Light as a Feather, Cold as Marble

Chapter 30

"Oh, the snow. Right. Yeah. Well, I hope you have a safe drive tomorrow, Charlie. Sleep tight and sorry to bother you at this hour," Officer Mulvaney said. The disappointment in his voice that he didn't have reason to cuff Henry and march him away was audible.

The police apologized (in a tone that suggested that they weren't truly sorry at all) to Henry and told him they just had to dot every i and cross every t. Surely, they said, he could understand. I wasn't sure what had just happened; I recognized Charlie's name as the fraternity brother who Henry had brought home to the Richmonds' as a guest the weekend of Olivia's sixteenth birthday party. But if Henry had had the foresight to warn Charlie that cops might be calling to verify a cockamamie story about a ski trip at an absurd hour, Henry was more of a logistical mastermind than we'd given him credit for being.

The racket in the parking lot had subsided and Henry thanked them for their vigilance and assured them he'd contact them if he came across any information about the missing teens from his hometown. We heard him flip the deadbolt on the door and pull the chain lock as a secondary measure to make sure any attempted reentry by the police wouldn't take us by surprise. Even though the coast was clear, Trey and I held our positions under the bed.

"Stay down there, guys," he said in a low voice. "Let's give it a few minutes to make sure they're not outside listening."

So, we waited. Trey spotted a pair of lacy panties on his left side and fired them like a slingshot toward the wall for my amusement. "Gross," I mouthed at him.

Henry flipped on the television set and then walked into the space in between the beds and dropped to his knees.

"It's cold out, and it's late," he said. "They probably have a ton of traffic stuff to deal with because of the snow.

We waited what felt like an eternity but was probably more like fifteen minutes, and then we crawled out on our bellies and brushed ourselves off. I was covered in a film of dust.

"How did Charlie know what to tell the cops?" I asked Henry as quietly as I could.

"I was texting with him earlier when I was chilling in the ski lodge. I figured it might come in handy to have my cover story ironed out since I've been lying to cops left and right for the last twenty-four hours," Henry said. "We're frat brothers. He's supposed to have my back." It felt like years had passed since the accident we'd witnessed on the Mackinac Bridge, but it had only been one day. I wondered about that guy whose car had gone over the side of the bridge whether or not the police had ever found his car in the icy lake.

"Good thinking, man," Trey congratulated Henry. "I thought it was over. The end of the line."

The t-shirt of Olivia's that I'd worn as pajamas was smeared with black and probably all sorts of gross allergens. If I'd had any options, I would have changed before climbing back into the clean bed wearing it. But Henry was adamant that we turn out the lights and at least make it appear to the outside world like he was going back to sleep for the night, so I pulled the blankets over myself and accepted that sleeping covered in grime was just one more thing I'd have to get Violet back for.

Unlike earlier that night, this time our breathing was ragged. Even with my eyes closed, I could tell that neither Trey nor Henry was anywhere close to dozing off again. Antsy and distracted despite my own exhaustion, I opened my eyes and looked up at the blank ceiling, wondering when and if I'd ever sleep in my own bed at home in Willow again, and realizing for the first time since I'd escaped from Dearborn how desperately I wanted to. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glint of moonbeam bouncing off the pendulum.

"Hey guys?" I propped myself up on my elbows. "What should we do with this pendulum?"

I heard rustling blankets and knew that I'd caught Henry and Trey's attention.