My brain reeling, the sunlight pulsing in my eyes, I stared at the dead girl’s face. Taylor. Taylor Mancuso. Marissa’s maid of honor. Marissa’s best friend.
Her blue eyes were open, glassy but lifeless. Gazing up at me as if trying to see me. Her mouth had a layer of coral lipstick, still fresh and smooth. Her lips were parted slightly and her tongue fell limply through her teeth.
She must have landed on the back of her head because her face seemed almost untouched. I could see that her skull was crushed, and her blond hair was caked with dark dried blood.
“It’s . . . not.” My father choked on the words.
“It’s Taylor Mancuso,” I cried out. “Not Marissa. It’s not Marissa.”
Dad wrapped his arms around me. I could feel him trembling. He tried to speak but no sound came out.
The officers slid the tarp back over her face. But I could still see her. Still see her glassy eyes . . . her open lips . . . her pretty face. Taylor’s pretty face . . .
I heard her voice. I heard her laugh. I pictured Taylor and Marissa in our den, music thumping, dancing, practicing new dance moves. Laughing, always laughing. Taylor and Marissa, like twittering birds. Like . . . birds of a feather.
Crazy thoughts.
Dad gripped my shoulders. He still hadn’t spoken.
“Can I help you back to the lodge?” The cop leaned into the dazzling sunlight, a shadow in front of my face.
I turned to him. “Do you have a name?” Why did that question burst out of me?
“Sergeant Grady,” he said.
“Help us back, Sergeant.”
He took my arm. Dad held on to my other arm. “I . . . I don’t believe it.” He finally found his voice.
“Was she pushed?” I asked.
Sergeant Grady pointed to the dirt at the cliff edge. “I really can’t say. But there’s no sign of a struggle.”
We walked a few steps along the path to the lodge. “Do you think someone had a reason to push her?” he asked, brushing a horsefly off my forehead.
“Of course not,” I snapped.
“Just asking. We have to ask the questions, you know. How well did you know her?”
I shrugged. “She was Marissa’s best friend.”
“She wasn’t depressed or anything, was she?” Grady turned his olive eyes on me, studying me. “She didn’t act strange at the wedding rehearsal?”
“Taylor never acted strange,” I said. My voice cracked. I hated thinking about her in the past tense. “She was totally normal, a good girl. You know?”
He nodded.
We walked on. He had a thoughtful look frozen on his face. “So . . . you’re saying she wouldn’t jump.”
“No,” I murmured.
Then I noticed the roar in my ears. I turned and saw a black helicopter rising over the side of the mesa. Dad squeezed my hand. He saw it, too.
“They’re still looking?” I asked Grady.
He nodded. “Maybe your sister fell with her.”
“Huh? Fell?”
“Maybe they were together. In the morning. Maybe they were kidding around. Before the wedding. And maybe one of them started to fall and the other one tried to save her and—”
I shuddered.
“Just trying to think of everything,” he said, avoiding my stare. “The state guys have been in the air a long time now, and they haven’t found anyone else down there. So maybe . . .”
“Maybe Marissa decided she didn’t want to marry Doug, and she took off. Escaped. Early this morning,” Dad said.
Grady nodded. “Better a missing person case than a homicide or an accident. We can’t declare her missing until she’s been gone for twenty-four hours. But you should check her credit cards and bank accounts. Look for any unusual charges or withdrawals.”
Was I supposed to play detective now?
I couldn’t. I wanted to shout and cry and scream and wail and throw myself on the grass and pound the dirt till my fists bled. I wanted the world to see how much I wanted my sister, and wanted her back now. But instead I kept walking between Dad and Grady.
We were nearly back at the lodge now. The roar of the helicopter over the mesa had faded to a distant hum in my ears. I crossed my fingers on both hands and silently prayed they wouldn’t find Marissa sprawled and broken on the cliff bottom.
Sergeant Grady pulled open the entrance door for us. I pictured the scene in my parents’ room. And I imagined the horror—and the relief—everyone in there was about to feel.
Dad stayed at the lodge. He said that someone had to stay in case the local police came up with anything. Robby and I took Mom and Grandpa Bud to the airport.
We put Bud on a flight back to Cincinnati. “Promise me . . . ,” he started.
“I promise we’ll call you as soon as we hear anything,” I told him.
At the gate, he leaned close as if to kiss me good-bye. But instead, he whispered, “When you stir the pot, unexpected things emerge. No more tricks, Harmony. None.”
