Ash, I need you. I’m at the McDonald’s. Don’t bring the camera, leave it behind. Have to tell you something.
Bel waited in the darkness, became the darkness, pressed up against the side of Scoggins General Store, where the streetlight couldn’t reach her. Back in the ant-town, just one of those specks she’d seen from Point Lookout. Rachel would still be up there somewhere, dragging two dead bodies into Mascot Mine. But the night wasn’t over, and surviving wasn’t the same as having to live with it. Which Bel would, because a life had already been stolen from her and her mom and her sister once before, and she wouldn’t let anyone take it again. Not Charlie, not the police, not the documentary.
Protect the truth, protect Carter.
She watched the entrance of Royalty Inn, waiting. She knew Ash would come, because he cared.
McDonald’s was the only choice; nothing else was open past two a.m. Didn’t matter anyway, Bel wasn’t going. All she needed was five minutes alone in his room.
The hotel door opened outward, glass reflecting the lamps either side, hiding whoever it was.
Ash walked out.
Bel knew he’d come.
He walked toward the parking lot, moving fast, away from her, a black puffer jacket over cartoon-patterned pants. Probably pajamas, but it was hard to tell with him. Bel would miss that. Her heart kicked up, watching the wind throw his curly, unbrushed hair behind him as he passed under the next streetlight. She hoped he’d forgive her, that he’d understand, even if he never really would.
Bel unpeeled herself from the darkness, crossed the quiet street into the hotel.
The lobby was empty, only Kosa behind the front desk, sorting papers. She looked up, long black braid slipping off her shoulder.
“Good evening,” she said.
“Late, isn’t it?” Bel replied. “You know how film crews are. Night shoots.”
Kosa nodded, because she didn’t know how film crews were, and neither did Bel.
Bel’s voice was gravelly, raw, from crying, from screaming, from talking to Carter all the way back to the yard, explaining how their mom disappeared twice, two plans intersecting on that day sixteen years ago, and a baby who appeared from nowhere. Why Carter should never feel bad about what she did to Charlie. It had all sounded so unreal, repeated in her own voice.
“There’s dirt on your sleeve.” Kosa pointed.
Bel picked at it. “We’re filming in the woods, this reenactment thing. Speaking of, Ash just left here, the camera assistant?”
“Yeah?”
“He messaged saying he’d left the lens in his room. Asked me to pick it up. Is that OK? I need a key, sorry. Room thirty-nine.”
Kosa blinked at her.
“Look, I can show you the text.” Bel reached for her pocket. This was the easier way, but if Kosa didn’t give her the key, Bel was going to break the door down and do it anyway.
“That’s OK,” Kosa said, a sigh, like she just wanted to get rid of Bel, get back to her papers. “I know you’ve been up there before. Here.”
She opened a drawer, searched through, tongue tucked in her teeth.
“Thirty-nine.” She handed over the spare key.
“Thanks.” Bel saluted her, something Ash might have done.
She raced up the stairs, muscles still burning. Ash had probably reached the McDonald’s already, but Bel still had time. He’d wait for her, because he cared.
Down the corridor, counting doors, up to number thirty-nine.
She slotted in the key and opened the door, flicking on the light.
Boxers on the pillow, again.
She walked inside, the familiar smell of him, her heart grabbing hold of it. Past a pile of his hideous sweaters, strawberries and dinosaurs, tracing her finger across. More memories here than just the ones stored on SD cards.
But those were what she came for.
Bel moved to the table at the far end, the desk chair and the armchair pushed together in front of it. His and hers. A stack of clear plastic cases on the surface, the memory cards stored inside.
She pulled them all out, opened the cases, the ones marked with a red X and those that weren’t. One by one, she tipped the SD cards out onto the table. Rachel’s secrets, buried in those tiny metal strips. Bel had connected them, found her way to the truth, but no one else ever could.
She ran her hand over the scattered pile, picked one at random.
Snapped it in half. And again, destroying the metal chip.
And the next one.
Making a new pile out of the broken pieces.
Bend with her thumbs, snap it with force.
Until the last one.
