Darkest Fear (33 page)

“I think they would have called,” Matéo said. “But it's probably nothing. Maybe their phones died. Maybe they just decided to stay an extra day.”

“Yeah.” Aly looked unconvinced. “I've been trying to call
them, and then I saw Suzanne's calendar here.” She pointed to a small open notebook on the kitchen counter. “It looks like she has an important exam on Monday. It seems odd that she wouldn't already be back, getting ready for it. You know what she's like.”

Overprepared and anal? Yes, I knew.

“That is weird. I don't think she would skip an exam, or skip preparing for it. So what are you thinking?” I was trying not to let my imagination run away—that wouldn't help anyone. In all likelihood they were fine. But after everything that had happened, it was concerning.

Aly glanced at her watch. “It's late. Maybe I misunderstood when they were planning to get back. Maybe Suzanne brought her books with her. I think I'll give them till tomorrow afternoon. But if we haven't heard from them by then, we need to do something.” She said that last part to Matéo, and he nodded.

“Agreed. Let's get some sleep and come up with ideas tomorrow, if we have to.”

“Okay.” Aly still looked troubled, and I wondered if she'd be able to sleep. For myself, I was hoping that Suzanne was being thoughtless, rather than in danger.

Upstairs, my room felt cavernous and chilly. Matéo kept the heat at sixty-five degrees because it cost so much to heat such a big house. Cold air wafted around the not-modern window frames, and I pulled my curtains closed against the damp night. Maybe tomorrow I would go buy a space heater. Or maybe I would bribe
Matéo to crank up the heat. I was willing to pay for it.

Huddled in my bed, trying to get warm, I thought again about Suzanne and James. Surely they were okay—they'd probably just lost track of time. But deep down a shard of fear remained, and I prayed to the Tzechuri to protect my friends as I listened to the wind blowing the tree branches to and fro.

The next day I woke up feeling as if something important was about to happen. A minute later I remembered about Suzanne and James. Quickly I braided my hair, put on sweatpants, and went downstairs.

Matéo wasn't in his workroom, but I found two notes on the kitchen table:

Haven't heard anything. Went to work. Will check in with you this afternoon. A.

And:

Helping Charlotte move furniture. Back soon. M.

Which left me with nothing to do except wait. Worry was starting to overcome me—Suzanne and James weren't my favorites of all our roommates, but they were in the roommate family. I thought about Margaret McCauley, who had died up in New York. At least Suzanne and James were together.

This was pointless. I rolled up my sleeves, preheated the oven,
and pulled out my Cookie Mania supplies. Every year of high school I'd made a ton of cookies for my teachers, our neighbors, people my parents worked with. I'd gotten it down to a production line. This year, making cookies was the last thing I'd thought I'd be doing, but it seemed right, and I found myself measuring out flour and sugar with a sense of . . . almost acceptance.

The long afternoon went by without hearing anything from Aly. Matéo was home by three, and after stealing some Mexican wedding cookies, he disappeared into his workshop. We were now both worried. There was no house phone—everyone had a cell phone—and each time Matéo's phone rang, we jumped. By the time we heard Aly's car pull onto the wet crushed shells, it was dark and chilly outside, a winter's night.

Inside, the kitchen was toasty warm and full of all of the best smells: vanilla, brown sugar, spices, butter, peppermint. Though I'd been on my feet all day and had burned my hand at one point, I felt about as together as I could, considering. The familiar actions of rotating cookie sheets in and out of the oven, of mixing and washing bowls and reusing them, had helped me feel less out of control.

Now Aly came in the kitchen door, shutting it against a gust of air that threatened to push it open. “You haven't heard anything, have you?” were her first words.

“No. There's no reason I would,” I said. “But I know Matéo hasn't. And I'm guessing you haven't.”

“Nope.” Aly dropped her purse on a chair and kicked off her work heels. “I called their parents this afternoon. They hadn't heard
anything, didn't know Suzanne and James were late getting back. And I called the police. They say that I don't have a definitive due-back-by date, and there's no evidence of foul play.”

