She can hear footsteps now: the young woman returning with John Paul. She wonders how much he’ll remember about last night. On other occasions, following a fight, he has been remorseful, conciliatory, swearing off drinking for a time before returning to it with fervor the moment he reunites with friends from school.
She hopes that this morning is no different. She hopes he’ll feel guilty about last night, rather than enraged.
But when the footsteps down the hallway crescendo and then stop, she sees it is not John Paul Jr. who has returned.
It’s John Paul’s father instead.
Mr. McLellan looks worried, pale, much different from how he was the last time she saw him, over a year ago now: then he had been tipsy, pink-faced, swilling strong drinks at a restaurant John Paul had chosen. It had been clear to Louise, upon their arrival, that the McLellans had not been expecting her. She had believed that the purpose of the dinner was to announce the news of their engagement, but it had not come up at all, and they had fought about it on the way home. The father had been all right on that occasion—nicer than the wife and sister, at least. She recalls that the McLellans had talked the whole time about politics—something Louise knows something about, actually. Something she even has strong opinions about. But no one had asked.
Today, standing before her, Mr. McLellan shows no recognition on his face. His expression is entirely blank.
“Mr. McLellan,” Louise begins. And fumbles for words.
“Go on,” says John Paul’s father, distractedly. “May I help you?”
“I’m not sure if you remember me,” says Louise. “I’m—I know John Paul.”
Mr. McLellan looks at her, head tilted slightly. Trying and failing to place her. And then, after a moment, his expression changes.
“Oh, Christ,” says Mr. McLellan. Lowly enough so that only she can hear him. “Are you the reason he’s gone?”
Louise blinks. “Gone?” she says. But Mr. McLellan ignores her.
“Were you with him?” he asks.
At this she hesitates—not out of fear so much as uncertainty.
“Sort of. Briefly.”
Mr. McLellan looks impatient.
“Here’s what I know,” he says. “He looked like hell when he came through the door in the middle of the night. The rest of us were sitting up talking in the great room when he came in: face beaten within an inch of his life. He was bleeding from his lip. He said something about a girl—that’s you, I presume—and stumbled down the hallway. Drunk as hell.”
Mr. McLellan shakes his head, disgusted. “In front of all our friends, this happened. Then this morning, he was gone. No sign of him or his car.”
Mr. McLellan looks at her as if waiting for an apology. When none is issued, he continues.
“Is there anything I should know about last night? If there is, you need to tell me. Quickly.”
“No,” says Louise. “I mean, not really. We had an argument. He—”
She pauses, choosing her words. Threatened me, she wants to say. “He was angry with me. My friend had to—step in. That’s how John Paul got hurt.”
“Your friend,” says Mr. McLellan. Regarding her.
“I don’t know where John Paul went,” says Louise. “I came here to find him. To talk to him. I had no idea he was gone.”
Mr. McLellan nods slowly. His eyes, Louise notices, are much like John Paul’s: a very light green, beautiful in sunlight. But Mr. McLellan’s, that morning, are shot through with red veins that seem to be increasing in number as their conversation goes on.
“Do you know what this looks like,” he says to Louise. His voice is low and vicious. “That he’s gone now. Do you understand what this looks like, with Barbara gone too?”
She does. For Louise has been thinking it also.
Denny is clearing his throat loudly now, ready to go.
Mr. McLellan moves as if to turn back inside, but stops.
“Are they taking you in for something?” he says.
“Yes,” says Louise.
“What is it?”
“Drugs,” says Louise. “But they weren’t mine.”
For an instant, the fleeting hope that Mr. McLellan might offer her some counsel crosses her mind.
But Mr. McLellan only takes a step backward, into the shadows of the house, as if being pulled inside by an invisible force.
“Best of luck,” he says, and turns, and lets the door swing closed behind him.
Tracy
1950s | 1961 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975: Day One
The stranger doesn’t speak. The stranger stands thirty feet away. Without Tracy’s glasses, everything beyond twenty is a blur.
“Hello?” Tracy says.
But the figure before her says nothing. Instead, it holds a finger up to its lips, and then gestures once—a beckoning wave—and then begins to walk silently in the direction from which it apparently came.
Its silver hair glints in the scant light that filters through the trees above. The way it moves is ghostlike, and for a moment Tracy is reminded of Scary Mary—one of the legendary ghosts on the Preserve—who is always described in this way. A gray-haired lady, standing still in the woods. Campers report seeing her only from a distance; then she moves on.
The problem with this theory is that this stranger walks, in Tracy’s mind, more like a man than a woman.
The stranger turns and waits. For a moment, Tracy considers staying in place. But her hunger and thirst make the decision for her. She moves instead in the stranger’s direction.
• • •
They walk for perhaps twenty minutes, Tracy trailing behind. Whether the figure ahead of her is leading her to safety or danger, she doesn’t know.
And then she sees a clearing through the trees, and suddenly she is oriented again.
The stranger points silently in the direction of Self-Reliance, and then recedes into the wild again.
• • •
There, ahead of Tracy: a swarm of activity on the lawn. All of the police cruisers that crossed her path as she was setting out that morning are parked now at odd angles on the lawn, along with four pickup trucks, an ambulance. Tracy wonders if there’s any chance that—in the hubbub surrounding Barbara’s disappearance—her own absence has gone unnoticed. With this in mind, she turns south and begins to walk in the direction of Camp Emerson. She keeps her head down, picks up her pace.
