The battery icon flashes 10 percent when I plug my phone into the charger.
I reach into the back seat and pull the shoebox onto my lap. The cardboard has that papery crackle from years in the attic, and it smells faintly of mildew. Inside, the broken heel rattles—the only piece of evidence I have, the only thing left after twenty-five years.But proof of what, exactly? I think of Kennedy Claire’s perfumed hug today. I think of her fingertip spreading cream blush onto the apples of my cheeks on my wedding day.
The storm groans around me, rocking the car. I check my phone again: 12%. For a second, I wish I had Ben’s phone number. Ridiculous. But I can’t help picturing him and Mabel in that trailer, the thin metal walls the only barrier between them and this storm.
The governor of Texas has declared a state of disaster in all 254 counties. That’s what they’ve been saying, whenever anyone is able to pull up a bit of news. The entire state’s power grid has gone down—ice on machinery, disruptions to natural gas supplies, an unprecedented increase in demand—our state’s own little isolated power grid, disconnected from the national grids. A landlocked island. I peer up through the windshield and try to imagine it. More than a quarter million square miles, from El Paso to Beaumont. From space, we’d look like a big black hole.
A knock on the passenger window makes me jump. A man, bundled up in a jacket and scarf, stands outside my car, pulls once on the locked handle, then again, harder. That panic from before slams back into me. My hand flies to the gear shift, my foot bracing over the gas. Then a gloved hand wipes away the snow, and Travis Magnuson’s face appears, blurred behind the glass.
I exhale, hand to my chest, and I feel my heart racing beneath my fingertips. I reach across and pop the lock. He climbs in, clapping his hands together, shaking off snow. “Hell of a storm,” he says, breath clouding in the cold air. “Saw you come out here. Wanted to check on you.” He takes off his gloves and rubs his palms near the vents. “Mind if I—” He picks up my extra cord, plugs in his own phone, and sets it on the dash. The screen glows, but it’s tilted away from me.
I wait for my pulse to steady, watch the wipers in their futile sweep across the windshield.
“I heard they found your sister in The Hollow,” he says gently. “Are you okay?”
His tone is kind. Earnest. And, to be honest, I kind of appreciate the candor. Everyone keeps hedging around the point.How have you been holding up?Kennedy Claire asked, without actually saying what we both knew was wrong.
“No,” I admit.
Travis nods, turning his body toward me. “When my granddad died, we spread his ashes in Cataract Lake. That’s where he always took us fishing. It was his favorite place in the world.” He says it with a happy fondness, then his brow furrows. “I don’t even know if it was legal for us to do that,” he says, like it’s just now occurring to him.
I’m surprised to find myself breathing out a laugh along with him.
“You told me Izzy always wanted to travel, right? Maybe now, you could take her with you. Leave a piece of her in every place she wanted to see.”
I swallow, caught off guard. I hardly even remember telling him that. But he remembered. The thought touches something tender in me.
He nods at the box in my lap. “What’s in there?”
I should say nothing. I should lie. But Travis has a way of lowering my guard. He’s the only one who knows about Joel, about my marriage falling apart. The only one I’ve trusted with pieces I’ve told no one else. Maybe it’s because he’s so open himself, so genuine when he talks. Maybe it’s because he’s a stranger, really, someone I know won’t be around forever. Because when you’re honest with the people you love, you could hurt them, and they could hurt you.
So what the hell.
I open the lid, show him the broken heel, and I tell him—about the betrayal I feel, my doubts about Kennedy Claire, how I don’t know what to believe anymore. He listens without interrupting, his face open, patient. When I finish, he says quietly, “You should talk to her.”
And I know he’s right.
“Ready to head back in?” he asks.
I hover my hands over the vents one more time, soaking up the warmth, then kill the engine. I’m about to reach for the handle when he pulls his phone from the dash. For a second, the screen tilts my way, and I see the voice memo app that’s been recording this whole time.
CHAPTER SEVENTYSARAH LYNN
All the Lone Star girls are hanging out together in the very center of the Events Hall, sitting in a circle, knees pulled up to our chests, around a space heater like it’s a campfire. We’ve gathered ourselves as far as we can from the windows. Because of the cold that emanates from them, but also because of Sabrina, who insisted she saw Abel Sherman lurking around like some kind of walking dead. We’re keeping eyes on each other, going to the bathroom in pairs.
All the girls except Olivia, who is still hidden away in that room. I keep thinking I hear her crying again, like that Poe story we read in American Lit last year, “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
Kayden and Billy and Teddy found a deck of cards, but no one knows how to play anything, and it’s not like we can look up the rules on our phones. The internet barely loads, and our parents don’t want us wasting the batteries anyway.In case of emergencies. As if things could get any worse.
So Billy has resorted to performing magic tricks, which has the girls falling all over him in a new way. Hannah should be annoyed, but she’s as distracted as I am.
She nudges me, her hand tugging at the drawstring of the hoodie she’s thrown over her dress. “We have to tell someone,” she whispers.
I nod, but my throat feels tight. My hands are buried in my jacket pockets.
Between my fingers, like a fidget spinner, I turn the SD card over and over in my pocket.
Yesterday, after Olivia told us about the videos her mom had of The Hollow, she gave us the key code to the front door. Olivia stayed behind at the Amenity Center to keep an eye on her mom, while Hannah and I slipped away, hoods pulled tight, the mist beading on our sleeves. Inside, the model home was too quiet and reeked of floral air freshener. We split up, Hannah veering toward the office, while I rummaged through drawers in the kitchen. Then I spotted the trail cam, just sitting right there on the coffee table, out in the open. My heartbeat ratcheted up when I yanked the SD card out and shoved it in my pocket.Hannah, I hissed.Let’s go.