Page 90 of Tourist Season
Sam told me in confidence a couple of weeks ago that he was going to be looking for something at spring tide, which was this morning sometime,a user called KnightofTruth replies.He might still be out on the water. I’ll check in with his girlfriend and report back.
This message generates some chatter in the group, an atmosphere of excitement. Another user asks a question that strikes my interest.Something to do with autumn?
I don’t know what could be happening in the autumn here. Aside from the Taste of Terror festival near the end of summer,there’s not much planned in the fall when the coastal weather starts to turn. If there’s something coming up that Sam would take an interest in, it’s a mystery to me.
I frown at the screen and start a new search for autumn.
But what I find is not at all what I expected.
There are numerous results for “autumn,” some as recent as yesterday, some dating back to four years ago. But it’s not a season. It’s a person. Autumn Bower. The name brings up a vague recollection of news stories and speculation. She was fodder for the press. A popular influencer in her niche who survived a prolific serial killer, what could be a more enticing story than that? She was a seemingly unassuming woman who somehow escaped from the cellar of a house of horrors and walked seven miles to the nearest town barefoot in nothing but a fucking plaid shirt, leaving the remains of her slain boyfriend and his murderer burned in her wake.
And then, several months later, she just … disappeared.
I keep scrolling through entries, so many of them from shortly after her mysterious disappearance focused on trying to track her down.Autumn’s last video, one entry says, with a YouTube link. I click on it.
And smiling back at me is Harper Starling.
“Hi,” she says, with a wave to the camera. “I’m Autumn, and welcome to Autumn and Adam’s Vanventures with Goonie, our 1985 Chevy G20 camper van conversion. Now that we’ve been living in Goonie for a month, we have a better idea of what we’ve done well in our rebuild and what we’ll probably change. Today I’m going to show you my top-five favorite things in the van so far. Come on in …”
The rest of her words are lost to the roaring heartbeats in myears. I’m staring at Harper. But I’m not. She seems so different. And it’s not just the long blond hair or the lighter eyebrows or the sun-kissed glow. It’s not a Texas accent I can hear in her voice, one I’ve never heard when she speaks. It’s the ease in her. The openness. It’s her welcoming smile, her enthusiasm.
She shows the interior of the van, from the kitchen to the little wood stove, the layout identical to the van that lies at the bottom of the sea. I start the video again and pause it when her face is centered in the shot, and then I bring up my pictures of Harper Starling from before the accident, placing them side by side on the screen. The resemblance is there. They must be about the same age. Their face shape is similar. Even the width of their noses and the angle of their jaws. They look like they could be sisters if their hair color was different. But they are not the same woman.
I close my eyes and try to force a memory that refuses to surface. When I look back at the glimpse of the driver of the car that hit Billy and me, it’s the woman I know that I see behind the wheel. But is it? When I recall the feeling of the asphalt against my face, it’s her voice I hear arguing with the men whose souls I’ve already claimed. But can I be sure?
What if my memory is wrong?
It was only a flash of a moment, her features illuminated by the dashboard lights in the instant before the crash. Could I have warped this memory with my hatred until it matched what I wanted to see and hear?
I navigate to the channel page and click on the introductory video.
It’s her again, this time with a man her age, his arm around her shoulders. He has a surfer vibe: a wide, bright smile and a mop of unruly blond hair. He’s the kind of guy everyone loves. It bleeds right through the screen. There are photos and video shots ofthem working on the van, with a voice-over. “I’m Adam Cunningham,” he says.
“And I’m Autumn Bower,” she chimes in.
“And welcome to Autumn and Adam’s Vanventures …”
I press a shaking finger to the keyboard and pause the video. And then I stand so quickly that I knock the table, rattling my laptop and cup and saucer with a shock of sound that just barely penetrates the thoughts that are clicking together like magnets snapping into place. I rush to my jacket where I tossed it over my backpack and take out the silver bracelet I put there the day the raven dropped it in the sink.
A²BC.
Autumn Bower. Adam Cunningham.
I slowly sit on the edge of the bed.
She’s not the woman who struck me and left me for dead.
She’s Autumn Bower.
The hint of blond roots I noticed in her hair just the other day. The way she feared Sam as though she knew exactly what he could do to her life.
Tears blur the metal links laid across my open palms.
All the fucking horrible things I spent years wanting to do to her. The way I’ve hated her. The way I’ve treated her. Until only recently, I’ve always approached her with the expectation thatshewas the one who owedme. And every harsh word, every glare, every threat and vow to wreak havoc upon her, she took it all.
Somehow, she made her way here. And in the process, though I have no recollection of when or how, we crossed paths. She must have stolen Harper Starling’s identity, maybe in the hopes of evading a past that refused to let her have what she’d fought for and earned.A life.
And I almost took that from her. I came here to destroy her. But she isn’t even the woman I was seeking, and yet she never said a word.