Except that wasn’t the last one. Bel’s eyes fell to the handheld camera, resting in Ash’s chair. Just as much a part of him as his silly hair, or his ridiculous clothes, or the way he said Oh too much, or how he could keep up with her like no one else, exchanging unpleasantries. Bel didn’t have to destroy it, she couldn’t do that, but she needed to remove its memories.
She slid her fingers across the back panel of the camera until it clicked, came free. There it was, slotted in, the red edge of an SD card, same as all the rest.
She pressed it and it pinged out, giving itself up without a fight.
The card Ash used tonight: finding Rachel’s message in all of the books, their trek to the red truck on Price & Sons Logging Yard, even though there were no Sons left anymore. This card held the biggest piece of the truth, the most dangerous one. She’d wanted him to record it all, for evidence. But now it was evidence against them.
Bel pinched it between her thumbs, then twisted them apart in one quick motion. It snapped into uneven halves, metal entrails stringing across.
Breaking them wasn’t enough. She had to know they were truly gone.
Bel scooped up the broken memory cards, lying dead and dismembered in her cupped hands.
She walked them toward the bathroom, hands over the toilet bowl, and let go.
The pieces scattered down, floating on top, sinking below.
She pushed the flush.
The black-and-red shards swirled up, one last dance, then disappeared together, down the drain.
But she wasn’t finished. Some of those cards might have been empty. Ash told her himself; he backed up the footage onto an external hard drive, then wiped the cards to reuse. Now Bel had to use that against him.
She found the small black box plugged into the laptop. This bad boy here, Ash had called it, tapping it with two fingers.
Bel tapped it with two fingers too, then unplugged it.
Dropped it to the floor.
Waited for it to land, to lie still.
Then she brought her heel down on it.
The plastic casing snapped.
She stamped again.
Right foot, left foot. Both feet together, jumping on it.
Bel didn’t stop, not until it was in more pieces than she could count, picking them up, putting them in her pocket.
She straightened up.
Gasped.
There were eyes watching her, but they were only her own, mirrored in the dark screen of Ash’s sleeping laptop. Bel moved closer to her reflection.
She didn’t know if any of the footage was saved on here, and she didn’t know the password to check. But she couldn’t risk leaving it.
The laptop was already open, but she opened it more, bending the screen back, pushing against its spine until it snapped clean off. Ripped out the wires that tried to hang on, pulling the base free.
She knew the hard drive was in this part somewhere, under the keyboard, that was why it was coming with her too, tucked under one arm. The only way to know it was all gone was to watch it disappear. Throw it in the river on her way home.
Now she needed to go. Someone must have heard all that. The room below could be complaining to Kosa right now: Some kind of party going on upstairs.
But Bel couldn’t leave it like this.
She turned over the dead, splintered laptop screen, the half she was leaving behind. Picked up Ash’s red pen, pressed the tip to the pre-bitten silver apple.
Sorry, she wrote, in tiny red letters, not quite the color of blood.
Bel was the first one back.
She watched the clock on the wall. Past three now. Her mom and her sister were still out there, doing their parts, and all Bel could do was wait for them to come home. Flinching at the sounds an empty house made; the howl of the wind against the upper windows, the hum of the refrigerator she’d never noticed before, the patter of her own heart.
She counted the dark minutes and she waited.
A scrabbling sound at the front door, a shape hovering in the window. Bel pulled it open before they could.
Carter.
“You OK?” Bel pulled her inside.
“Yeah,” Carter said, breathless. “Left your bike by the garage.”
Bel took her into the kitchen, filled her a glass of water.
“How did it go?”
“Fine.” Carter took a long sip, coughing it down. “Took a while, but I got them all.”
She pulled something out from the waistline of her jeans. A book. The Green Mile by Stephen King.
“I kept this one.” She looked down at it. “It says we are being kept. That was me, wasn’t it? Me and Rachel.”
Bel reached out, unstuck Carter’s hair from her face. “Yes. You should keep it. It’s a special book.”
Carter’s smile was weak.
“Did Yordan wake up?”
“No.”
“Good. You did a good job.” Big sisters were supposed to say things like that.
“Is Rachel—M-Mom …,” Carter stuttered, stopped herself.
“That’s OK,” Bel said. “I’ve only just started being able to say it. And I’ve had a lot longer to get used to it than you.”
