“Call me if you need me. For anything,” I told her. “I mean it, Ellie. Anything at all.”
She grinned up at me. “I know, Mom. I always know.”
I watched Marcus’s SUV pull out of the driveway and told myself she’d be fine. She always was.
On the third afternoon, my phone rang.
I almost let it go to voicemail — I was in the middle of folding laundry — but something made me grab it.
“Ellie?”
“Mom, please come get me.” Her voice was wrecked, barely holding together. “Please hurry.”
My stomach dropped straight through the floor. “Ellie, what happened? Are you hurt? Talk to me.”
Before she could get another word out, I heard a door bang open behind her, hard enough that I flinched at the sound coming through the phone.
Then Vanessa’s voice, sharp and furious, cutting through the line.
“Ellie. I told you not to call anyone.”
“Vanessa, what is going on—” I started.
The call died.
I stood there in my kitchen with a wet dish towel still in one hand, staring at the phone like it might ring again on its own. I called back. Straight to voicemail. Called again. Same thing. My hands were shaking so hard by the fourth try that I dropped the phone on the counter.
I didn’t remember making a decision. One second I was standing in my kitchen, the next I had my keys in my fist and I was already in the car, engine running, GPS pulling up the resort’s address with fingers that wouldn’t stop trembling.
I don’t remember most of that drive. I remember gripping the wheel until my knuckles went white. I remember Ellie’s voice looping in my head, over and over.
*Please come get me. Please hurry.*
I probably broke every speed limit between my house and that lake. I didn’t care.
By the time I pulled into the gravel lot at Pine Hollow, the sky had gone that deep gold color it turns right before sunset. I was out of the car before it had even fully stopped rolling.
