Megan simply shook her head in response, barely making eye contact as she answered.
Chelsea cast a questioning look in Violet’s direction. “Do you know where he is?” she pried, even though it was evident that the girl was uncomfortable.
Violet recognized Megan’s discomfort. It seemed to radiate off of her. She didn’t want to be noticed; she didn’t want to be included. She hovered, wordlessly, soundlessly, on the periphery, existing in quiet solitude.
She’s so sad, Violet thought. Sad and lonely. Violet wondered if she’d always been that way.
“He’s in town. He’ll probably be out late.” Megan practically whispered the words.
“What does he do, hang out at a bar all night?” Claire attempted to joke.
Megan looked up at Claire, her face serious. “Sometimes,” she responded.
Mike came in then, unwittingly shattering the strange hush that had fallen over the girls. Jay followed right behind; each of them had their arms piled high with logs. A wheelbarrow with more logs sat beside the back door, and Violet and Chelsea both jumped up to help them, stacking the wood neatly beside the hearth.
It was a convenient diversion from the awkwardness caused by Megan’s starkly honest answer.
So what did that mean, exactly, about their father? That he was a drinker? An alcoholic? That the kids were frequently left on their own to fend for themselves?
It would explain Megan’s ease in the kitchen and her isolating demeanor, wouldn’t it? That she and Mike were used to taking care of themselves?
Violet’s shame deepened.
Dinner was simple: grilled cheese sandwiches and potato chips. Of course, it was Megan who had to fire up the stove-top. And Megan, again, who managed to grill the sandwiches without burning them. Chelsea’s attempt didn’t end quite so expertly, and her sandwich was more charred than grilled. Violet’s was even less admirable. Jay fared better, making something that was at least edible. But Megan proved to be something of a culinary whiz. Or at least a grilled-cheese-sandwich whiz.
So Jay helped Megan at the stove, and that was the only time Violet saw Megan going out of her way to interact with any one of them. She asked him quiet questions while they worked, and she smiled hesitantly when she responded to his playful banter.
It reminded Violet of why she’d suspected Megan of stalking her in the first place. Besides all her other suspicions, it was obvious that Megan had a little crush on Jay. Maybe more than a little one. And Violet felt immediately guilty for even entertaining the thought again.
She knew it hadn’t been Megan.
Violet and Claire set the table while Jay and Megan made dinner. Mike and Chelsea “tended to the fire,” which turned out to be equivalent to Violet and Jay “doing homework,” so when they were called to get their plates, they were glassy-eyed and distracted.
After dinner, Mike and Chelsea were assigned to clean up the mess, which actually meant “cleaning up the mess,” since they hadn’t done anything to help with preparation. Everyone else went to sit in front of the fire.
Violet continued to feel pulled by whatever she’d discovered beneath the cover of the trees, buried under the frozen layers of ice and snow. She wondered briefly how she was going to resolve this predicament . . . it was an animal she couldn’t get to, couldn’t rebury. She still didn’t understand why the draw to find some was so much stronger than others, why some creatures, like the deer by the roadside, could let her pass while others wanted so badly to be found that they continued to lure her, long after she should have left the radius of their reach.
She hoped beyond hope that the need to find this body would simply fade over time, releasing her eventually from its indefinable grip.
It was already past nine o’clock by the time they were finished cleaning up and were settling in for the night. Outside the snow had stopped falling, and even though the sky was dark, the ground shimmered eerily, capturing strands of light and reflecting them like tiny pieces of glass. It created a ghostly backdrop.
They had rearranged the furniture and spread their sleeping bags around the floor in front of the fireplace. There was one bedroom, which Violet presumed was where Megan would sleep, since that was where she’d been hiding earlier, and a small overhead loft, where she guessed Mike’s dad stayed. When he was there.
But, even though she had a bedroom, Megan didn’t retreat again. She stayed with the group, lingering on the fringes, sitting without making a sound in a chair as far away as she could get from them and still be considered in the same room.
As often as she could, Violet tried to include Megan in their conversations. But Megan was reluctant, answering in as few words as possible and then falling silent again, stubbornly evading Violet’s attempts to befriend her.
When it grew late, one by one they began finding their way into their sleeping bags. Violet crawled into hers, beside Jay, and eventually Megan went down the short hallway to her bedroom.
Conversation dwindled, and then disappeared into silence, until all that remained was the crackling of the fading fire.
Chapter 30
The rain woke her, but it was the dull ache that kept Violet from falling back to sleep. It reached up through her neck, gripping the base of her skull with sinewy fingers.
And with it, something else caught her attention. A light that intruded on the night.
It saturated her eyelids, no matter how tightly she held them shut. But it wasn’t the light itself that forced her into awareness. It was the pattern. The discontinuity of it.