“Are you okay?” Shanna said. She’d grasped Clare’s upper arm, and for a split second the sight of her hand there dredged another memory up. A hand holding tightly to her arm right where Shanna’s was, except the hand was different—the fingers longer, knuckles rugged. And it hurt.
“Yeah, I’m . . . I’m okay. That sounds like it was a really bad dream.”
Shanna studied her for a moment and let go. “I tried telling myself it was the next morning. But dreams and awake feel very different.”
Clare silently wished she could say the same, but as of late the two had begun to bleed into one another. She started walking again and Shanna followed suit. “Sometimes nightmares are so real they follow you into waking. It’s really frightening, but in the end they can’t hurt you.”
As they neared the hotel and the path opened up to the clearing Shanna said, “I’m sorry for not telling the truth right away.”
“It’s okay. I’m glad you told me now.”
“Did you ever hear anything like that?”
“No.” The lie came so abruptly Clare didn’t have time to think about it. She gathered herself. “No, nothing like that. I think with everything that’s happened the stress has accumulated and it’s leaking out through places it shouldn’t. That’s all.”
She seemed to absorb this. Clare was in the process of fabricating another affirmation that wasn’t solely for her sister’s benefit when Shanna slowed and pointed. “What is that?”
Clare took in the glass structure growing from the rear of the hotel and wondered how she’d missed the solarium before. “It’s a pool room,” she said.
Shanna wandered in its direction. “What’s a pool room?”
“It’s like an indoor pond or lake where people can swim.”
“Like in The Great Gatsby except inside?”
“Yes.”
They approached the thick glass rising up from a concrete patio that didn’t look like it had seen a broom or leaf blower in ages. Shanna pressed her hands against the glass and looked inside. Clare did the same. The room was rectangular, the pool itself sitting closer to the opposite side while a spacious hot tub steamed near the emergency exit on the right.
“I didn’t like the ending of that book. It made me very sad,” Shanna said after a time.
“Me too.” Clare glanced at her sister, how her forehead was pressed against the glass, how wide her eyes were. “Why don’t we go in? I’ve got something you might like.”
They linked arms again and left the ghostly prints of their hands on the glass behind.
Shanna perched on the edge of the bed after stripping off her shoes and socks. Even with the several bathings she’d received since being found, her feet were still stained dark from years of the shack’s dirty floor. Clare took out her phone and sat down beside her, hitting the wake button. The background screen was a shot of her and Eric when they’d traveled to wine country the year before. They were leaning against a railing overlooking a vineyard at sunset, arms around each other’s waists.
“He has a nice smile,” Shanna said.
“He does, doesn’t he?” She recalled they’d both been a little squiffy off a few glasses of excellent cabernet.
“Will you marry him?”
The question was so innocent and sudden it threw her completely. “I . . . I don’t . . . I’m not sure.”
“Is he a good man? Someone you can trust, like you said?”
“Yes.”
Shanna nodded once. “Then it’s good you found each other.”
The simplicity of the statement shot straight to her core and lodged there. Clare spent another few seconds looking at the background photo before tapping the music app. She scrolled and found the album she was looking for, a compilation of classical music she sometimes put on to soothe her nerves. Within the album she located the song she was looking for and hit play.
Music flowed out of the phone’s speakers, tinny but still beautiful. Shanna blinked at the device and leaned forward. “What is that?”
“It’s called ‘Pachelbel’s Canon in D.’” Clare tried handing the phone to Shanna but she didn’t reach out to accept it.
“Is it like a television? I don’t like television.”
“Kind of. But if you just want it to play music, that’s all it’ll do. Here, it’s okay.” She picked up one of Shanna’s hands and placed the device in it, showing her how to touch the screen and maneuver between songs. All the while the intermingling violins poured from the phone, low but swelling. She smiled, watching her sister sway slightly to the music. Adam leaned into the room through the connected doorway a second later and motioned to her.
“I’ll be right next door,” she said, squeezing Shanna’s shoulder.
There were a few more liquor bottles surrounding Adam’s laptop when she approached the table in his room. “What? Pizza makes me parched,” he said, noticing her look. He swept the empties to the side.
“So what did you find?” she said, settling into the chair opposite him.
“Okay, you want current stuff or history?”
“History. Let’s work our way forward.”
“Harold Davis Rainier. Born nineteen sixty-seven to George and Helen Rainier of Star Lake, Minnesota. George was a welder and died in seventy-four of lung cancer when Harold was seven. Helen worked at a laundromat and when she lost her job a year later, mother and son headed south to Brooklyn Park, then on to Sheffield. They were there for a few years, then they’re off the map until Helen kicks the bucket in eighty-eight. She was buried in Lakeville Cemetery without fanfare. According to the obituary she was survived by her only son, no other family or friends mentioned. Harold went on to attend Fairfield University, where he eventually—”
“Met my father. I know that much,” Clare said. “Okay, so nothing shocking in his backstory, a young kid looking for a father figure meets up with Simon Kinley and the rest is history.”
“Appears so, though I am intrigued by the missing years between adolescence and university. Think I’ll tap a resource who owes me some favors. He has . . . a different set of parameters he can use to gather intel.”
She stared at him. “A hacker.”
“He prefers ‘digital desperado.’ Don’t ask, he’s from Texas.”
“All right, what else?”
“Started digging into the Free Spirit Disciples before I flew out, but really at its heart the sect is the Parson family. Their background is a little more interesting than Rainier’s. Steven Jones Parson, born in nineteen sixty-two to John and Eileen Parson of Maple Ridge, Minnesota. John was a Protestant minister and lost his clergyhood when he got caught with his hand in the collection jar. He was also discovered in communion with a barely legal choir girl around the same time.”
“You’re enjoying the religious double entendres, aren’t you?”
“Let me have my fun. John’s parish boots him in disgrace and amidst the turmoil, Eileen goes for a walk off the roof of a five-story department store. John takes young Steven and moves several towns over to Valley Falls, and there proceeds into a spiral of alcoholism until his eventual demise in nineteen eighty-nine. Steven apparently heeds the call of the cloth, either because or in spite of his father’s past, and opens up his nondenominational church in nineteen ninety after spending some time bumming around the local art scene in Minneapolis. Steven and Margaret are married in ninety-two and their children, Daniel and Felicity, come along in ninety-four and ninety-five respectively.” Adam sat forward, peering over the top of his computer. “Now this is where things get interesting. In two thousand five, Steven takes a page from Daddy’s playbook and decides to skim quite a sum off the church books. Nothing’s conclusively proven and the lawsuits go nowhere. The Parson family packs up in late two thousand six and purchases forty acres of secluded wilderness in northern Cairn County, Minnesota. Presumably with the skimmed money.”