Jasmine sat up and stretched, fluffed out her hair. “I can’t believe any of this is real.”

Bethany’s phone began to chime its alarm. She reached over Jasmine to silence it, checked her messages, felt a dull ache of loss replacing the fear around her heart. Dylan was dead. Finally, after everything they’d been through, Dylan was dead.

And Jasmine hadn’t answered her question.

Before she could press her friend, Bethany caught the rattle of the garage door rising beneath her. She scrambled for a shirt, for eyeliner.

“Is that your dad?” Jasmine asked, her nails clicking on her phone.

Bethany fumbled with the light in her bathroom. “I can’t let him see me like this.”

Russ Tanner had just steered his suitcase into their sprawling kitchen when Bethany and Jasmine reached the foot of the stairs. Her father was like many men around town, a towering former lineman who’d gone to seed. The last five years had added several inches to his waist and a jiggle to his chest. His embrace had grown no weaker, however. Bethany felt the air deflate from her lungs as he wrapped his arms around her, squeezing like he wanted to break her back.

“Oh, Spud,” he murmured into Bethany’s hair. “You must be a wreck.”

“I was yesterday,” Bethany replied in her calmest voice.

“I came back as soon as I heard.” He ignored Jasmine completely. “Have you talked to the police yet?”

“They were at school yesterday but I left early. Why?”

Her father dropped a coffee pod into their gleaming new Keurig machine, dug a bottle of bourbon from behind the cereal—it was never too early for Russ Tanner. “You just tell me when the cops come to see you,” he said. “I don’t want you talking to them alone.”

“I wouldn’t have anything to say. I was sick in bed all weekend.”

Her father appraised her. “It took the fried chicken off your legs.”

Bethany felt Jasmine hold in a shudder.

“We’ve got to run,” Bethany said.

Her father spiked his coffee and took a long sip. “You won’t talk to the police alone,” he repeated.

“I’ll call you if they come for me.” She kissed her father on the cheek. “Which they won’t.”

She and Jasmine were halfway up the stairs when he stopped her. “You were in bed all weekend.”

It wasn’t a question.

“I’m just wondering,” he continued. “You had the strength to clean the garage when you were sick?”

Oh fuck. Oh fuck.

“I told Maria to hose it out yesterday,” Bethany said, praying her voice didn’t betray the panic in her chest. “Some mud got under the door in the storm.”

From the stairs she watched her father take another long slurp of his coffee. He nodded at her, pulled loose his phone. “I heard that rain was wild.”

CLARK

When they’d finally pushed their way through Houston, Mayfield rolled down the windows and soon Clark could smell the sea. Her phone steered them off the interstate and onto a winding highway. The water appeared on the horizon, dull and flat as tin.