For all Quinn knew, the simple solitaire with a diamond the size of a grain of rice was still in the top drawer of the bedside stand in her childhood room. Bennet had refused to take it back. She could hardly stand to think of it.
“I still can’t believe you’re a cop,” Quinn said, just to fill the silence. The stillness felt thick and threatening, but what was she trying to do? Distract him? Flatter him? Quinn didn’t even know her own mind. She just felt the need to talk, to keep talking. They had wasted an hour, two, at her mother’s party by carefully reminiscing, laughing modestly about old friends and reliving the sort of safe stories that would keep them balanced on a tightrope where they were suspended above reality. It was a diversion. But now the night felt urgent.
Bennet shrugged.
“Do you like it?”
A grunt. “I guess. Everly is a much bigger town than Key Lake, so there’s always something going on. I don’t spend my day writing traffic tickets, that’s for sure.”
Quinn was quiet for a moment, trying to imagine what sort of savagery he faced. Drugs? Domestic abuse? Murder? In their little corner of Minnesota? She decided she didn’t really want to know. “Do they still have the grad dance?”
“Of course.” Bennet smiled, but it was tight and unamused. “This year may have been the last. Too many minors drinking.”
“We were minors drinking at the Everly dance.”
“That was different. I swear, teenagers get younger every year.”
Quinn hummed her assent.
“There was a fight this year. Someone was thrown off the bridge.”
“You’re kidding.”
“He landed in the shallows. Nothing more serious than a broken leg, but we were never able to prove that he was helped over the edge. A half-dozen boys swore he was drunk and tripped. We’re pretty sure they tripped him—the railings are four feet high—but what can you do?”
“He’s not talking?”
“Would you?”
Quinn glanced out the window. She could picture it: the end of the year grad dance on the old bridge to Everly. Or the bridge to Key Lake, depending on where you lived. It was the only time the two rival high schools came together for a reason other than competition. Though there was plenty of preening and posturing, petty jealousies, and girlfriend stealing that transcended the festivities.
“No,” she finally said. “I wouldn’t say a word.”
“Me either.”
Because the trestle bridge was on a gravel road, the county police closed it off for one night in early June and let a DJ set up speakers on the wooden deck between the first and second beams. It was a BYOB affair, but of course, beer was prohibited. So there were two-liters of Coke and Mountain Dew, boxes of pizza on the open tailgates of the trucks that backed onto the entrance of the bridge. Half the bottles of Pepsi were filled with rum. Vodka mixed well with Sprite. And a few kids could be relied upon to smoke up in the trees along the sandy beach between the trestles. The woods around the little tributary of the Cottonwood River were thick and mysterious, perfect for secrets and things people would rather keep hidden.
“It used to be the cops would cruise around once or twice but mostly leave everyone alone.”
“That’s not the case anymore,” Bennet told her. “It’s just too dangerous. We’re all afraid that someone is going to get really hurt.”
What did her mother say? The more things change, the more they stay the same? Quinn was quite sure that many people had already gotten hurt on the Everly bridge—just maybe not in the way that Bennet and his cop friends expected.
“Quinn?”
Something about Bennet’s voice was off and Quinn pulled her attention from the stars so she could study him, a wisp of anxiety rising in her like smoke.
“What’s going on?”
She followed the path of his finger through the windshield to the black edge of the horizon beyond. At some point he had turned down her road, the gravel ribbon that wound around the farthest curve of the lake. Quinn knew the serrated edge of the landscape around her, the familiar trees, rolling hills, and sleepy homes that looked two-dimensional, cut from black cloth against the backdrop of the equally dark night. But instead of peaceful shadows, the silhouettes were alive and writhing, dancing against a curtain of orange.
Quinn couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing and she leaned forward, clutching the dashboard in her sweaty palms. But even as she wondered at the spectacle before her, it became suddenly, terrifyingly clear. Something was burning.
“Oh my God!” Quinn fumbled for the door handle, Walker’s name on her lips.
Lucy.
But Bennet was quicker, and stronger. “Quinn, no!” He snagged her by the arm and hauled her back, bruising the skin with a grip that brooked no argument. “Shut the door!”
She obeyed, but just long enough for him to drive the final stretch past the boathouse and the A-frame, which, thank God, was not on fire. When Bennet pulled to the side of the road just past her home, Quinn yanked her arm out of his hand and threw open the door while the car was still coming to a stop. She ran up the same short hill where she and Lucy had picnicked, tripping and stumbling through the tall grass, and stood at the top of the rise, panting.
The little abandoned shack was aflame, each board cast into bright relief as a roaring fire blazed through the dry wood. The heat singed her face and Quinn had to shield it from the lick of the scalding air. As she watched, a beam gave way and the fire soared even higher. It was vicious, hungry, lapping up the night sky in greedy, violent mouthfuls that made Quinn fear for the field, the cabin, the boathouse, and beyond.
“Are you insane?” Bennet’s voice in her ear was accompanied by his arms around her waist. He hauled her unceremoniously away from the spectacle, down the hill a ways where they could still see the flames but were no longer scorched by the heat.
Quinn spun on him. “What is this?” she sputtered. “What happened here? Cabins don’t just spontaneously combust!”
“The fire department is on their way,” Bennet said. He emanated a cool, professional calm that only made Quinn feel more crazy. “They’ll put it out. The shack was abandoned, right? Everything is going to be okay.”
“What if . . . ?” But before Quinn could articulate all her fears, a shape emerged out of the darkness from the direction of the A-frame.
“Quinn?”
“Walker!” She rushed at him, uncertain until the last second whether she was going to throw her arms around him or beat his chest. In the end, he caught her up.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Quinn wiggled out of his embrace and searched his face. “Lucy?”
“Asleep in her room. I had no idea this was going on until I went to close the bedroom window a couple minutes ago.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.” Walker ran one of his hands up and down her arm. Quinn didn’t realize until she looked down that his other hand was locked tight around the handle of the baseball bat. “It’s probably nothing, Q. Just a fluke thing.”