“Damn it,” I said. “So what now?”

“We have to go find them.” Aly strode intently to the kitchen doorway. “Téo! Téo!”

“Hey, babe,” he said, coming out of his workshop. “Nothing?”

“No. They aren't back and no one's heard from them. We need to go find them.” Aly was no-nonsense, and it took Matéo only a few moments to process everything, including the look on Aly's face.

“Okay. Let's throw a few things in the car. We should bring some of their clothes.”

“Thank you. Look, we'll be back probably tomorrow,” Aly told me. “This might be for nothing, but I'm worried and really want to know for sure.”

I had already washed the flour off my hands, and I turned off the TV and the oven before saying, “I'm going with you.”

They both looked surprised. Aly hugged me. “Thank you, sweetie, but it's fine for you to stay here. Hold down the fort.”

“Look, I don't know what I can do to help,” I said honestly. “I don't know what your plan is or anything. But you guys—you're my cousins, my family, and you're upset about our friends. Of course I'm going with you.”

Aly hugged me again, and Matéo smoothed his hand over my hair with a smile.

Coco came home while I was throwing water bottles into a bag.

“What's going on?” she asked, and Aly quickly explained.

Coco was clearly not thrilled. “I can't go with you—I've got to help cater the Cavalitto wedding tonight and the breakfast tomorrow. But what if you guys don't come back?”

“Then you go to the cops,” Matéo said, coming into the kitchen with a sleeping bag under his arm.

“Where's Tink?” Coco asked.

“At work. He had to go down to Plaquemines Parish this morning,” Matéo said. “No clue when he'll be back.”

“What about Dana?” Coco was frowning, her hands on her hips.

“Dana went to Amsterdam early this morning, remember?” said Aly. “A TKD exhibition.”

“Tzechura help us,” Coco muttered, running her hands through her short hair. “Okay, I can't stop you. But please be extra careful. If you guys get hurt, I'll kill you.”

Aly hugged her. “Understood.”

It was almost seven by the time we left, and a cold December rain had started falling. The chill went right through my sweater and jeans, and I was glad that the Camry's heater worked.

As Matéo headed west on I-10, I popped the top on a can of Barq's Root Beer and felt a little excited and a lot scared, like a kid going on an adventure that would end up forming my character much more than I wanted it to. I had even brought a pillow and a blanket, the way I had when I was little and my parents would take me on a road trip. “Do we know where they were planning to camp?”

“James mentioned the Sabine National Forest,” Matéo said. “I've never been there, but I know it's in Texas, just west of the Louisiana border.”

Aly was looking at the GPS on her phone. “It has three different campgrounds, and there's one road that goes up through the middle. We can start asking questions there, so head north at Orange City. We can eliminate the campgrounds one by one.”

“I'm hoping that they're living it up at a Marriott and didn't think that we might be worried,” I said. “I'd much rather be pissed than scared.”

“Me too,” said Aly, taking Matéo's hand.

What would it feel like to have someone to lean on, like Matéo and Aly had in each other? To know that you could count on someone? Just one more thing I hadn't appreciated about my parents, and now I wondered if I would ever find it with anyone in my life. Everything felt bleak and scary, and a small, ashamed part of me wished I were home again, making cookies.

We drove through the night and the rain, west across Louisiana and then north. Sometimes the rain was a fine mist that made the wipers squeak; sometimes we couldn't hear each other talking because of the drops hammering the car's roof and windows.

There was a lot of time to think—too much. Lying on the backseat, my knees bent so my long legs would fit, I looked up through the back window at the water sluicing down. We were on smaller country roads now, and there were no lights except the occasional gas station or restaurant or bait shop. The interior of the car was
washed by a faint green glow from Matéo's radio, but the stations buzzed in and out as we got farther from New Orleans, and finally he turned it off.

One after another, thoughts, questions, concerns, and fears scrolled through my mind: What did I feel for Rafael, and what did he feel for me, if anything? Where were Suzanne and James? Who had killed my parents, and would I ever not miss them so much, or feel so much guilt? When was I going to break down and tell my tia Juliana where I was and that I knew about Donella? Or would I just go back home and pretend I'd been there the whole time?

