“What are you saying?” Parth asks.
“Sabrina didn’t run because she doesn’t want you,” I say. “She ran because she’s scared that, in the end, she won’t be worth chasing.”
Parth’s eyes lock onto mine, his face slackening as he takes it in. “Shit.” He scrambles to his feet. “We need to find her.”
“We will,” I promise.
* * *
? ? ?
CLEO AND KIMMY have just gotten back from their massages when we reach the house. They haven’t heard from Sabrina either, and after we all take turns calling and texting her to no avail, we accept that we’re going to have to look for her.
“You two were supposed to spend the morning together,” Cleo points out. “What were you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Parth says. “She’d planned it all, and there were no details on the itinerary.”
“No address?” Wyn asks.
Parth stares at him. “Oh, yeah, there was an address, but how could that possibly benefit us?” he deadpans. “No, nothing! For all I know, she left in the middle of the night. For all I know, she’s lying in a hospital bed right now!”
“We’ll find her,” Wyn says. “Don’t assume the worst.”
“This is my fault,” Parth says. “I was upset about how everything went down last night, and I blamed her. Like I hadn’t been totally on board. I was, completely, and when it blew up, I turned it around like I’d had nothing to do with it, and now she’s gone.”
Cleo’s eyes go distant as she retreats into thought. “We need to be logical here.”
“You’re gonna hate this,” Wyn says, facing Parth, “but what if we called her family?”
“There’s no way she’d go to them,” Parth says. “She hardly tells them anything. I mean, my family’s already planning a blowout wedding, and hers doesn’t even know we’re engaged yet.”
“Then we’ll look around town,” Cleo says.
“We’ll find her,” Kimmy promises, rubbing Parth’s shoulder.
“We should split up,” I say.
Wyn and Parth take the Land Rover. Cleo and I use her station wagon. Kimmy hangs back in case Sabrina shows up at the house.
Most of the places we frequent on these trips are downtown, but there are also some beaches and parks worth checking, along with a couple of other towns we occasionally visit.
But when we reach Bernie’s—packed, thanks to the sunshine and the fact that it’s Lobster Fest weekend—I realize a part of me was banking on finding her here, sipping coffee and watching seagulls fight over hash browns on the patio.
“We should ask the host,” Cleo says, “in case they’ve seen her.”
But they haven’t. Though, to be fair, the streets are so packed with face-painted, ice-cream-cone-eating tourists that, for once, it’s actually feasible that Sabrina could blend in with a crowd.
We check the Roxy Theater, ask the ticket agent （today in a porkpie hat） whether he’s seen her, and when he refuses to answer with anything other than a shrug, we each buy a ticket and split up inside to check both theaters. Not there either.
We check Murder, She Read; the wharf; and the Lobster Hut, as well as the Lobster Hut’s heavily graffitied bathrooms. We even check the tattoo shop on the very off chance that she’s enacting some small rebellion and getting her own wicked pissah tattoo. She’s nowhere to be found, and our next call goes straight to voicemail.
“She must’ve let her phone die,” Cleo says.
“That’s not like her,” I say.
“You think she was lying about hotels being booked up?” Cleo says. “Could she have checked in somewhere?”
I pull up a search for available rooms in the area. Nary a hotel, motel, bed-and-breakfast, or hostel available in sight.
The group text chimes with a text, and we both jump.
It’s only Wyn, whose number I’d unblocked again. Any luck? he writes.
None. You? I ask.
Parth’s really worried, Wyn replies. He’s going to call hospitals. Just to be sure.
My stomach flips. Keep us posted.
You too, he says.
Cleo’s nose wrinkles as she scans our list. “That’s all the usual spots. She wouldn’t . . . be reckless enough to sail off by herself, would she?”
The blood rushes out of my stomach. “She’s a pretty confident sailor,” I say. “And I think sailing is sort of her happy place. It makes her think of her mom and when . . .”
“Harry?” Cleo says. “What is it?”
“Her mom,” I say.
“What about her?” Cleo asks.
“It might be nothing,” I say. “But I’ve got one more place for us to check.”
* * *
? ? ?
“STOP THE CAR!” I shriek, with such conviction that Cleo instantly obeys, right in the middle of the road.
Although road is a fairly aspirational title for the wooded lane the GPS has directed us onto. One has to assume that there’s a parking lot somewhere ahead, but parking no longer matters because （1） the little open-air chapel is visible through the trees on our right, and （2） a cherry-red Jaguar sits parked on the dirt shoulder.
Cleo hits the gas again and pulls over. We check the car first—empty—then scramble over the short stone retaining wall to hike up the hillside toward the chapel.
The damp green woods give way to a manicured garden. In its center, a pavilion of gray stone stands, ivy crawling up its left side. Butterflies move in dizzy spirals through the flowering bushes hugging the steps, the distant crash of waves the only sound.
No wonder Sabrina’s parents’ wedding made such an impression on her. This place is beautiful. It feels like nothing could go wrong here, nothing bad could happen.
When I start forward, Cleo hangs back. Her mouth opens and closes a couple of times. “What if she wants to be alone?”
She has a point. It’s possible.
But people don’t run or hide only when they want to be alone.
“What if,” I say, “she needs to know she isn’t?”
Cleo takes my hand. We climb the steps to the back of the pavilion.
There are a handful of timeworn pews, a flagstone floor, and a few wooden arcades on either side. Straight ahead, a stone arch frames a slice of pure Maine blue water in the distance.
Sabrina sits cross-legged before it, staring out. The whole scene is serene, down to the faint chirp of birds overhead. Then she looks over her shoulder at the sound of our approach.
I’d braced myself for some measure of awkwardness after everything, but the second we see her drawn face, puffy and red-rimmed eyes, last night’s fight stops mattering.
Both Cleo and I run to her, kneel on the ground, sling our arms around her.
“You scared us,” Cleo says.
“I didn’t mean to,” Sabrina whispers.
We peel apart, sitting in a triangle, the same way we did so many nights in our musty freshman dorm room.
“My phone died a couple hours ago,” Sabrina says finally. “And . . . I guess I wanted to put off the inevitable.”
“The inevitable?” Cleo says.
Sabrina draws her knees into her chest, wrapping her willowy arms around them. “The end of the trip? Goodbye? Everything’s changing, and I’m not ready.”