“Of course not,” I whispered back.
But he started me thinking. Was there a spell to bring Marissa back? Was there some kind of magic in those old books in our attic to reveal to me where Marissa was?
If she is dead, could I bring her back? Is the Fear magic that powerful? Am I?
Probably not.
Weird thoughts, for sure. But I couldn’t control them. And, actually, I didn’t want to.
“Where’s Douglas?” Mom asked as we waited at gate 12 to board our plane. Mom was still in a fog. She hadn’t seemed at all relieved when I told her that it wasn’t Marissa at the bottom of the canyon. It was as if her mind just couldn’t bear all that had happened. She hadn’t snapped or anything. It was just like she was half asleep. Her body was going through the motions, her mind still lingering in some kind of dream.
“Doug went on an earlier plane,” Robby said.
Mom nodded. She folded her hands over the pocketbook in her lap.
Robby had his thumbs moving over the keyboard on his phone. I knew he had to be texting Nikki, telling her we were on our way back to Shadyside.
I had a gnawing hunger. Maybe because I hadn’t eaten a real meal since Marissa disappeared before the wedding. I’d bought a giant Snickers bar at one of the airport stores, and I devoured the whole thing in ten seconds.
I could see that Robby was watching me. “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” I said. What should I say? That I was just fine?
“Maybe Marissa will be home waiting for us when we get there,” Mom said. She had a strange, dreamy smile on her face.
“Maybe,” Robby said, glancing at me.
“Mom,” I said. “She hasn’t called, and she doesn’t answer her phone. If she is home . . .” My voice trailed off. I didn’t know how to finish my sentence.
Mom nodded. She had a copy of Food & Wine magazine rolled up between her hands, but she made no attempt to look at it. Robby and I stared at our phones until it was time to board the plane.
“What’s new with Nikki?” I asked, just to be saying something.
He shrugged. “Not much.”
I had a short text conversation with my friend Sophie back in Shadyside. She was excited about some new shoe store at the mall. Sophie is a shoe freak, although she can’t afford any of the shoes she likes.
I was desperate to tell her about what happened at the wedding and how Marissa had disappeared, but it just didn’t seem like the kind of thing to spring on someone in a text message.
On the plane, Robby and I sat together. Mom was at the far end of the row. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I pushed Robby’s phone away from his face, tugged his earbuds from his ears, and told him I had to talk to him.
He rolled his eyes. “Are you going to tell me some kind of conspiracy theory about the wedding?”
“It’s not a theory,” I said. “It’s what happened to me. Shut up and listen. I saw Aiden Murray at the lodge.”
That got my brother’s attention.
I was so desperate to share the story with someone, I blurted it out in a breathless wave of words. I told Robby how I saw Aiden park his red sports car and go into the lodge. How I spoke with him at the door to his room but he wouldn’t tell me why he was there.
“I know he has something to do with Marissa disappearing,” I said. “I know he does.”
Robby narrowed his eyes at me. “Harmony, are you kidding me? Why didn’t you tell anyone about this before? Why didn’t you tell Mom or Dad—or the police?”
I took a breath. “Because the story gets all mixed up,” I said. “I tried to find Aiden after Marissa vanished, but he wasn’t in his room. Another couple was in there, and they said they had been in the room for a week.”
“You had the wrong room?” Robby asked.
“No. I had the right room,” I insisted. “So I tried to track Aiden down with the desk clerk and the parking valet. But they weren’t the same. They were different people. And they didn’t know the men I had talked to.”
I saw my brother’s expression.
“I’m not making sense—am I?”
“Not much,” he said.
“Well, it gets crazier,” I said. I hesitated. I didn’t want Robby to think I was crazy. But I had to tell him the insane, impossible part of the story.
“There was a photo on the wall behind the front desk,” I said. “An old photo of the lodge workers, from 1924. And . . . And I swear, Robby, the desk clerk and the parking guy I talked to—they were in that old photo.”
Robby nodded. His expression didn’t show any surprise. His eyes locked on mine.
I waited for him to react. To say something. Anything. But he didn’t move a muscle.
A cold feeling tightened the back of my neck. “Do you believe me?” I asked, gripping his arm. “Please say you believe me.”
“Did you see me in the photo?” he said finally. His face was slack and his eyes bored into mine. “I was the bellhop in the long red coat and bow tie.”