And I did want to go to college, didn't I? I did want more in my life than working at a coffee shop, right? Why had I been able to be so aggressive with Rafael that night in the park? What had he done with my portrait? What was happening with my home in Sugar Beach? Mrs. Peachtree hadn't reported anything weird lately. Would I ever be able to live there again?

All these bits and snippets of thoughts and feelings whirled through my brain, kicked up by a storm of uncertainty. Seven months ago I'd been able to look ahead and see my future clearly defined by my step-by-step plan to live my life far away from my parents while not severing all contact forever. It had been mapped out: a very distant school, maybe junior year abroad, a job not in Florida . . .

Jennifer was my best friend, but she alone was having all the college experiences I'd expected to share. Her life seemed odd and foreign to me, and mine seemed boring and inexplicable to her.
Though she was still my best friend, I was keeping so much from her that I might as well have been a stranger. But I was growing closer to Aly every day—in some ways closer to her than to Matéo. She knew who I was, all of me. I didn't have to hide anything from her. I could tell her anything, and had. Even when I gave Jennifer edited versions of my life here, she'd never met Matéo or Aly or Rafael, so they didn't seem real to her. Just like her friends and her come-and-go girlfriends didn't seem quite real to me. Was this how we would drift apart forever? I had planned to leave my parents and keep them at arm's length. Now I was losing Jennifer. How come the only way I could be myself was to leave everyone I loved behind?

I didn't know. And I still had no clue as to who “myself” was.

Around eleven o'clock we found a drive-through and got fast food that I wolfed down and then regretted. I was tired of the darkness, tired of the rain, tired of myself, and wished I were home in my big bed with the silk half tester on top.

Around one in the morning there was a slight break in the rain, and a few minutes after that we reached the first campground. The small office was closed.

“We might as well get some sleep,” Matéo said.

“Maybe we should just . . . go search,” Aly said.

I'd looked on my phone's map: the Sabine National Forest was a big, irregular stretch of land and helped define that part of the border between Louisiana and Texas. The Toledo Bend Reservoir separated it from Louisiana, and there was really only one main
road that cut through the forest's middle, south to north. All the campground entrances were off this one road, which should have made the search simpler. But it was the middle of the night and we were all beat.

“I know how anxious you are, sweetie,” Matéo told her, rubbing her shoulder. “But I think it would be better if we slept until morning, then asked questions at the three campgrounds. This park is huge. If we could narrow down the area to cover, it would help.”

“You're right,” said Aly, her face drawn with fatigue and worry.

We ended up staying in Matéo's car, right by the campground office. I was okay with my pillow and blanket in the backseat by myself, while Matéo and Aly made do in sleeping bags with the front seats reclined. I didn't think I'd be able to sleep, expecting all my weighty concerns to press down on me as soon as I closed my eyes . . . but finally I dozed off, and when I opened my eyes it was morning and I was freezing. Uncoiling my too-long body, I stretched, feeling hungry and stiff and needing to go to the bathroom.

The campground office opened at eight and was staffed by one college student. She was very nice, and she hadn't seen Suzanne or James. Mostly what she did was verify hunting and fishing licenses—there were certain limited areas of the forest where hunting was allowed as a means of keeping the deer population down. She didn't remember seeing Suzanne's green Subaru. We got the same answers at the second campground, and Aly almost cried with frustration.

“Third time lucky,” said Matéo, putting his car into gear.

The third and final campground entrance was only four miles away, but the road was narrow and twisty, and it took us a good twenty minutes to get there. It looked like few people ever made it this far in their quest for camping access. The road was unpaved but covered with crushed oyster shells like our parking spot at home. The sound of our tires on the shells was incredibly loud, and I peered through the windows, hoping that Suzanne and James would hear us and come running. Maybe they'd simply had car trouble and gotten stuck. Maybe they'd lost their phones.