I go down the hall, take Ma’s phone from the counter, bring it back to my room, and shut the door softly behind me, sending Kincaid a text to my phone. I can always delete the conversation from Ma’s phone after we’re done. Sneaking around is getting old fast, but I hope now that I’ve spilled to Bree, I can get back to being a basically honest person again.

Hey. He’s seeing Ma’s name on the screen right now. It’s me, the unknown quantity.

Wait, wait. Bloop—quote bubble. Hey I still have your phone.

I muffle a snort; uh, yeah, I know. Where’d you go today?

Not a big fan of cops.

I consider typing who is? It would’ve been nice having him around, is all, after the showdown with Bree, and seeing Ivy’s jacket hardened in the mud like that. I wonder if it ever occurred to him that I might’ve needed him. They think Ivy’s dead. Cops didn’t say so but you could tell.

Wait, wait. A jacket’s not a body.

I straighten, watching the cursor blink. Do you think she’s alive?

Not really

The words, unanchored by a period, seem to hover and sink, like some forecast seen in the haze of a crystal ball. He has an odd, tilting way of coming at a subject, even in writing. Try a different topic. Are you at home?

Where’s home.

A pause, exasperated. Are you drunk?

FUBAR.

Is this a game—I take one step forward, he takes one step back? Should I let you go throw up in peace?

Lol miss your face.

I want to say something about Bree, but I’m pretty sure that was his way of signing off, and I hate the thought of the message I told her about us waiting on the screen for him tomorrow morning. Was he serious about being drunk? Does he ever go home? Wonder about his family. Wonder how hard he’s going to make me work for these details, if it should have to be work at all. If that’s a warning sign of a hookup.

Friday motif: strange sense of unfulfillment.

Everybody’s heard the news about Ivy, but the general mood is quiet, charged, discussion kept to close-knit groups of three or four, comparing facts, trading tragedy. Lips move in near-silent formation: Mumbler’s Marsh. Mumbler’s Marsh. Linking Ivy and Gavin Cotswold together, too coincidental—two kids who went missing only to turn up dead, out there, in the wilderness. The Mumbler’s MO.