A dress hung from the lowest branches of a tree, twisting and quivering in the breeze. It was strung up by its sleeves so that the empty fabric created the silhouette of a woman, headless and handless and limbless, shivering. The earth here was blackened and charred. There were no trees in this clearing, just the dark bones and stumps of burned trees. The smell of fire and ruin had reached me before I had a chance to guard myself. I didn’t even realize I was leaning over, heaving and coughing, until I felt Cate’s hand on my back and looked up, eyes watering, to see her high above me.
Tom was staying back, not venturing farther into the clearing, like he was afraid of contamination. Isabelle went to the dress and tore it down from the branches in one swift movement. One sleeve ripped slightly, leaving behind a trailing clump of threads. Isabelle held up the dress to her own body like she was trying it on. When she turned the dress around, there was a bloodstain near the waist, layers of maroon and brown, overlapping continents.
“We don’t know what happened here,” Tom said suddenly. His eyes were glassy, a strange cast to them. “We don’t know if this has anything to do with the Strouds. We just came to town.”
“What do you think happened?” Cate spat. “Somebody killed them. Someone hurt Vera and Delilah and then dragged them here. Maybe to burn them alive, or burn the evidence after the fact.”
“Just like there was a fire that killed Bellanger and Fiona,” I said. Bile collected at the back of my throat. “Just like the one at Cate’s house. Just like there was a fire that—” But I couldn’t complete the thought. My body folded in half, and I threw up again, grateful for the way the sensation took over my body. When I looked up again, the back of my throat as raw as a wound, Cate was staring into the trees.
Tom swallowed, scrubbed at his lower face with the back of his hand. “We need to tell somebody.” His voice cracked a little, but he was firm now. “We’ll go to the police. Whoever did this came to Kithira. Maybe people around here saw him. Maybe they met him. It’s a small place. We need to ask around, figure out who did this—”
“Coeur du Lac is also small,” I said. “Nobody saw who set the fire there.”
“This is different,” Tom said. “He’s left evidence behind.”
What if somewhere on the outskirts of Coeur du Lac, on the bank of some lonely reservoir or in the middle of an overgrown vacant lot, there was a spot like this? The remains of my mother.
“We aren’t going to the cops,” Cate said, low and vicious.
“But something’s wrong,” Tom said.
“This has been here awhile,” Cate said. “Why didn’t somebody see the smoke and investigate? Why didn’t anybody check on Vera and Delilah? I don’t see how something like this could’ve happened and then gone unnoticed for months.”
“What are you trying to say?” Tom had lost some of that stunned quality, his initial panic shape-shifting into denial.
Isabelle was still clinging to the white dress, running a hand over it now, the idle, soothing way she might touch a newborn baby or a small animal.
“I’m saying that it might not be that simple,” Cate said. “You think we’re about to catch the bad guy, but we can’t get reckless. We don’t know anything about Kithira or the people who live here.”
“This is our best chance to figure out who’s been targeting all of you,” Tom said. “This person is sick. He’s dangerous. We need all the help we can get.”
Cate’s expression didn’t change. She shook her head, mute. I could tell that Tom hadn’t convinced her, and my own disquiet was mounting. All the violence in my past had happened when I wasn’t looking, locked in a place beyond the reach of memory. This—the ashes, the blood—I couldn’t think straight.
It had dipped into evening now, the sun hot and golden all around us, the kind of brilliance that came on the very cusp of darkness. Tom spoke up again, and this time he was gentler: “I get your hesitation, Cate, I do. So I’ll take the lead. This is bigger than I realized. We need outside help.” He paused. “This could be the only way we find out what happened to Josie’s mother. I don’t want to get in the way of that. Do you?”
Cate inhaled as if he’d struck her. All three of them were looking at me now. “I don’t know,” I said, miserable with the choice. “I want to find whoever did this to the Strouds. Of course I do. And my mother—” I couldn’t even finish the sentence. I remembered Emily in the attic, the way she’d said that Tom would lead me to my mother. The simple comfort of that moment. “Tom’s right,” I said. “We can’t handle this by ourselves anymore. It’s too much.”