crouch down and scramble to put my hands on the flashlight in the dark, to make the image go away. My fingers find pine needles and rocks, my mind still snared by the vision or memory. Zoe falling from some great height. Zoe, dead.
Caden’s standing over me, the light of his phone screen casting a watery glow on the woodsy floor. We spot the flashlight at the same time and both reach for it.
“I’m sorry,” he says, as I draw my hand sharply back.
“No, I’m sorry.” I grasp the flashlight and push myself up to standing. “You’d better take this.” I hold it out to him. “Butterfingers.”
Part of me burns to tell Caden what I just saw. But if I’m imagining things, I won’t be doing myself any favors by spilling my “vision” to him. And if what I saw was somehow real, I’m not sure what that means. The possibilities range from unsettling to flat-out terrifying, so I shove them back into the dark where they belong.
The incident in the car yesterday, and now this. Something very creepy is going on with my brain, and a small voice at the back of my head says if I know what’s good for me, I’ll keep my thoughts to myself.
We start walking again, and in a minute, we’re through the trees and standing in tall, unkempt grass. The few windows on this side of the estate are dark. Caden turns right and guides me along the edge of Windermere, back toward the grounds behind the house.
Soon, a barnlike structure that must be the stable comes into view. On the far side, I can see a riding pen. It’s hard to be sure in the dark, but as we approach, something tells me this piece of Windermere is better cared for than the house itself.
Caden takes hold of the handle and swings a heavy wooden door wide. As if reading my mind, he says, “Charlie’s the one person she lets on the grounds. Helps us with the horses. She loves to ride, but they need a lot of care.”
We step inside the stable, and I look down to find Jake pressing against Caden’s legs, tongue lolling happily to one side of his spaniel mouth. Caden reaches down to scratch the top of his head. My nostrils are flooded instantly with the sweet tang of hay, the rich, earthy scent of leather, and the smell of the horses themselves, which is distinctly animal. It smells like the country.
“This is Jackie O.” Caden gestures toward the tall brown mare in the first stall. “And this is Pike.” Pike is just a bit smaller, and his coat is a dappled white and gray. Caden reaches into Pike’s stall to rub his nose, and I take a step back.
He watches me with amusement. “I thought all girls were into horses.”
“Don’t they teach you anything about not making binary assumptions at that fancy college of yours?” I ask.
Caden laughs. “My bad. But Pike’s very friendly, promise.”
I look around the rest of the stable. There are six stalls in all, but the other four appear to be empty. There’s a locked door at the back, which is probably where they keep saddles and feed and whatever else gets stored in a horse stable. Both the top and bottom panels of the door to the last stall on the right are closed and latched. Caden heads back toward it, Jake on his heels, and in a minute, the bottom panel is open, and Caden is rustling around inside.
“Drink?” he asks, emerging with a bottle of whiskey and two cans of Coke.
I hesitate. “Just the Coke,” I say finally. “I’m not really drinking right now.”
He hands it to me, and I’m surprised to find the can is icy cold.
“You have a fridge back there?”
Caden grins. “Windermere can be … intense. My mother only ever comes out to ride in the mornings, so the stable’s empty a lot. Sometimes I need a place to kick back.”
I’m tempted to tell him about my run-in with Mrs. Talbot at Tom’s birthday party. But things are actually not weird with Caden right now. Easy. Relaxed. Like they were that first night. I don’t want to rock the boat. He closes the stall door and sits on the floor with his back against it. I follow suit across the aisle, cracking open my Coke, and Jake flops down on the stable floor between us. I can justify keeping quiet about Mrs. Talbot, but I do