Page 62 of Death Valley

I take in a deep breath through my nose, steadying myself for the worst. “Related to the same baby that was rescued and adopted into a new family. A family whose name eventually became Wells.”

18

AUBREY

Ican feel the blood drain from my face as Jensen’s words hang in the air.

A horrible chill washes over me, one that has nothing to do with the relentless mountain wind howling outside the cabin. My mind races, pulling together fragments—Lainey’s obsession with the Donner Party, my mother’s descent into madness, the recurring nightmares of blood and snow that have plagued me my entire life. They all come together like puzzle pieces until I’m looking at them as a whole new image, in an entirely new light.

“That’s impossible,” I hear myself say, but the words sound hollow even to my own ears. “There’s no way to know that. I would know that!”

Jensen’s expression remains steady, patient even. He’s been waiting to tell me this, I realize.

Waiting and dreading it.

“I know, because your sister told me,” he says quietly. “Three years ago, when she and Adam hired me to guide them into these mountains.”

My eyes widen. The world seems to tilt beneath me, the cabin’s sturdy floorboards suddenly uncertain. I grip the edge of the table, steadying myself.

“What?” I manage, the single word barely audible over the crackling fire.

“Lainey came to Lost Trail Ranch in May of 2022,” Jensen says, his eyes never leaving mine. “She and her boyfriend Adam. They hired me to take them up here, just like you did.”

I shake my head, unable to process what he’s telling me. He can’t be saying what he’s saying. “No. That’s not possible. The police reports…they said Lainey and Adam were last seen at a gas station near the state park. There was nothing about a guide. Nothing about you.”

But even as I say the words, I slowly realize the truth.

Jensen isn’t lying.

“Because I never came forward,” Jensen admits, shame flickering across his features. “After what happened, I couldn’t.”

I can’t breathe.

I can’t fuckingbreathe.

“What happened?” I whisper, though a part of me doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t want to hear what he’s been hiding from me all this time. Doesn’t want to feel like a fool.

Such a god damn fool.

Jensen runs a hand through his hair, his gaze shifting to the fire. “Lainey was…intense. Driven in a way I’d never seen before. She kept talking about dreams she’d been having her whole life. Dreams about the mountains, about snow and blood and hunger. She said she needed to find something up here, something connected to her family.”

My stomach twists. “The McAlisters?”

He nods. “She had documents with her. Old adoption records, journals, letters—things she’d spent years tracking down. She’d figured it out, Aubrey. That she—that you both—were direct descendants of Josephine McAlister, the baby born during the Donner Party ordeal.”

I close my eyes, memories surfacing unbidden. Lainey at thirteen, stealing our father’s car to drive to the library two towns over because ours didn’t have enough books on the Donner Party. Lainey at sixteen, spending her summer job money on a “historical research trip” to Donner Memorial State Park with a friend who probably had no idea what she was getting into. Lainey at twenty, drunk and crying about how our mother used to tell her stories about the hunger when she was too young to understand what it meant and that she worried one day she’d turn into her, that the stories would come true.

Stories she never told me.

Stories I’d dismissed because of course my mother would ramble on like that sometimes. I’d grown up learning to compartmentalize it and ignore it, because if I didn’t, it would have killed my childhood.

“She knew,” I say softly. “All those years, she knew. Or at least suspected. And she never told me.”

The betrayal hits deep. Not just that Jensen had been lying, but that Lainey had been. My sister. My own flesh and blood. She’d been keeping it from me.

“I think she was trying to protect you,” Jensen says, seeming to read my face. “The way she talked about you…she wanted to keep you safe from it.”

A bitter laugh escapes me. “By disappearing without a trace? By letting me spend three years wondering if she was dead or alive? That’s not protection, Jensen. That’s cruelty.”

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