Page 37 of The Lovely and the Lost

“What you overheard, with Gabriel—it’s nothing you need to concern yourself with.” Bales managed to sound like he hadn’t just changed the subject. “And it’s not something he’d thank you for overhearing.”

I know.I didn’t say that out loud. Instead, I opted for a different truth. “Jude, Free, and I ran into the sheriff at the supply store.” I addressed the words to the back of my hands. “He said some things. About Gabriel.”

The silence Bales offered in return didn’t feel pointed. It felt like breathing room.

“The sheriff,” I continued after a long pause, “told me to ask you about how you and Gabriel met.”

If that statement took Bales off guard, he gave no sign of it that I could see. “That a question?” he asked.

Was it?

The night before, Gabriel had said that he wasn’t the trustworthy type. But today, he’d knelt next to me in the cave. He hadn’t tried to pry the radio from my hand. He’d fed me the words to say, until I could speak on my own.

“No,” I found myself telling Bales. “That wasn’t a question.”

I wanted answers, but not from him.

“I would have liked to have known you,” Bales commented, his eyes fixed on the horizon. “When you were young.”

As seconds stretched into minutes, I expected Bales to get up and leave, but he didn’t. As the sun set, and the wind began to whip, Cady’s father kept his eyes locked on the Glades.

“You going to ask me what Gabriel meant when he said I was lying to Cady?”

I wasn’t sure how long we’d sat in silence when that question finally broke it. “Would you tell me?”

Bales didn’t answer.

“Why bring Cady back here?” I asked, climbing to my feet. “Why this search?”

I wasn’t sure I’d get an answer. I wasn’t entirely sure why I’d asked.

“Because,” Bales replied gruffly, closing his eyes, “it’s not the things you can’t find that haunt you. It’s when you choose not to look.”

What Bales had said nipped, needle-sharp, at the edges of my mind. The last thing I wanted to do was surround myself with walls, but when night fell and the storm rolled in off the mountain, I forced myself to take refuge inside.

It’s not the things you can’t find that haunt you. Bales hadn’t been talking about me. I knew that, but as the hours wore on, it became harder and harder for me to think of anything else.It’s when you choose not to look.

I’d stopped searching for Bella. I’d pulled back. And, a voice deep inside me whispered, I’d never looked for answers about my own past—the nightmares, the woods, how I’d survived, why there had been no family to claim me.…

The front door creaked open, snapping me out of it. The world came instantly into focus. There was a mug of hot chocolate sitting on the floor beside me, ringed in a confetti heart—clearly, a present from Jude. He wasn’t the one who’d opened the front door, though.

Cady was.

“You got somewhere to stay?” I heard her ask gruffly.

“I imagine I can rustle something up.”

I couldn’t see Mac, but I recognized his voice. For a moment, I was back in the cave, lying flat on my stomach opposite Saskia, trusting him to do no harm—to her, to me.

“You arenotsleeping in your car.” There was no give whatsoever in Cady’s voice. “Or the barn.” She stalked into the house, banged open a linen closet, and unceremoniously shoved a bundle of blankets in Mac’s general direction. He stepped into the house, and a moment later, his gaze fell on me.

I’d been sitting with my feet flat on the ground and my knees in the air, my weight braced against my palms in what Cady referred to as my “ready position.”

Ready to jump to my feet.

Ready to skitter backward.

Ready to fight.