Carter nodded. “Is she back yet?”
“Not yet. But she had a lot more to do than us. She’ll come home. She always does.”
Carter’s fingers danced around the edge of the book, never still, like Rachel.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“We wait.”
“OK.”
“Do you need anything?” Bel said. “Hungry? I could make you a sandwich or something.”
“Stop being friendly,” Carter said. “It’s weird.”
Bel laughed, and it took her by surprise too, the sound. “Sorry. Just trying to be like a sister.”
“You always were.”
A crashing sound filled the house, a fist against the front door.
Carter dropped the book.
“Is that her?” she whispered.
It couldn’t be. “Rachel has a key,” Bel said.
It came again, three loud knocks, knuckles on wood.
“Police?” Terror filled the whites of Carter’s eyes.
“Stay here,” Bel told her, moving into the unlit living room, to the windows at the front. She pressed her eyes to the glass.
A lone dark figure at the door, fist raised. She recognized the shape of him; shoulder-length curly hair and a puffer jacket, splitting his arms into segments.
She turned; Carter had followed her.
“It’s Ash,” she hissed. “I’ll deal with this. You go up to my room, get into bed.”
Carter nodded, but it didn’t shake the terror from her eyes, disappearing up the stairs.
Bel took a breath, opened the front door.
“Hi,” she said, before he could speak. “Kinda late for a house call, isn’t it? Is this an English thing?”
His eyes were wide and swimming, teeth glowing in the dark.
“I would have deleted it all, if you’d asked me.” His voice shook. “You only needed to ask.”
Bel stepped outside and Ash dropped to the step below. They were the same height now, eyes straightforward, unblinking.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said quietly.
“Bel.” He held on to her name, kept it on his tongue. “What happened?”
“We had a birthday dinner for my grandpa, then everyone went home.”
He tried again. “What happened in that red truck?”
“What red truck?”
The breath hitched in his throat.
“Where Rachel was. Where we found your dad chained up.”
Bel shook her head. “Rachel was taken by a stranger. Kept in a basement for sixteen years.”
“Bel!” Her name, pushed as loud as a whisper could. “I don’t care about the footage. I don’t care about the documentary, that I’ve fucked it all up. I care about you.”
She almost said it too, but “Thank you” came out instead. She’d never let someone close enough to care before. Ash had showed her that she could, she didn’t always have to pick the way that hurt less. Some hurts were good: friends grew apart, people moved away, they left. It didn’t have to last forever to count. Things ended, this was ending, but that didn’t mean it never mattered.
“Bel.” He lowered his voice. “Are you in danger?”
She gave him half an answer.
“Not anymore.”
“Where’s your dad now?”
“The police say he ran away to Canada.”
Ash breathed out, eyes heavy. “What are you doing?”
“Protecting my family.”
He nodded. “So this is it?” he asked, a sad lilt, dragging his words down.
Bel nodded too. “This is it.”
“OK.”
Ash turned away.
He walked down the stairs, his steps a hollow echo in the dead of night, reaching into her chest, skipping around her heart.
He crossed from their path to the street. It was ending, and he was walking away, like he was supposed to.
But Bel knew, suddenly, that that wasn’t quite it.
“Wait!” She ran after him.
Ash turned and Bel crashed into him, a grunt of surprise.
Her eyes found his, his lips found hers.
Hand through his scruffy hair, pulling him in deeper, making it count.
His fingers brushed her neck, moving up, but the glow moved down.
It was goodbye, but it was something else too.
Bel pulled away, just an inch.
“It wasn’t pointless,” she whispered, lips brushing his. “And it did matter.”
“I know.” His nose pressed against her forehead.
She unwound herself, stepped back. “Could have told me sooner.”
Ash laughed, and Bel did too, both of them standing there, under the moon.
“I should go now?” he said, almost a question.
“Yeah,” Bel replied, pushing his shoulder with two fingers.
He gave her a salute, hand crooked, matching his smile, and he walked away.
Bel watched him go, all the way down the road, until he was little more than an outline, misshapen darkness.
He left, and that was OK.
Ash was always leaving.
And leaving wasn’t the same as leaving behind.
