Page 45 of Face Her Fear

Taryn looked up from the bags and smiled. Her eyes were glassy with unshed tears. “Thanks for saying that. Also, thank you for defending me to Nicola today. That meant a lot.”

Josie moved closer as Taryn dug into the bag with the three-ring binder in it. A closer look revealed the wordsDr. Sandrine Morrowwritten in Sharpie along its spine. “Sure,” said Josie. As Taryn reached into the bottom of the bag, upending the binder even more, Josie noticed colored tabs sticking out from its pages. She couldn’t read the handwriting.

Coming up empty-handed, Taryn noticed Josie staring at it. “It looks weird, but it’s really not.”

Josie lifted her hands in the air, as if in surrender. “I didn’t say anything.”

Taryn lifted the binder out of the bag as if it was an infant and held it against her chest. “I made this with all my notes from seminars I took and things I learned here because I like Sandrine’s teachings, okay?”

It was an odd turn of phrase to use but Josie let it go. “Whatever helps, Taryn. I’m not here to judge.”

One of her hands crept from the edge of the binder to her throat and scratched. “Really? Because it seems like everyone else is here to judge me. Except Sandrine.”

“You’re talking about Nicola,” said Josie.

Taryn looked down at the binder. “Not just her. Meg, too. I made the mistake of, uh, leaving this out where she could see it and she freaked out.”

That was what had set Meg off, leading her to believe that Taryn was stalking Sandrine. Josie was sure that the way Taryn then hung on Sandrine’s every word did not help matters.

“When did you show it to Meg?” asked Josie.

“We hung out at night, after everyone turned in. She got scared at nighttime, even though we’ve got locks on the cabins. I told her she could come hang out with me here. The first few nights everything was fine. Then on Tuesday we were here and she wanted a snack so I told her to just look in the bags.”

The cold was seeping into Josie’s bones now that she wasn’t moving. She shifted her feet from side to side in an effort to get her blood moving. “She saw your binder?”

Taryn’s eyes darkened. “She said I was sick. That I had a ‘sick fixation’ with Sandrine. She said a lot of ugly things, so I did, too. We had a fight. It wasn’t the same after that.”

Meg had gone missing Thursday night, two days after that. “She didn’t come back here again?”

Taryn looked toward the door, still hanging half open. “After she did the sound bath on Thursday, I tried to make up with her. I asked her to come over after dark and let me explain.”

A chill swept across the nape of Josie’s neck. “Did she?”

Taryn shook her head. “No. She said she might but then she didn’t.” Her nostrils flared. “She never even gave me a chance to explain, to be friends again.”

“You didn’t see her that night at all after you left the main house?” Josie asked.

But Taryn’s face twisted into an angry mass of lines. She wasn’t listening to Josie anymore. She scratched again at her throat, angrily this time, drawing blood. “Megjudgedme. She acted like a friend and then she saw one thing and she judged me. I know everyone thinks I’m pathetic, but I’m not.”

“I don’t think that,” Josie told her. At the beginning of the week, Taryn had told the group that she was okay with physical contact. Josie reached over and squeezed her shoulder. “Taryn, I don’t think you’re pathetic.”

Something inside her seemed to shift. She blinked and the anger diminished. “You didn’t want to be my friend this week. You’re always with Alice.”

Josie again felt the cold brush of apprehension along the back of her neck. “Alice works in an emergency room. I’m a police officer. We have a lot in common, that’s all.”

Before Taryn could respond, the sound of shouting came from outside. Josie ran out onto the small porch but there was no one in view. A moment later, she heard more shouting. She couldn’t make out the words, but she could tell they were coming from next door—Brian and Nicola’s cabin.

TWENTY-NINE

As Josie approached their cabin, jogging up the steps to the open door, she could hear their voices, loud and angry. They stood in the center of the main room, facing off. Brian said, “Just give it up. We’re not going to get what we want. She’s a closed book.”

Nicola shot back, “Of course we’re not. I’m the only one trying here!”

“This was a total waste of time,” Brian complained. “I’m sick of this shit. I just want off this mountain.”

Josie was standing in the doorway when Brian turned from the middle of the room to storm out. He pulled up short when he saw her, face turning ashen.

Josie looked back and forth between the two of them. “Everything okay in here?”

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