Page 42 of The Narrow

Grace Carpenter was from Connecticut, I learn. Her father was a banker and her mother was the youngest daughter of a wealthy businessman. She was the middle child of three. The night of the disappearance, her roommate saw her going to bed but slept soundly and didn’t notice that she’d left until the next morning. This wasn’t a cause for alarm, and so most of the day went by before a search began in earnest. She hadn’t left by the main road—there was a security guard stationed at the gatedentrance—but there were service roads she might have taken. Or she might have headed into town for some reason. Perhaps to meet someone. It’s a little over an hour’s walk on foot if you cut through the woods and over the Narrow.

You could walk the extra half mile to the bridge, of course. Or you could make one easy jump and be on the other side.

The article continues on the next page. I turn it, and there she is, staring at me: Grace Carpenter. It’s a formal photograph. It’s printed in black and white and fairly faded, but her gaze immediately arrests me. She has a fair complexion and dark brown hair, swoopy and curled where it falls around her shoulders. I think of it wet and lank, dripping water, but it’s hard to hold the image of the Drowning Girl in my mind while looking at the living one. She has an elegant oval face. She’s pretty in a way that sneaks up on you, a beauty that blooms softly as you look at her hooded eyes and the sly smile at the corner of her mouth, like she’s keeping a secret and dying to tell you. I have the fanciful thought that we would have gotten along, Grace Carpenter and I.

I’m so absorbed in the photograph that I don’t hear the door open or the footsteps approaching behind me. I only realize that Veronica is there when she speaks. “Eden.”

I twist around with a gasp. She rocks back on her heels, hands held up in a placating gesture.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were going into town,” I say, voice rough and adrenaline spiking.

“I ditched,” she says. She folds herself into a sitting position on the ground next to me, elbows on her knees. Her bleached-blond hair flips over her eyes, and she blows a puff of air at it. A row ofsilver hoops marches up the cartilage of her left ear. I have a sudden, vivid memory of holding her hand while she stifled a shriek each time the needle punched through. “I’m sorry.”

“Cool,” I say, looking down at the paper in my hands. “Thanks.”

“Eden. Come on. I’m really sorry. That was dismissive and bitchy of me. You’re right. I haven’t asked what’s going on with you. You’ve always been so private, though, you can’t totally blame me. You don’t like people asking questions.”

I want to protest. But she’s right. What came first—Veronica not asking me about my life or me dodging the questions every time? I can’t remember.

“I’m asking now,” Veronica says softly. “What’s going on, Eden? It’s not just the money.”

“It’s not just the money,” I confirm. I’m staring at the words on the page.Feared drowned.

“Then what?”

I know what the honest answer would be. It would be the pool house and the pills, Dylan and Luke. But when I look up, I say, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

She shrugs. “Sure.”

“Not just in theory, not just a maybe. Do you actually believe in them?” I press. I reach up, touch the pentacle she gave me. I laughed it off, but I’ve worn it ever since.

She bites her lip. “I think that ghosts are our way of perceiving spiritual energy,” she says. “Like spells are a way of shaping energy and intention, you know?”

“What about what happened to Delphine? That night at the Narrow?”

She looks uncomfortable. “I don’t know what happened to Delphine. What does that have to do with ghosts?”

“Nothing,” I say, shaking my head and looking away.

“Eden. What’s going on?” she presses.

I can’t look at her. “The Drowning Girl. I think she’s real. And for some reason she’s coming after Delphine Fournier.”

Silence. Then, a slow intake of breath. “Because of what happened. With the Narrow.”

“We think so.”

“We. You and Delphine.”

“She’s really nice,” I say, though of course that isn’t the word to describe Delphine at all. I look away.

Veronica puts a hand on my knee. “You like her,” she says, like she suddenly understands what’s going on.

“I want to help her,” I say, which isn’t a denial, not exactly.

“And you think this girl is the ghost? Grace Carpenter,” Veronica says, looking at the newspapers. Her voice is carefully neutral. She doesn’t believe me, I realize. She’s indulging me. She takes the paper from me and reads through it with a line between her brows. “What do you know about her?”

“Just what’s in there. I couldn’t find anything online,” I say.

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