Chapter 10: Hiking trip
The morning after the pool was a study in fragile normalcy. Sunlight, hard and accusing, poured through the beach house’s large windows, bleaching the hardwood floors and exposing every mote of dust in the air. Jess moved through it like a ghost, her muscles pleasantly sore from the swim, her mind replaying on a loop the brush of fingers, the weight of that shared silence. Soren was already at the kitchen island, scrolling through her phone with a focused intensity that felt like a wall. She didn’t look up when Jess entered.
Lily, however, was a whirlwind of pastel athletic wear and nervous energy. “Hike!” she announced, slapping a hand on the counter. “We need to go to the cove. For old times’ sake. I’ve packed a picnic.”
Jess’s eyes flickered instinctively to Soren, who continued to stare at her screen, her expression unreadable. “Sounds great,” Jess said, her voice slightly rusty.
“I’ll drive,” Soren said, not looking up.
Lily’s bright smile tightened at the edges. “No, it’s okay. Jess and I can take my car.”
“Yours is low on gas. I checked.” Soren finally put her phone down, meeting her sister’s gaze. Her offer was a flat statement, devoid of warmth. “And I’ll carry the cooler.”
A peculiar tension crackled in the sunlit kitchen. It wasn’t an argument; it was something subtler, a territorial shift happening in millimeters. Lily looked from her sister’s impassive face to Jess, who stood frozen by the refrigerator, trying to become part of the appliance.
“You don’t have to come,” Lily said, the brightness in her voice now transparently forced. “Seriously. You probably have… reading to do. Or emails. You’re always doing emails.”
Soren’s jaw tightened, a faint muscle feathering along its line. She held Lily’s gaze for a beat too long, then shrugged, a fluid, dismissive motion. “You’re right. I’ll stay back. Got some reading to do.” She picked up her phone again, a clear dismissal. The victory felt hollow and bitter.
“Great!” Lily chirped, already turning away, but not before Jess saw the hurt confusion in her eyes—the unspoken question of why her sister’s presence had somehow become a thing to be negotiated.
The trailhead parking lot was dusty and sun-baked. The silence in Lily’s car clung to them, thick and unwieldy, a third passenger. As they stepped onto the path, the forest swallowed them whole. Sunlight filtered through a high canopy of pine and oak, dappling the worn earth in coins of shifting gold. The air here was different from the beach—humid, rich with the scent of damp soil, pine resin, and the sweet decay of fallen leaves. It hummed with the relentless, oscillating whine of cicadas, a sound that felt drilled directly into the skull.
Lily charged ahead, the wicker picnic basket swinging from her hand. For fifteen minutes, the only sounds were their footfalls on the soft path, the occasional rustle in the underbrush, and that endless cicada scream.
“So,” Lily said, her voice too casual, not looking back. “You were out late last night.”
Jess’s heart performed a slow, heavy roll in her chest. “Couldn’t sleep. Went for a swim.”
“In the dark?”
“Yeah.”
Lily stopped walking, causing Jess to nearly stumble into her. They had reached a fork. One path, wide and friendly, wound steadily upward. The other, narrower and choked with ferns, dove steeply toward the distant murmur of the creek. An ancient oak stood sentinel at the divergence, its roots erupting from the ground like knotted veins.
Lily turned. Her round, usually sunny face was pale, her brow furrowed. She wasn’t meeting Jess’s eyes; she was studying a point just past her shoulder. “Soren was outside, too. I saw her from my window when I went for water. She was just… standing there. Smoking.”
The confession hung between them. The cicadas crescendoed.
“It’s a free yard,” Jess said, the words dry and inadequate in her mouth.
“She never just stands,” Lily whispered, her voice cracking on the last word. Her eyes, finally lifting to Jess’s, were wide with a vulnerability that was far more frightening than any accusation. “She paces. She plans. She doesn’t just… watch the night.” A trembling breath. “Did something happen between you? Last night?”
The world narrowed to the dappled light on Lily’s cheeks, the desperate search in her eyes, the crushing weight of the unsaid. Jess felt the truth, a living, tangled thing in her throat—the cigarette passed lip to lip, the electric touch, the impossible command to stay. It was a secret that felt physical, a swallowed stone.
“What could happen?” Jess deflected, her own voice thin. “She gave me a cigarette. We talked about swimming. That’s it.”
“That’s it?” Lily echoed, a flare of something like anger breaking through the hurt. “Since when do you and Soren talk? Since when does she look at you like…” She trailed off, shaking her head, as if trying to dislodge an image. “I’m not stupid, Jess. Something’s different. With her. With you. You’re both so… quiet. And you keep looking at each other when you think no one’s watching. It’s like there’s a wire stretched between you and everyone else is about to trip on it.”
Jess had no defense. Lily had named the invisible current, given it shape. The guilt was a hot flush, climbing from her chest to her face. She looked away, toward the narrow, fern-choked path, anything to escape the wrenching honesty in her best friend’s gaze.
“Nothing happened,” Jess repeated, the lie ash on her tongue. “She’s just… different since she came back. You said so yourself.”
“Yeah,” Lily said softly, the fight draining out of her, replaced by a deep, weary sorrow. “But I didn’t think you’d be different with her.”
She didn’t wait for a reply. She turned and started down the wide path, her steps slower now, her shoulders slumped under the weight of the picnic basket and the fractured trust. Jess stood rooted at the fork, the gnarled oak roots like claws around her feet.
The air no longer smelled sweetly of decay. It smelled of betrayal, subtle and sharp.
After a long moment, Jess followed, the distance between them no longer just steps on a trail, but a new and terrible geography. The cheerful picnic, the cove, the old times—they were all ruins now, buried under the words they hadn't said and the truth Jess was holding onto like a stolen, burning ember in her fist. The cove, when they finally reached it, was just a sunlit depression of stones and cold, clear water. It offered no solace. Lily’s laughter over sandwiches was a hollow performance. Jess’s responses were echoes.
All she could think about was the house, and what, or who, was waiting there, reading in the silent afternoon. The wire was stretched taut, and Lily had already stumbled. It was only a matter of time before someone was cut.