Abigail pressed her lips together and nodded. Mellie pushed a strand of her red hair behind an ear with one of her fingers. She had pale skin covered in freckles. Her eyebrows were so thin as to be almost nonexistent, and she had a deep groove from the top of her lip to the base of her nose. “Mellie,” Abigail said, when they were a few feet apart. “Did you hear about what happened last night?”
“Er, you mean what happened to you?”
“Yeah.”
“They woke us up early this morning and had us search the island. They said you saw a woman who appeared injured … is that right? … outside your bunk.”
“I saw Jill Greenly outside my bunk. She was bleeding all down her side, and then she ran into the woods.”
“I didn’t know it was Mrs. Greenly,” Mellie said, her thin nostrils flaring a little.
“Yes, it was definitely her, but then Chip Ramsay told me that she’d left the island yesterday. So I guess I was confused.”
“You’re not confused,” Mellie said, lowering her voice. Then she looked toward the door and added, “I shouldn’t be saying this, but she’s still on the island.”
“What?” Abigail said.
“Shhh. I’d lose my job if they knew what I was telling you. She’s here, and she’s not in danger. No, listen to me. The plane will come tomorrow. You just need to keep your head down until then and you’re going to be okay.”
“I don’t know what … Mellie, tell me what’s happening here.”
Mellie turned back and looked at the door again. Abigail glanced over her shoulder and saw Aaron come back into the office, his head down, reading something printed on a piece of paper. Mellie leaned in close and whispered, “Don’t trust your husband.”
CHAPTER 21
Abigail walked back down the stairway, then turned away from the lodge’s hall toward the tunnel Mellie had shown her earlier that led to the pool.
She needed a place to sit for a moment.
There was no one else around as she walked down the dingy hallway, and she was grateful. She didn’t know what she would do if Chip or even Bruce suddenly appeared. She’d probably scream.
She took the turn that brought her into the tunnel, darker than she remembered. She was scared, but she also didn’t want to go back through the lodge, risk running into someone she’d have to talk to. Her instinct was to run, but part of her knew that if she allowed herself to panic, she’d never stop. So she walked through the tunnel as calmly as possible, finally pushing through the double glass doors into the warm, chlorine-tinged air. She thought of going into the women’s changing room—she’d have it to herself —but she actually wanted to be outside instead, not closed in by walls. She walked past the entrance to the changing room and kept going. There was an unmarked door at the end of the hall, and she pulled it open, relieved to find that it led to the outside world. The cold air felt so good that she just stood for a moment with her back against the door and breathed in and out, even closing her eyes for a moment.
The slight breeze on the air carried voices that sounded as though they were coming from the front of the building. She couldn’t make out the words, just the deep jokey inflections of men talking, and Abigail cut around toward the back of the building, passing the bench and finding that the path continued past a cluster of what looked like spruce trees. She peered behind her to make sure no one could see that she was entering the woods, then kept walking along the path, now paved with flat rocks. She came to a wooden sign nailed into the side of a tree. Carved into the sign were the words silvanus woods, and there was an etching of a man’s face, ringed with ornate leaves, designed as though they were growing from his skin. The sign itself looked old—it was speckled in places with dark green lichen—but the nails that held it to the tree looked new. The name Silvanus rang a faint bell in her head—she’d taken Latin in high school and remembered enough to wonder if Silvanus was some sort of Roman god.
She took a few steps past the sign, enough to see that there was a clearing up ahead. She felt trapped, not really wanting to see what was there—her mind conjuring the image of Jill, blood spilling down her side—and not wanting to turn back. She moved tentatively ahead, said, “Hello?” in what she hoped was a normal voice. If there was someone in the woods, she definitely did not want to be surprised by them.
No one answered, and she stepped into the circular clearing. At the middle was a firepit ringed with blackened stones, and a little farther out a circle of benches, crudely fashioned from logs. Abigail found a place to sit that gave her a view of the path back toward the resort, so that she could see if anyone was coming. Despite the sign with the strange face on it, she felt temporarily safe here.