.”
“That’ll do it,” she said. “Hollis’s family is gone too. But otherwise, most everyone has stayed, haven’t they?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said. But that wasn’t entirely true. We’d all kept tabs on one another. Checking in, checking up. A tally of names, of lives—a responsibility.
Grace guided me into a neighborhood of identical ranch homes with perfectly manicured yards. Each unit had a single-car garage and a mailbox out front, and there was a series of oddly placed speed bumps that slowed our progress to a crawl. It seemed impossible to tell anything apart, but she leaned forward, scanning the streets, directing me when to turn. Then finally, she jabbed her finger into the window. “This one, right here. Just park in the road.”
The only defining features to this home were the woven flower wreath on the front door, encircling a cursive letter L, and the large matching potted plants framing the porch entrance.
“My mom sure loves daisies,” she said, with half a smirk. She opened the passenger door and stared at the house, as I popped the trunk.
“Can I use the bathroom before heading out?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. She peered up and down the street before grabbing her luggage. The street was eerily quiet, though there were cars in the majority of driveways.
“Are they home?” I asked, following her up the paved walkway, skirting between the potted daisies.
“No, the irony of them living in this retirement community is that they’re not actually retired yet.”
She checked under the brown welcome mat—daisies surrounding the word Home—and behind the wreath hanging on the door. Then she ran her hands along the chairs on the porch, lifting the cushions one by one, until she finally held up a single key, in triumph.
“This town,” I said, shaking my head.
This town, we had been told all our lives, was so safe. And we were so lucky to grow up here. We’d heard our parents extol these facts, the mayor reiterate them, our teachers confirm. Even after twelve tragic, untimely deaths, there was a feeling that as long as we remained here, within these borders, we would be protected. It was only when we were outside them that things went so terribly wrong.
As if, out there, the world was unpredictable, and we became unpredictable, in turn.
Grace slid the key into the lock. As soon as she pushed it open, the sound of an alarm beeped its warning. She went straight down the white tiled floor to the keypad, then typed in a code. The beeping continued, and Grace frowned.
“Should we call them?” I asked, feeling a chill. Unsure of who Grace truly was, in this unfamiliar place.
But she tried a second code quickly, and the system declared Disarmed.
“There,” she said.
She turned on the hall light, illuminating a mirrored entry, giving the impression of a funhouse. I smiled at the mirror version of Grace.
The house was lacking wall decor, lacking photos on the mantel, lacking any personal touches on the shelves. The couch and furniture might’ve come with the house, all part of the cookie-cutter package. “It looks like they’re still moving in,” I said.
“They’ve been here for over a year, believe it or not,” she said. She walked down the hall and pushed open a door at the far end, revealing a bathroom. “There you go,” she said.
She was right—in this house, there was no evidence of her existence, which had to be jarring for her. I could only imagine, as a therapist, what she would make of this.
When I returned from the bathroom, Grace was staring out the front window, behind the tilted blinds. She was standing so still, I imagined something out there: a car, parked behind mine; a person, creeping closer.
“You don’t think someone followed us?” I asked, standing just behind her, nervous to check.
“No, but we’re definitely being watched.” She beckoned me closer, then laughed. On the other side of the street, an older couple walking a tiny poodle was examining my car carefully.
“I should get going,” I said, shoulders relaxing. “Take care, Grace.”
She pulled me tight then, like we always did at the end, overcome with relief. She smelled like the minty shampoo from the hotel, but before we parted, I always pictured the same thing: that moment, huddled together on the road, in the headlights of the truck, when we were finally found.
Outside, the couple made no move to hide the fact that they were examining me as I approached.
“Hello!” I said, too cheerful. “Just visiting the Langlys.”
“They’re not home,” the woman said, frowning.
“No, I know. I’m a friend of their daughter’s.”
“Well, she doesn’t live here. What’s your name?”
“Cassidy,” I said.
“Cassidy what?”
“Cassidy Bent,” I said.
I saw her lips moving, repeating it to herself, as if it were meaningless. The names remembered around here were the ones we never mentioned, who never made it out. The names I imagined now on the plaques in the new library. Twelve chimes for the dead.
I slipped away, taking the speed bumps too quickly. Imagined myself slipping from her memory, just as fast.