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Back One White Lie Save as PDF
Chapters (59)
  1. COVER
  2. About the Author
  3. DEDICATION
  4. ONE
  5. TWO
  6. THREE
  7. FOUR
  8. FIVE
  9. SIX
  10. SEVEN
  11. EIGHT
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. TWENTY-FOUR
  28. TWENTY-FIVE
  29. TWENTY-SIX
  30. TWENTY-SEVEN
  31. TWENTY-EIGHT
  32. TWENTY-NINE
  33. THIRTY
  34. THIRTY-ONE
  35. THIRTY-TWO
  36. THIRTY-THREE
  37. THIRTY-FOUR
  38. THIRTY-FIVE
  39. THIRTY-SIX
  40. THIRTY-SEVEN
  41. THIRTY-EIGHT
  42. THIRTY-NINE
  43. FORTY
  44. FORTY-ONE
  45. FORTY-TWO
  46. FORTY-THREE
  47. FORTY-FOUR
  48. FORTY-FIVE
  49. FORTY-SIX
  50. FORTY-SEVEN
  51. FORTY-EIGHT
  52. FORTY-NINE
  53. FIFTY
  54. FIFTY-ONE
  55. FIFTY-TWO
  56. FIFTY-THREE
  57. FIFTY-FOUR
  58. Acknowledgments
  59. THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

Then they exchanged a look. Vera cleared her throat.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘We’ll go tomorrow.’

Penguin walking logo

SIXTEEN

We arrived at the trailhead for a dress rehearsal just after ten a.m.

It was Halloween, funny enough, a good day to cause mischief, to kick off the sort of macabre plan that really should be relegated to books and movies.

John found a spot in the back of the parking lot, which was fuller than it had been last time. Must be people up from the city to see the leaves, I thought. I imagined Ellie, somewhere nearby. I tried not to imagine Davis.

I zipped up my hoodie as we got out of the truck. The weather had changed in a matter of twenty-four hours. Our first real cold snap had arrived during the night, and the reprieve we’d had, the cricket-chorus nights in the gazebo, were like a faraway dream.

At the entrance, Vera grabbed the sign-in clipboard and immediately began riffling through it. Taking charge, even though John was disappearing, not her. Perhaps women were naturally better at planning how to disappear; perhaps they had more reasons.

‘What are you looking for?’ I asked, shoving my hands in my pockets to keep warm.

Her eyes flitted to me briefly before returning to the clipboard, glancing over names. ‘We need to know what times are busiest,’ Vera said, without looking up. ‘Run into someone hiking at the same pace as us, and the whole thing won’t work. Mornings look pretty empty,’ she added. ‘At least during the week. It picks up around noon.’ She flipped another page. ‘We should go in the early evening, so there’s not too long for John to wait before dark. On Fridays,’ she continued, ‘there seem to be a lot of people in early, but it drops off in the afternoon.’

‘That’s just the sign-in, though,’ John said, his hand tracing down the sheet. ‘This hike’s out and back, so people will be coming down as we’re going up.’ He pointed to a cluster of names. ‘Five people signed in an hour ago. We’ll likely run into them.’

‘Right,’ Vera said. ‘We want to run into, maybe, one person. So ideally, we need to arrive just as people are finishing up, but not so late that no one will be here.’ She perused the sheets again. ‘Practically no one goes on Wednesdays,’ she said. ‘But then no one will see us. Mondays are pretty dead, but there are still some hikers – long weekends and all. I don’t see more than seven or eight people all day on the last two Mondays, in the afternoon.’

‘So Monday,’ John said.

Vera hesitated, mentally calculating whether she could get it all together by then. She looked to me. ‘Is that okay with you?’