Page 91 of Our Last Resort

Gabriel dropped to the floor. He raked his grimy fingers through his hair.

“We didn’t know,” he said finally.

But I kind of did.

And you should have, too.

You had the same information I did.

Gabriel must have followed the same train of thought. Quickly, he switched gears.

“What she did to you,” he said.

“It wasn’t—”

“I know. But I can’t forget.”

He picked up the paper again, went back to the article.

“I just can’t,” he said.

“It was Émile.”

“It was both of them.”

I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell Gabriel that this was not his pronouncement to make. That what had happened belonged to me.

Gabriel would never understand it, that thing I shared with Edwina—a dark, confused intuition. I’d hated her, but I’d alsoknown that we did what Émile asked of us. We, the girls, the women.

It would have been so easy to convince myself that, in her place, I would have been better. That I would have drawn a line. That I would have refused to hold down another girl, to pin her to Émile’s bed.

But I knew. I just knew.

Whatever culpability she held, whatever she had done—if Émile had asked, I would have done it, too.

32Escalante, Utah

The Seventh Day

Leon parks outside the police station. Inside, it’s stuffy and quiet. It reminds me of a TV show I watched a few years ago, an eccentric detective investigating the death of a girl, a too-nice receptionist putting out doughnuts for the men.

I follow Harris as he trades greetings with a couple of colleagues—a raised hand, a quick nod. He leads me to a small, drab room, bare walls, carpet, a table and two chairs. Not too different from the one in which I spoke to the New Jersey cops, after they found Annie’s body.

Harris gestures for me to sit. He settles on the other side of the table and produces a small tape recorder, into which he speaks the date and time and my name.

“So,” he says. “Can you tell me how you came to be in possession of Sabrina Brenner’s phone?”

Not necessarily where I thought we’d start, but sure. I don’t mind talking about the phone. If anything, I was a model citizen, with the phone. Confronting a coyote to retrieve evidence.

I tell Harris about the desert, the coyote, my shoe.

“When I came back to the hotel, I looked for you,” I say. Heraises a skeptical eyebrow. “I did! But I couldn’t find you, so I gave it to Deputy Calhoun instead.”

Harris nods. He takes a sip from a paper cup of water that I didn’t notice when we first sat down.

I’m parched.

“Could I get some water, too?” I ask.

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