Chapter 3: The Eyes at the Convenience Store

At seven the next morning, the rain had eased.

Lila followed her map to the only convenience store in town—Betsy’s Grocery, with a hand-painted sign out front: No reporters. No cops. No nosy Parkers.

She pushed the door open. A bell jingled. Every sound in the store stopped at once.

Three men at the counter, nursing coffee, turned in unison. A woman holding a child immediately pulled the kid tighter against her chest. Behind the register, Betsy herself—sixties, hair dyed a suspicious orange-red, eyes like two nails—scanned Lila from the ends of her hair to the toes of her boots.

“Little Mason girl.” Betsy said. It wasn’t a question.

Lila’s back went rigid for a heartbeat.

“You know me?”

“Whose kid in this town didn’t lick lollipops on my counter before they were nine?” Betsy peered over her glasses. “The year your mom remarried, I was the one who helped you pack the car.”

The store fell silent again. The three coffee drinkers had eyes that grew heavier by the second.

“I’m not here to dig up old scores.” Lila picked up a can of coffee, keeping her tone light. “I just want to stay a while. Paint some seascapes.”

“Seascapes?” Betsy snorted. “What’s there to paint about the sea? That stretch of reef out there has swallowed more people than it has barnacles.”

One of the workmen spoke up. “Listen to me, miss. Stay a few nights at the B&B and go back to Portland. Our fog around here—breathe too much of it, and a person gets addled.”

“Addled?”

“Can’t tell where you’re standing.” The man stared at her. “One wrong step, and you’re gone.”

Lila paid and turned to leave, but Betsy spoke suddenly from behind her, her voice soft as if talking to herself: “Your sister said she wanted to paint seascapes, too, back then.”

Lila spun around.

But Betsy had already bowed her head to polish the glass counter, as if the words had never left her mouth.

Lila walked out into the rain. She glanced down at her own hands—they were shaking.

She pulled out her phone and brought up the last photo taken before her sister disappeared. In it, seventeen-year-old Emily stood on a wooden dock, grinning without a care, the gray sea and a sign reading Black Reef Coast behind her. In the corner, nine-year-old Lila dangled by the scruff of her neck from Emily’s hand, nose scrunched up.

On the back, in Emily’s handwriting: Sis, everyone here is lying. Please don’t come looking for me. —But I know you will.

Lila squeezed the photo tight.

She glanced back at the convenience store window.

Betsy was pressed against the glass watching her, that orange-haired face a mask in the mist. And behind Betsy, one of the three men held up a phone toward Lila and pressed call.