13.

Kerry

February 2, 2023

2:16 p.m.

In a drawer of the motel’s front desk, I found a tangle of cords, messed up together like electronic spaghetti: iPhone chargers, micro USB, USB-C, all the sorts of connections that the modern world demands we have. I pushed the knot aside, looking for power packs or backup batteries, my fingers brushing against a file folder instead, Applicants written in Sharpie across the front.

My eyebrows narrowed, and I pulled it out, setting it on the desk and opening it.

I found a printout of an Instagram profile, a man’s handle and photo, a few lines about him—IT guy working on my first screenplay in Queens—and next to that his stats, following and followers, the latter number, a little more than thousand, circled in red, a large X next to it.

There was a woman on the next page. Maybe early twenties. Brooklyn-based YA fantasy writer. Equal parts sweet and sarcastic. #AmWriting she/her/hers. Next to her numbers, a bit more substantial than the guy’s, were handwritten notes in red: Too young? Not yet published but has an agent. Very pretty.

My stomach turned, and I flipped another page.

A picture of bright-orange dyed hair, the face mostly obscured. Handle: MissMaryMac06. Name: McKenzie Rivers. About the same number of followers as the previous woman. Only next to hers, written in caps and underlined so hard it partially tore the paper: NO.

Flipped again, and there was Siobhan, her name and handle, her bio—“Promising film student” turned Reel-maker extraordinaire. Jersey girl in Brooklyn. Will stop to pet dogs.

Siobhan’s healthy follower count was circled. Her Reels—mainly just her being Siobhan in the city, had always done well enough. She was so damn good at making them but had no interest in becoming an influencer. She just liked to capture what she saw. Hell, I was the one who had told her that her follower count had surpassed ten thousand. She hadn’t even noticed. Beneath her stats, more handwritten notes, bulleted this time:

Again, my stomach soured, and another wave of grief—of guilt—took me over, bringing fresh tears to my eyes. It was awful to see Siobhan like this, reduced to what I assumed was Maisy’s note-taking. Siobhan was dead now. Siobhan had come here to make something and been killed, and this was all she was to Maisy, the woman who’d triggered the first domino to put it all in motion? No more than numbers and avatars, quippy little words in a character-count-limited bio. It was sick. Twisted.

My vision blurred again, because I couldn’t believe she was gone. I couldn’t believe this was it for her.

I brushed my tears aside and continued flipping through a few more pages, a few more equally nauseating notes, and then there was mine.

The profile picture, one that Frank had captured candidly one morning, me looking over the top of my MacBook, coffee on one side, a notepad on the other. “This should be your author photo,” he’d said a bit naively. “It’s so author-y!” That was back before the big book deal. Back when Frank was my biggest—and only—fan. I remember thinking that if I ever got a deal, no way would that be my author photo—I’d get a professional one—but what I loved about that moment was the way Frank just treated it as a fait accompli. Next to that were the numbers that had exploded after The New Yorker story had taken off and beneath it all the grid of photos that made it seem like nothing about me was a lie.

My page was scrawled with notes.

So here it was, not only Maisy’s but in a way the world’s assessment of me. It was wild, seeing it like this, because it had all seemed so important. My agent had gone on and on about how the numbers boded well for the book doing well, too (if I could ever finish it, that was), and yet now it all seemed so frivolous. It was a lie, through and through. Nothing about this was what my life felt like.

You only got one life, after all, and in the end, did any of this matter? Had any of this protected Siobhan? Saved her from a horrible fate that no one deserved, least of all her…

Crack!

I jolted at the sound, followed by a clear, thundering thump coming from outside. I looked up, through the wide picture window, saw a flood of white thudding against the patio, powdery flakes ballooning out, like a full bag of flour dropped on a bakery’s floor. A mass of snow, right where the patio had only moments before been protected. Was the motel’s roof caving in? Was this place going to fall apart around me, crumble under the weight of snow, yet another thing going wrong?

