Julian
“Sam’s been gonemost of the day,” Theo said in a frantic whisper. “We left the diner and I took her back to our house, but she was freaking out and afraid her dad would figure out she was here.Whichhe did. He’s downstairs right now demanding answers from Mama, and I told them I was gonna try to track her down, but she’s not answering her damnphone.”
“Theo, start at the beginning. Why is Sam running from her dad?” I looked up as Daniel came into the living room, already frowning inworry.
“Speaker,” Daniel mouthed, and then I clicked the button that let Theo’s voice play out for us both tohear.
“Jules, it’s complicated, okay? I lied earlier about her being grounded. Sam and her dad just don’t get along, so she moved out a few months ago. She tried living with her mom and stepdad in Syracuse for a hot minute, but that was even worse. So she told her mom she was coming back to O’Leary, she just didn’t… officially come back. Not to her dad’s house. Her dad assumed she was with her mom, and her mom thought she was with her dad, until Mr. Henderson saw her at the diner this morning and realized something was up. He called Sam’s mom and now it’s all a huge clusterfuck.”
“I had no idea.” I looked at Daniel and he shook his head. “Daniel didn’teither.”
“Is he there?” Theo’s voice had a new tension. “Is Daniel withyou?”
“Yeah. We’re at Daniel’s place rightnow.”
“Oh, thank fuck,” Theo whispered. “Okay, listen, you need to go out and check theshed.”
“The shed?” Iasked.
“The one out back that Sam was cleaning out for me.” Daniel was already grabbing his jacket from the hook and shrugging it on. “Why, Theo? You think she’s hidingthere?”
“Shit.” Theo sighed. “I might as well tell you because you’re gonna see for yourself, but…” He lowered his voice another notch. “Sam’s been staying there for a while. Sleeping there. Atnight.”
“What?” Daniel and I chorused in a two-part-harmony ofoutrage.
“In a rickety shed in the woods? What the hell?” I demanded. “It’s literally freezing outside. That’s incrediblydangerous.”
“It’s not rickety, it’s structurally sound, but it’scold.If she needed a place to stay, why wouldn’t she just come sleep on my couch?” Daniel asked. “Jesus, Theo. What the hell were you twothinking?”
Daniel held the phone while I grabbed my own coat and tugged it on, along with a pair of gloves. I beckoned Daniel to lean down so I could throw a hat on his head and he smiled at medistractedly.
“It wasn’t me, okay? I wanted her to come stay at our house. Mama would have let her. But Mama would have insisted on telling Mr. Henderson, and Sam didn’t want her dad to know where she was. So what the hell was I gonna do, Daniel? I could either support a plan I hated, or turn my back on a friend when things got shitty. What kind of choice isthat?”
“No kind,” Danielsaid.
“I don’t get why she couldn’t let her dad know where she was.” I took the phone back as Daniel threw open thedoor.
“Because he would have made her go back home, Jules. Duh.” Theo’s voice suggested I was anidiot.
“He would have made her wear a dress and go to an ivy league school or something,” Daniel said wryly. “There was constant tension there, it soundedlike.”
“She told you?” Theodemanded
“A little.” But then Daniel looked at me and added, “Not a damn thing about her living in the fucking shedthough.”
It was really cold out—dangerouslycold, as Dana Cobb had warned us it would be—and windy, too. With the sun nearly ready to slip below the horizon, it was only going to getcolder.
“She knew if she got anyone involved, they would have told her father or gotten the state involved, or something like that, and she just wanted to be left alone. She’s gonna be eighteen soon. I was gonna help her get a place after that. She could’ve stayed here with me, like in your old room,Jules.”
I followed Daniel around the side of the house and down an overgrown path I’d never used before to a freestanding shed maybe a hundred feet from the cabin, but hidden from view by a thick stand of trees. It was a windowless wooden structure with a thick metal roof designed to withstand tons of ice and snow, built in roughly the same style as the cabin itself, but with no windows and only one padlocked door large enough to drive a four-wheeler or snowmobilethrough.
“The last owner used to keep a small tractor here for plowing the driveway,” Daniel said. “Along with a pile of junk that’s older than anything else on this property. Lamps, furniture, gardeningequipment.”
“We cleaned all that out,” Theo said. “Well, most ofit.”
“She’s not here,” Daniel said as we got closer. He made a frustrated noise and ripped the hat off his head. “Where else could she beTheo?”
“Wait, how do you know?” I demanded. “We haven’t even been insideyet.”
