Page 118 of Touch the Sky

“W-what are you doing?”

Tess wheezes but can’t seem to find any words to answer her daughter.

Shel starts backing out of the bedroom.

“Shel, wait,” Tess rasps.

We can’t move, though—not without shifting the blanket and making it clear we’re both buck naked.

Shel disappears around the edge of the doorway, and then we hear her start to bolt for the front door.

“Honey, give me a minute,” Tess calls, her voice now shrill and sharp with alarm. “Let’s talk about this.”

Shel’s footsteps don’t slow down. The front door bangs against the wall hard enough to make us both flinch.

Tess pushes me off her and leaps to her feet.

“Shel!” she cries, racing around the bed to get her clothes. “Stop!”

It’s too late, though. There’s nothing but the silent house to answer.

Shel is already gone.

Chapter 25

Tess

“SHEL!” I scream, my flashlight’s beam cutting across yet another patch of empty pasture.

I whirl around in a circle, slashing the light like I can cut the night to pieces and pull my daughter out of its depths.

She has to be here somewhere. She just has to.

“Where the fuck could a ten year-old go in five fucking minutes?” I demand, like maybe someone will pop up out of this field and give me some damn answers.

It can’t have taken any longer than that for me to yank my clothes on and come running out into the yard. Really, it must have been closer to two minutes, but that’s all it took. She was gone without a trace. We’ve all been scouring the property with flashlights and screaming for her for half an hour now.

She can’t have made it to the woods or the highway that fast. She’s got to be hiding on the property somewhere.

I cling to that belief like it’s the last thread of my sanity.

All around me, I can hear voices shouting Shel’s name again and again. Somewhere in the blur of the last thirty minutes, I learned the kids had less streets left for trick-or-treating than they thought, which explains why Shel showed up so early.Gabrielle was still sleeping, and when no one answered at the door to the main part of the house, Shel came around the back to look for me.

Now Ali and his parents are out on the grounds, armed with flashlights of their own. Maddie and Natalie joined the search as soon as they arrived. There can’t be much of La Grange Rouge left to check.

I have no idea why Shel would be sitting in the middle of this field, but I have to check. I have to try.

“She has to be here,” I chant. “She has to be. She has to be.”

She’s just shocked and confused. She saw something she didn’t understand, and she wanted to be alone to process it.

She wouldn’t do something as drastic as trying to run away into the darkness.

“So then why isn’t she answering?” I ask the field.

The field doesn’t say anything back.

I let out a screech and kick the ground so hard a jolt of agony zings through my toe and up my leg.