And that’s when I feel it. The bottom opens up, the earth drops out from under me. I think about who could have put her there and why, and my skin tingles with dread. Something very bad has happened, right outside our door.

Again.

I look at Paul, and he feels it, too. “Show me.”

6

Paul and I march down the back steps in silence, our coats pulled tight against a mean kind of cold, one that doesn’t typically happen until months from now, with gusting winds and temperatures stuck in the teens. The kind of cold that chafes the skin and burns the inside of the nose.

Above our heads, a thick layer of overstuffed clouds spits an occasional spell of swirling snow, dousing the mountain’s browns and greens and golds. My gaze tracks to the lake, churning silver peaks on water that’s a gloomy, bottomless black. I think of the poor woman under the dock and shiver.

He pulls me to a stop on the last step. “Are you okay with this?” He tips his head to the lake, white clouds whirling from his lips. “With seeing her again, I mean. I can clear things with Sam if you don’t think you can handle it. You don’t have to be here.”

The truth is, I’m not looking forward to seeing her again. It was bad enough the first time, and the closer we get to the dock, the more the presence of her lodges underneath my ribs, gnawing at me from the inside. Honestly, I’m barely holding my shit together.

But I also know I need to be here, holding Paul’s hand when they pull that poor woman out of the water. Lake Crosby delivered another woman to Paul’s dock, to his door, and I can already hear the whispers worming their way through the hills. I already know what people will say.

“I’m more worried about you,” I say. “This can’t be easy.”

His hand shakes in mine, and I’m pretty sure it’s not from the cold. Paul needs me here, standing next to him when they pull her out, if for nothing else than a reminder I’m still safe and here.

He swings an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into his warmth, planting a kiss in my hair. “Don’t tell Micah, but I’m kinda freaked out. I just hope it’s a stranger, and not—” He hears himself and winces. “Oh, God, that sounded awful. I just meant...”

“I know what you meant. I hope it, too.”