“You know them?”
“Simmons, yes. Porter, no. I saw them driving up the road. Couldn’t get here in time to warn you but I was keeping an eye out.”
“I’m sure you were.” The possibility that Scotland knows about the girl—that maybe he knew about her before even Finch and me did—flickers through my mind. The spotting scope, the meticulous tracking of our whereabouts. Did he know where Casey Winters was? And if so, what was his game plan? And what if he were to end up trying to be a hero and leading the police right to me, after all this time?
I sit next to Finch and pull her closer.
“Marie talked to them, and then she went home,” she says. “We hid in the root cellar. The man was standing right over us. Snow dripped on us from his boot. They’re looking for that girl we saw in the woods. Remember? I told you. Down by the river.”
“I figured that’s what they were after.” Scotland wipes his brow with his shirt. “There’s an article in the paper. Front page. Her boyfriend says she was planning to run off to California. Wanting to get out from under her parents, apparently.” He shakes his head. “Kids.”
Finch frowns at this, then grabs the stack of newspapers and slides them closer. She stretches out on her stomach, leafing through. Walt Whitman climbs onto her back and settles there.
“Looks like Walt’s feeling at home here,” Scotland says.
Finch, absorbed in her reading, doesn’t even look up.
“Listen,” Scotland says. “They still haven’t found the girl. So you’re not in the clear yet. California or not, they’ll be looking for her, I bet. Place could get busy. I’d stick close to the cabin if I were you.”
* * *
Finch spends the next few hours poring through the papers, circling lines and photographs, jotting notes in her journal. Agitated, quiet. Later, I’m getting ready to sew the final square onto her quilt, a piece from a shirt with a rainbow and a unicorn that, for a long period of time, she insisted on wearing every single day. I had to wash it each night, hang it next to the woodstove to dry. Scotland’s warning on my mind, I step onto the porch, scanning the woods for movement, listening. It’s not quite dark, the sky flourishing pink and orange, the silhouettes of the trees leaning into the light. Everything quiet and still. I head back inside and settle on the couch. Cut the fabric and thread the needle. Finch sits at the table, the papers and journal spread out in front of her.
“Coop, that sheriff who came here?” she says, setting down her pencil. “We need to call him.”
“Sugar, we aren’t calling anyone.”
“But…” She rises. “They’re looking for her.”
“I know that.” My voice has an edge now, sharp and hot.
“And we saw her.”
“Once.”
“You saw her once.” She stares at her feet, voice quiet.
I wait.
“She was back, after that,” she says. “I went down there. On my own, after we saw her.”
I point to her, my hands shaking, and my voice, too. “Why would you do that?”
She balls the hem of her pajama top in her fist. “She’s my friend.”
“That girl is not your—” I pause, change my words. The sadness of it striking a nerve: for a person who has no friends, watching a girl in the woods—that would feel like friendship, maybe. “You don’t even know her, Finch.”
“I know her enough.”
“Did she see you?”
“No. Well, I’m not sure. Maybe. Actually, I think yes. Because—the last time, something happened. Someone else was there.”
“Someone else?” A menacing thought, a flash of terror: Scotland, snooping after all. Meddling, or something worse, and Finch as witness, and the trouble we are in if this is true because what are we gonna do about it? Report him? Avoid him?
Finch steps closer, holding out a newspaper. “Him.” She points to a photograph of a young man with brown, curly hair, standing next to Casey Winters. The two of them dressed up, like for a school dance or something. “And he’s lying.”
“Finch, you don’t know that.” She’s been wading into the Nancy Drews lately, and apparently they’re rubbing off on her.
“It said in the papers that he told the police she was going to California. Why would he tell them that? He knows where she is.”
She begins clenching the corner of the quilt, hand wrapped tight around an old onesie. There’s more, I can tell.