It was just after 1:00 P.M. now, almost twenty-four hours since she’d stood on the Reynoldses’ back porch. So much had happened since then. She was now carless, cameraless, and soon to be penniless when she returned his cash. So you don’t have to claim it on taxes, right, he’d said as he’d given her the envelope of hundreds. Her stomach twisted into knots as the dread of explaining to the Reynolds family they would have no Christmas party photos settled in, and she wished, for the hundredth time, that she had never stopped at that gas station. That she had never gone out with Bennett. That she had driven directly home and not gone to the house on Winslow Street.

But alas, curiosity killed the cat. Or in this case, the cop.

I found you.

He’d spent his last words on her. And yet, she was certain she’d never seen him. Could he have remembered her from years ago, when she was a skittish eight-year-old girl with matted hair and bruises on her skin? Or had he been tracking her dastardly deeds at The Ruins?

Morgan finished her makeup, taking care to ensure perfect symmetry on the right and left halves of her face. Then, she left the bathroom and padded her way across the main area of the basement where she spent most of her time these days. It wasn’t her childhood bedroom. That space belonged to Grandpa Teddy now. But she had pushed an old mattress up to an even older couch and had a comfortable enough area to sleep and watch TV. Her Bart Simpson doll lay on her pillow. Stained and faded to a shade of muted yellow, the white paint on his eyes scratched and all but flaked away, he looked—and smelled—like a stale french fry. She’d had him for as long as she could remember. Aside from the scars and nightmares, he was the only thing from her childhood that followed her everywhere she went.

She tossed her damp towel on the bed and grabbed the pair of black leggings and oversized T-shirt she’d crawled out of earlier. Her socks were thick, machine-spun wool––the kind only worn at cabins and in clammy basements. She put a sweatshirt on over it all and looked like a homeless person. Which, for all intents and purposes, she was.

Her parents let her stay, rent-free, as long as she drove Grandpa Teddy to the senior center twice a week for games and socialization. That was easy enough, especially because he’d stopped going about a month ago, when he’d ordered Morgan to pull into the beach parking lot. They’d just sat there in silence, watching the tide slam against half-sunk piers. Seagulls pecked at the salt. Black plastic bags occasionally wandered by, like tumbleweeds rolling through a tundra. The lighthouse, on its distant rocky perch, looked like a middle finger. They never spoke, just stared out the windshield at the darkening sky until the clock read 4:30 and he said, “Okay.”