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Kate caught David unfolding a pair of camping chairs on the motel balcony long after the sun had dipped down below the horizon.
“Evening, Miss Marsh,” he grunted, setting the green one down and plopping right into it. He flopped his hand at the blue one to his right. “Sit with me, why don’t ya?”
Kate sighed and unlocked the door to her room. “Give me a second, David,” she said, before slipping inside. She pressed her back against the door until it clicked shut. She left the lights off, and she stared into the dark room unseeingly for a few moments.
She’d made a habit of avoiding her next-door neighbor ever since the storm had displaced them into the same seedy motel just outside of town. David had made a habit of trying to drink himself to death every day since his wife had been buried and his step-daughter disappeared into the sunset with Max Caulfield. But it had been eighty-one days since the storm; it had been sixty since she’d first bumped into him.
And now it was New Year’s Eve, and she had no one else to spend it with.
Max had texted her, of course. Victoria had promised to call for the countdown. But David Madsen was the only person who could offer her his company, even if his breath reeked of alcohol and he hadn’t taken a shower in two days. Kate glanced over to the shadowy blob that was her bed, and she thought about the half-empty bottle of wine hidden between the bed frame and the nightstand.
She decided to leave it there, just as she always did whenever she thought about it. It was more of a reminder than a temptation. Kate flicked the light on, dropped her bag onto the armchair, and checked on Alice. Then, she grabbed a blanket and headed back out onto the balcony to sit in the blue chair next to David’s, even though in the dim balcony lighting they both looked the same shade of dark gray.
“What you get up to today?” David slurred.
“Cleaned up around the lighthouse,” Kate told him. “Prepped meals in the soup kitchen.” She didn’t ask him what he’d been up to. It was already abundantly clear.
“The lighthouse,” he scoffed. “What lighthouse…”
Kate hummed and unfolded her blanket across her lap. “They’re talking about rebuilding it one day.”
“One day,” David repeated mockingly. He leaned back in his seat carelessly, and his shin knocked into the bottle at his feet. It made a racket as it rolled across the concrete floor. He sighed, bending over to pick it up, and then nestled the bottle between his thighs. It was half-full, and what was left of the clear liquid sloshed like waves on the beach.
Kate leaned her head back and stared out at the night sky. There was no sun; there was no moon. There were only a handful of skinny clouds and a smattering of stars that looked like freckles. A couple of moths fluttered around the flickering balcony lights.
She thought about the bus ticket in her pocket. The station would close soon, and the ticket was on the verge of expiring. She’d bought it a long time ago—before the storm. After the party. After…
Kate had never asked David about Mr. Jefferson. She knew he’d been there when he was arrested. She’d heard through the grapevine it had been right before the storm hit the shore. But she’d never asked. She couldn’t bear to know the truth. His trial was months from now. She’d find it all out then.
“Was he really in a storm bunker?” she suddenly asked him.
“What?” David said. He glanced at her and saw the look on her face, whatever it might’ve been. He looked away, and he twisted the cap off of the vodka bottle. A swig of it, then another. “Yep,” he sighed. “Storm bunker. High-tech. Some sort of studio. Was all under this old barn. Prescotts owned it.”
The Prescotts owned everything—had owned everything. Now they had nothing, just like everybody else. Kate felt an odd twist of victory in her gut; it was surely the oddest of feelings when faced with a lose-lose situation like this. But she and David had lost their families, their homes, and their futures. It was only fair for the Prescotts to lose their family, their home, and their future, too.
“And there were photos.” Kate fiddled with her blanket. She tucked the edges around her thighs and sat on them to keep them in place. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, but she didn’t take it out to check why.
“Yeah.”
“Of me.” She’d seen one of them.
“Why are you—” David shook his head and stared at her, hard. He took another drink. She wondered if it burned, or if he couldn’t even feel it anymore. Did it start to taste like water, when you drank that much, that often? Whatever he was looking for, he must’ve found it, because he said, “Yeah. There were photos of you. Red binder full of them, and…”
Her phone buzzed again, a little more insistently. She slipped it out of her pocket just enough to see Max’s name, and then she pushed it back in. “And what?”
“Notes,” he muttered. “Don’t remember what it said. Didn’t make much sense.”
Kate thought that he wasn’t being completely honest, but let those sleeping dogs lie. “I wasn’t the only one, though.”
“No.” David ran his hand over his face and his overgrown beard. He pushed it through his greasy hair, which was long enough to flop over his forehead, now, but too short to push behind his ears. He rested his hand at the very top of his head and leaned back to look out at the horizon. They couldn’t see the beach from where they sat, but if the lighthouse had been anything more than a pile of rubble, it would’ve been visible. “Rachel. Kelly. Megan.”
“They all went to Blackwell?”
“Mm,” he hummed.
“But they weren’t the only ones.”
“No,” he confirmed, and with that, he took another drink. She wondered if he was thinking of Victoria, too. He swallowed roughly and pulled the bottle back, tilting it left and right as he squinted at it. It was nearing empty. “Something like twenty binders in there. I’ll be right back.”
Kate stewed on that after he disappeared into his room for a fresh bottle. Twenty-something binders. Twenty-something girls just like her. How many of them were dead, like Rachel Amber? Buried in junkyards and rotting away for months or years until their pictures were found in a red binder hidden inside a storm bunker.
How many of them had thought about ending it all because they couldn’t remember what had happened to them? How many of them had tried? How many had succeeded?
When David sat down next to her again, she asked him, “How did you find out?”
“Lotta questions tonight, Miss Marsh,” he noted. It sounded like deflection to her ears.
“Who told you?” she tested.
David cracked open his new bottle and took a long, hard pull from it. Kate nodded and considered pulling her phone out of her pocket, but it wasn’t buzzing anymore. There was still half an hour before the countdown began.
“Max and Chloe,” he eventually told her.
“Chloe’s your step-daughter.” The one that Max had run off with.
“She was.” David rolled the bottle between his hands. It was taller and skinnier than the last one.
“How did they find out?”
He barked out a laugh, sharp and cracked at the edges. “Dunno,” he admitted. “Had a whole board full of clues. Was missing the red yarn. Made a good pair of detectives. Better than me.”
Kate thought about a conversation she’d had with Max. Before the storm. After the party. Her room had been dark, her mirror had been covered, and Max had returned her copy of The October Country.
She’d wanted to run away then. She’d wanted to die. There had been no way out. Max had offered her help—had offered her hand not long after. But Max was gone now, and Kate still had a bus ticket to Portland in her pocket.
Her father and sisters were dead, and it was Kate’s fault. There was no way home, now; she had no home left. She only had the motel, David Madsen, and a bus ticket that was going to expire in half an hour.
Her phone buzzed. Victoria was calling her. She pulled her blanket off of her lap and stood from her chair. “Happy New Year, David,” she said.
“Happy New Year, Miss Marsh.” His voice was nothing more than a whisper in the wind.