Page 18 of Cut Off from Sky and Earth
She scoffs. “It was one helluva storm. It hit in the middle of March. Hurricanes and tornadoes and even a dusting of snow down in Florida. They got fifty inches of snow over in Mt. Mitchell. More than that in Tennessee. The whole East Coast got hit, all the way up to Canada.”
I don’t care about a storm that’s older than I am, not even a little. But she’s waiting for a response, so I say, “Wow.”
Satisfied, she hands me my receipt, and I jog back to the car.
I steer one-handed through the lot while I devour the bar and wash it down with the canned coffee. The caffeine and dense bar won’t do my stomach any favors but it should help me focus. I pull out and get stuck behind a logging truck chugging along at twenty miles an hour with its heavy load. There’s not a passing zone on this stretch of road, and I’ve seen the aftermath of too many head-on collisions to do anything risky. I settle in for a slow ride.
My thoughts return to the latest stabbing—less than a mile from the house that I vowed Emily would feel safe in. I need to camp out in the lab until I find the evidence that connects this new victim—a twenty-one-year-old ballet dancer named Giselle Ward—to Cassie’s murder. They’re connected, there’s no doubt about that. The only question is whether the evidence will show it.
What about the attack on Alex?
Should I try to get the cold case files from her attempted murder, too? I know without having to check any databases that the case is unsolved. I wonder for the first time how much evidence the Windy Rock police actually collected, and what state it will be in now—twenty-one years later.
The logging truck’s right turn signal blinks and I mutter a thank you to the Universe. The trucker comes to a complete stop before turning. I bite back an oath, but then he’s gone. I accelerate to seven miles over the speed limit when I see the sign for the interstate on-ramp.
As I merge onto I-81, the radio signal strengthens and a whiskey-voiced deejay repeats the gas station cashier’s warning about the storm system that’s forming:
Could be a big one, folks. We’ll know more in another day or two. Meteorologist Chaz Thunder will have more at the top of the hour.
I’m doubly glad now that Emily doesn’t have a cell signal or internet access. Storms freak her out—especially this time of year. Hearing that a major storm is forming while she’s alone in the cabin would send her into a tailspin.
I don’t know if she’s ever made the connection: The night she found Cassie’s body, there’d been violent storms—rain, not snow—but enough to flood the side roads and knock out a power station or two. This line of thought leads me to wonder if Alex Liu has a PTSD response to storms. I know for a fact that a huge nor’easter hit the coast of Maine the night she was attacked.
A buzz in my brain tells me that I’ve just had an important insight. What, though? I concentrate harder, but no clarity comes. After a long moment, I shrug. Must’ve been the coffee, not an epiphany.
Eleven
Alex
* * *
I make it back to the farmhouse without crashing the truck into a tree or passing out behind the wheel. No small feat, I assure you. My heart is palpitating, my palms are sweating and I can barely breathe. If I wasn’t sure this is a stress response, I’d be convinced I’m having a heart attack. But I’m not. My past has finally caught up with me.
I kill the engine and slump in the driver’s seat. How could I have been so stupid? I should have listened to the whispered warning my brain gave me when my search revealed the Roses as social media ciphers. Who are they, really? It can’t be a coincidence that someone from Windy Rock rented my cabin, out of all of the cabins in the world.
I scrub my hands over my face and drop my forehead into the heels of my palms, trying to think of a way out of this. Nothing comes to mind, and it’s getting cold in the cab with the heat turned off. So I drop the key into my pocket and hop out of the truck. I land on the hard ground with a thud that jars my teeth. The sensation knocks me out of my rumination and back into the real, present world. It’s a welcome intrusion, and, as I jog to the porch, I promise myself I’ll figure something out. Don’t I always?
Safely inside, I lock the door and secure the deadbolt. Then, I do a full circuit of every floor of the house, including the basement and the attic. I check the locks on every window, the kitchen door, and the bulkhead door that leads from the back porch to the cellar. Once I’m satisfied that nobody’s getting in, I put the kettle on. But before the water can even get hot, I switch off the burner. I need coffee, not tea. Strong coffee that will help me stay awake to ward off the nightmares that the topic of Windy Rock always brings.
