“My mom’s in the kitchen,” said Peggy. “She wanted you to have something fresh for afternoon tea.”
Merri could smell something baking, the scent of cinnamon wafting on the air. There was a vibe to the place, the girl, the aromas that relaxed Merri in a way that she hadn’t experienced in a long time. The place wrapped itself around her like a blanket.
“Your room is ready and waiting for you.”
Peggy walked around the desk and took Merri’s bag from her. Merri let her take it, because it just seemed rude not to, and followed her up the stairs.
The room was lovely (no pun intended), a plush four-poster bed with a cozy sitting area around a small fireplace. A writing desk by the window, on which sat fresh flowers—bright pink Gerber daisies—in a vase. The bathroom had a claw-foot tub and black-and-white tile floor.
“If there’s anything we can do for you, Merri,” said Peggy, looking suddenly solemn as she put Merri’s tote on the luggage rack, “please don’t hesitate. We want to help any way that we can.”
When Merri made her reservation, she hadn’t told anyone why she was coming and why she’d need a room indefinitely. But she had informed Detective Chuck Ferrigno of The Hollows PD that she’d hired Jones Cooper, and he promised to cooperate fully (apparently they knew each other well). She should have known that word would travel fast in a place like this. She remembered how the town had rallied around her family, how the volunteers had helped search, feed them, manned the hotline, organized vigils.
Merri barely remembered those early days—caring for Jackson and Wolf in the hospital and searching for Abbey. Every nightmare she had was unfurling around her in a blood-soaked blur—her daughter missing, her son and husband shot. The whole world was a stuttering horror reel. But as shattered as she had been, she remembered the feeling that arms were around her, holding her up. Strangers comforted her, ran errands, brought food and flowers. The owner of the cabin let them stay free of charge, as long as they needed. If the rest of the world had grown disconnected and lonely, people happier in front of a screen than with each other, the opposite seemed true in The Hollows.
“There’s a safety net here that can only be seen when tears are shed,” someone had said to her in those early days. Even for outsiders? Merri had wondered aloud. If you’re in The Hollows, you belong here, the person had replied. She couldn’t even remember now who it had been.
“Thank you,” Merri said now.
“I hope you don’t mind my saying that we’re all still praying for your daughter, that she’ll come home safe to you.”
Merri nodded, wanted to thank her again, but she lost her voice to a sudden rush of tears.
Come home safe to you. It was such a benign phrase, implying that all could so easily be well again. Merri was holding on to that. Only Wolf had dared to ask who Abbey would be if she came home. If all this time she’d been missing, alive somewhere, what horrors had she endured? How would it have changed her? Would she ever be well and whole again? Merri became obsessed with the women in the news, the ones who had been abducted and held for years, watching their interviews, reading their ghostwritten stories. The girl who had been taken from her home and held in the woods, walking through the town where her parents lived with her captors, never calling out for help. They all had the appearance of wellness in varying degrees. But what cracks, what fissures lay beneath the media-ready surface? Who will Abbey be if she comes home to us? It didn’t matter. Whoever she was, Merri would hold her until she was well again. They would all be changed, irrevocably. But they would be together.
The girl—what was her name?—hovered by the door, looking at Merri uncertainly. How long had Merri sat there, lost in her thoughts?
“Thank you,” Merri said, trying to recover herself.
Peggy—that was it—smiled sadly, seeming to understand, and turned to leave the room.
“Of course,” she said. “Again. Anything you need.”
People—Wolf, her doctor, even her mother—were starting to treat Merri like a crazy person, someone too delusional to move forward from tragedy, grasping at the very slim hope that Abbey was still alive. It was such a relief to not be treated that way. In The Hollows, it seemed like people were hoping along with her. No one here seemed to think she should have moved on by now.
They’re just being polite, Merri, Wolf would surely say. No one says what they’re really thinking.
Maybe so. But the world could do with a few more kind, polite people—even if it was fake.
Her phone pinged, and she drew it out of her pocket to see a text from Wolf.
Arrived safely?
He knew she had. They each had a Find My Friends app on their phone, so he could have easily seen that she was in The Hollows. Although service up here was spotty.