But I did.

Wearing her pink shoes.

Chapter Fifteen

Brent lives on the opposite side of town, past the Westlink Fertilizer & Feed store and the new community center that’s going up, past the newer area that’s been built up to accommodate for what Barrens counts as a population explosion. Ten years ago this was rural open countryside and now it’s all new construction, contemporaries slotted onto pancake-flat plots of land. The houses are bigger and upscale by Barrens standards: two-story, generous lawns, U-shape driveways.

Brent opens the door almost immediately. Even in slippers and jeans, he looks put together, well rested, and not hungover at all. He’s standing there as if the doorbell has summoned him out of some J.Crew catalog.

“Hey, Abby. You survived.” He grins at me, but not quickly enough—for a split second, I thought I saw him wince. I think again of the body in the water…a nightmare. Has to be. Surely, if anything bad had happened, if something awful went wrong at the party, there would be signs of it—chaos, tension, maybe even police.

Unless I’m the only one who knows.

“What happened last night?” I ask him. My voice sounds distant, as if it’s coming from someone else’s throat.

“What didn’t happen?” He leans the door open a little wider. “I think I’m off vodka for the rest of my life. Come on in.”

His ease, his flirtation, the way his eyes sparkle: all of it confuses me. His hallway is clean. Light-filled. Running shoes laced neatly by the door, a key dangling from a peg on the wall, beneath framed photographs of Brent at various stages of his life: Brent trout fishing with his dad, Brent suited up in his football uniform giving a thumbs-up to the camera, Brent getting head-knuckled by a curly-haired guy dressed in a flashy suit against a backdrop of cornfields.

“I don’t remember getting home,” I say. I meant to ask straight away about Misha, but fear closes my throat. Brent speaks before I can.

“Really? You weren’t even weaving.” He glances over his shoulder to smile—a slay-them-where-they-stand look I remember from high school, though then it was never directed at me. “Erickson drove us both. He’s on the wagon. I asked you if you wanted help getting inside but you seemed to know what you were doing.”

It’s a small relief. I hate the idea of Brent seeing all my clothes disemboweled from my suitcase, my mess in the kitchen, the unmade bed. That amount of vulnerability is just too much to bear.

“This way.” Brent gestures for me to follow him. I take in the muted colors of his house, the orderly lines and the faint medicinal smell of the air conditioner. It’s a grown-up house, nicer even than my condo in Chicago, which looks clean only by virtue of having hardly anything in it. “Misha’s in the back.”

“Misha…?”

“Yeah. It was a rough night. We were taking care of Annie until four in the morning. So Misha needed to crash.” Seeing my look of confusion, he adds, “Annie nearly got herself drowned last night. Don’t you remember?”