“Good to see you back here,” Rachel said, wiping her hands on her apron.
A stereo in the corner played a stream of classic rock. Saffy studied the room: ten tables with four chairs each, napkins and silverware laid out hopefully. She was the only customer. The Blue House was shaped like a regular middle-class home, once aspirational, now slightly unkempt. The downstairs had been gutted and transformed to fit an industrial kitchen—a staircase near the back led to a second level. The residence, Saffy guessed. As she burst the yolk with her fork, a low, grumbling laugh echoed from the backyard.
Out the window, Blue was climbing the splintered steps up the deck. She carried a toolbox, heavy in her arms, and she wore a T-shirt that read Tupper Lake Track & Field, her hair pulled into a messy ponytail. A pair of tiny denim shorts, plastic flip-flops clacking.
Behind her: a man. He was chuckling, voice low like thunder.
Ansel.
It was stunning, the moment of disbelief. Astonishment followed immediately by a roiling confusion. Saffy blinked hard, trying to understand—Ansel was not supposed to be here. He was supposed to be back in Vermont, reporting to work at the furniture store, sleeping in the sheets Jenny had left behind. He should not be here, pulling a tape measure from his pocket, running it along the dilapidated banister. He tugged a pencil from behind his ear, said something to Blue. Saffy could not hear their words, only the din of their conversation, relaxed and unworried.
That old, fluttering fear. Its wings, beating frantic.
“Everything okay?”
Rachel eyed Saffy’s plate of untouched eggs, a layer of film crusting over the goop.
“You’re doing construction?” Saffy asked, straining casual as she dug the side of her fork into the pancakes.
“Sort of,” Rachel said. “We’ve had a rough few years. We’ve got a friend helping out. We’ll have outdoor seating again soon.”
“Your daughter,” Saffy said. “She’s helping, too?”
A polite smile. A barely perceptible glint of suspicion.
“Remind me where you’re from?” Rachel set the coffeepot down on the table.
“Essex,” Saffy said, too quickly. “I’m here to hike.”
“Well,” Rachel said. “You’ve come to the right place.”
As Rachel launched into a description of the most popular hiking trails in the area, Saffy nodded along, one ear attuned to the sounds outside. Blue’s and Ansel’s laughter, humming easy through the glass.
“I’ll be back soon,” Saffy promised as she paid the bill. Rachel nodded, studying Saffy just a moment too long before she swiped the plate away, eggs congealed along the porcelain.
*
Tupper Lake was small. Pretty. It looked similar to the other half dozen towns that surrounded Lake Placid—Saffy drove slowly, studying the quaint, threadbare streets. The lake was a murky shade of algae-logged green, crumbling docks sinking into the water. There was a little library with a slanted roof, a middle school and high school combined. A museum, a McDonald’s, a Stewart’s gas station. A defunct ski mountain dotted with abandoned chairlifts. A squat little motel sat a few blocks from the Blue House—when she saw the truck, parked lazy in the lot, Saffy’s stomach dipped.
A muddy white pickup.
Ansel was staying.
There was more to this, Saffy knew, as she turned up the air conditioner, pulled her sweaty hair from her neck. Tupper Lake was part of the story that had obsessed her for years, haunting, inexplicable. It was Ansel’s story, it was Lila’s story—it was the story of Saffy’s own heart, that tangly, knotted thing.
*
What do you want, Saffron? Laurie had asked, in their session the week before.
The question was plain and direct. Saffy had blanched as Laurie peered out from beneath her low-perched glasses—a series of landscapes hung above her desk, sweeping fields and marshy ponds. They had been discussing Phillip, a pilot Saffy had dated the previous year. She’d broken it off when things got too serious, when he started grunting disappointed if her work phone rang after dinner.
You crave success at work, Laurie said, when the question had curdled. That much is obvious. But I’m interested in the things that live beneath that craving. A desire for acceptance? Admiration? Love?
I have plenty of love, Saffy had snapped. And it was true. She had Kristen and the boys, who flung themselves at Saffy’s waist when she arrived late on weeknights, toting boxes of Entenmann’s donuts. She had men like Phillip, or Brian, or Ramón from the Counterterrorism Unit, who came along occasionally, and did the things she asked. She had Corinne and her team of investigators. She had long nights solving puzzles. The sludge of police work felt bearable, through this lens: a love affair between herself and the truth. But that concept was becoming increasingly elusive. Saffy could not fathom the purpose of truth, if she could not trust it to prevail. It had started out so simple: Saffy wanted to catch bad men and put them away. But this was not love either. It was something hard, something angry—it was also the thing Saffy knew most intimately about herself.