Another crack, and I rushed for the door, tugged it open, burst out onto the patio, looked up to see, just as I had suspected, the awning split like a seam of a too-tight pair of pants, buckling under the snow, shingles and wood and sheetrock buckling and breaking apart, falling to the ground like confetti, creating a clear chasm, one you could see right through up to the sky.

Not wanting to be crushed, I stepped away, out of the danger zone, but when I looked forward once again, there she was, staring at me.

She was only about ten feet away, and in the bright sunlight, the reflection of the blankets of white snow, I could see her so clearly.

A woman—no, a girl. Not even twenty, if I had to guess. With stick-straight icy-blond hair that hung limp across her shoulders. A faded and ragged red wool coat, the middle toggle buttons missing. Combat boots laced halfway up her calves. Piercing blue eyes trained unflinchingly on me.

“Who are you?” I asked, pressure building in my chest. “What are you doing here?”

My words seemed to break the spell, the trance she’d been in, because she turned, bolting across the snow, gait long, running as quickly as she could in her clunky boots.

“Wait,” I said. On instinct, I chased her, needing to know who she was, why she’d been standing there, out in the parking lot, staring at me.

Almost like she’d been waiting.

The girl was too quick—so much younger than me, so much faster.

“Wait!” I said again, forcing myself forward, through the drifts, across the parking lot. She was heading toward the road, but what then? She couldn’t possibly have a car—I would have seen it, wouldn’t I? “Please just wait!”

The girl scrambled out into the road. I followed, lungs sucking in bitterly cold air, my chest already heaving. Snow, cold and icy against a bit of exposed skin on my legs.

What if she needed help? What if she was stuck out here, too? What if I had scared her off? What if we could somehow aid each other?

“Please just wait! I don’t want to hurt you!”

At the road, she turned to the right, the opposite direction that I’d gone this morning, not toward Denise’s house, not toward the track marks from the cops’ utility vehicles. She jetted off even faster now that she was on flatter, more even ground, leaving huge footprints in the unblemished snow. I chased her as best I could, but it was no use. Hers was the run of someone desperate and young.

The run of someone guilty? Could this girl have had something to do with what happened to Siobhan? Was she even strong enough to drag a body into that horrible freezer?

“Hold on!” I called again, throwing myself into a run, pushing with all the energy I had left.

And then something in the road stopped me—an errant rock? refuse tossed out the window of a car?—and I tumbled face-first, my hands only barely reaching out in time to catch my fall. I wasn’t even wearing gloves—those had been left somewhere back in the office—and the shock of the snow was hard and biting, followed by a searing chill on my face.

Pain and cold, all over my body. I tried to push myself up, struggled.

Move, Kerry, Imaginary Frank encouraged me. You got this. Find the strength.

The pain was in my wrists, my knees, and snow covered my eyes, blinding, but I managed to scramble up, push it all away, finally see clearly.

When I did, the girl was completely out of sight. I followed her tracks about a hundred more feet, to where they disappeared into the thick brush of the woods. I was about to turn back when I saw another driveway up ahead.

And at the top of the driveway, a mailbox.

A line of footprints caught my eye—they were different from the girl’s, which headed into the woods before they reached the turnoff. No, these came from whatever house was back there, meandered down the curving driveway and up to the mailbox, as if someone had come out to check the mail before turning back around.

My heart leapt. If someone else was here—right here, all along—that meant help, potentially. Answers, even. To who that girl was and what she was doing. About Denise and whether I could trust her. Maybe even about Siobhan and what had happened on her last days on earth.

It meant I wouldn’t have to be alone in this.

It also means another suspect. Another person who could have killed Siobhan. You have to be careful, Kerry. You have to slow down.

Quieting Frank, I took a step forward, walking onto the long, winding driveway.

Someone lived here; the footprints proved it.

Someone who could help me—who could hurt me, too.

But it was someone, at least, and I knew I had to try.