While the coffee percolates, I turn on the radio. Maybe music will drive the dark thoughts out of my mind. Then I head into the spare bedroom behind the living room. It’s drafty and sparsely furnished. I don’t often have overnight guests in the main house. The last time someone slept in here was three Easters ago, when Robert’s sister and her husband came East for a visit. The room smells like camphor and dust.
I flick on the lamp that sits on the dresser and cross the room to the closet. There’s a light in here, too. A bare bulb screwed into the ceiling. I pull the chain and blink at the brightness. Once my eyes adjust, I stretch up onto my tiptoes and feel around beneath the neat pile of quilts stacked on the shelf above the hanging rack until my hand connects with the cold metal of the crowbar. I heft it down then drag the old footlocker out of the closet so I can pry up the loose floorboard underneath—the one Robert doesn’t know about. I ease the plank aside and remove the metal lockbox that’s been nestled under the floor undisturbed since the weekend we moved in.
I leave the closet in a state of disarray and carry the box out to the kitchen. After I deposit it on the kitchen table, I pour a cup of coffee and roll my neck from side to side, staring at the damned thing like I’m waiting for it to jump off the table.
“Pull it together,” I say aloud, cringing at the harshness of my own voice against the forgettable pop music playing in the background.
I take a big gulp of coffee, scalding my tongue in the process, and square my shoulders. Then I dig my keys out of my jeans pocket and flip through the ring until I find the small silver key that unlocks the box. I pretend my hands aren’t shaking as I insert the key and unlock my memories.
First out of the box is the 1998 Windy Rock School yearbook. In a town the size of Windy Rock, back then, there was one school for kindergarten through twelfth grade. Two hundred and twenty kids ranging in age from five to eighteen in one building. Average class size of eighteen students, one class per grade. It was as suffocating as it sounds. But it also means the yearbook contains the photograph of every school-aged kid on the peninsula. If Tristan Rose lived there the year I graduated, he’ll be in the yearbook. If he’s old enough. I frown. I’m not sure of his age, but he looks to be around thirty. He might be just a hair too young.
I shrug and open the book, turning to a page in the front where a gaggle of gap-toothed kindergarteners smile at me. A quick scan of the three rows of six names confirms there’s no Tristan. I close the book with a loud snap and take another, more cautious sip of coffee. I set the yearbook aside and lift a yellow-orange Kraft envelope out of the box. I pry open the metal clasp with my fingernail and remove the bundle of yellowing newspaper clippings. They’re held together with a rotting rubber band that snaps apart when I unwind it. I toss it in the trash and stare down at the reports of my attempted murder.
The local press coverage was surprisingly circumspect. The first three articles referred to me only as the “unnamed victim who fought off her attacker.” Later, someone in the police department leaked my name, but the truth is they didn’t need to: everyone already knew who’d been attacked. The whisper network spread my name all over town before I even regained consciousness. I was life-flighted to the medical center in Bangor, one county over, and Bangor’s newspaper took a more sensational angle. Headlines like “Terror in a Small Town,” “Stabbing Victim Fights for Her Life,” and “Killer at Large in Coastal Community” flash by as I flip through the reports and force back the bile rising in my throat.
The scar that runs on a jagged diagonal from my sternum to my belly button throbs. I know my mind has created the sensation: the scar tissue is over twenty years old. It’s not throbbing. But the phantom feeling tells me this was a bad idea. I shove the articles back into the box and grab the yearbook. I’m about to toss it on top when I think to check the alphabetical index of student names in the back of the book, just in case Tristan is older than he looks. Roberts, Roman, Russell. No Rose. I close the book, return it to the box, and lock it up.
After I return it to its spot under the loose floor board and put the closet back together, I head back to the kitchen to refill my mug. I should eat something. The acid from the coffee and the acid already swirling in my gut are guaranteed to give me a stomachache if I don’t. I grab a box of crackers and the tomato jelly I canned last fall and boot up the computer.
