“I’ll wait until Sunday. But after that, I’m gone, Lily. I’m done. I’m going to go home and pack now. I’m serious. He knows that I know. I can tell. That means he’ll be looking for me. I’m going to lose my mind if I stay here.” She twitched and swatted at something on her arm that I couldn’t see.

“Okay. Let me think about this. About what to do. You really think Luis did this?”

She nodded gravely. “Be careful, okay?”

“Yeah, you too.”

After she left, I looked up Luis’s address in the employee directory spreadsheet. Technically, Emily and Carrie were the only ones who were supposed to access it, but it wasn’t password protected, and I scrolled until I found his name: Luis Silver. I googled the address listed—he lived right in AC. Sea Breezes Boardinghouse. If he was the one responsible for the missing women, I at least wanted to know where he was when he wasn’t at work. I thought of the way Luis sometimes came to work with bruises, cuts. Were they from these women, women trying to fight him off, women trying to protect themselves? It felt unfair to jump to that conclusion, but then I thought about the things Clara had described. The women arranged in the marsh, the buzzing flies. I felt like I was going to be sick.

I walked to the caf, distracted, confused. Everything around me seemed to have dimmed. Even the jangling slots sounded chastened. I had never seen any hint of violence from Luis, any anger. But maybe that didn’t mean anything. Only that he knew just as well as anyone to keep his secrets stashed away. I wished I hadn’t made things weird with Emily. Or that Matthew hadn’t shown up and made things weird between Emily and me. I could still ask her what she thought about Luis, if she had ever seen him do anything concerning. But then I’d need to tell her about Clara, about her visions, which I knew Emily didn’t believe in. It seemed like I was failing everyone around me—Emily, who didn’t trust me. Clara, who I couldn’t protect. I felt overwhelmed by everything I didn’t know, by how impossible it was to do the right thing when there was so much lurking in the shadows that I couldn’t understand, couldn’t see.

MEETING MATTHEW at the Swim Club reminded me of the night we had our first date at a Cuban restaurant in Williamsburg. Tonight he was already, at my best guess, three drinks in at the bar, murmuring to a waitress in an aqua bikini, fingering the knot on her sarong.