Chapter 5

She walked ahead. I followed.

The path got narrower and the brush got thicker and something in the air started to change.

My stomach turned.

I repeated it to myself, over and over.

I would rather she had something going on with my husband.

I would rather she had betrayed me.

I would rather she had run off with Ethan.

Anything.

As long as she was alive.

Anything.

The girl stopped.

She turned and looked at me. Her face had gone pale.

"Ma'am."

"What is it?"

"That place." She swallowed. Her voice was almost nothing. "It smells bad."

I didn't keep walking.

I understood what that meant. And I knew that if I went down there alone and found something, it wouldn't count for anything.

I needed professionals.

I needed it on record.

I took the girl's hand and walked her back to the road, then pulled out my phone and called the local police.

It took two tries to get through.

I explained everything.

"You're saying your friend might be at the bottom of a slope?"

"Yes. Her phone and bag were found there by a child. She's been missing for a month. Please just send someone."

They said they would.

It would take time.

I hung up and called a search and rescue team. I'd looked them up before I flew out. There was a volunteer group in the Harlow, Montana area that worked with police on searches in rough terrain.

The rescue team said they could be there by afternoon.

Waiting was the hardest part.

I sat on a rock at the edge of the road and held Lily's bag and didn't move.

I opened it and took out the photo.

The two of us standing outside our dorm building on graduation day, in our caps and gowns, arms around each other, laughing.

Lily was making a heart with her fingers.

We were twenty-two years old.

Lily was my roommate all four years of college.

Across from me. She slept on the left, I slept on the right, and every night we'd talk across the gap between our beds until two or three in the morning.

About the future. About gossip. About boys we liked. About what we thought our lives would look like.

On the last night of graduation, there was a party in someone's dorm. We slipped out to the fire escape with two beers and sat there looking up at the sky.

That was the night she came up with James Miller.

"Everly, let's make a code."

"If one of us ever gets into trouble, the other one hears that name and knows it's time to act."

I told her she was being dramatic.

But I remembered it.

I thought I'd never need it.

Now I was sitting in the dirt outside Harlow with her bag in my hands, waiting for a search team to come find her body.