Page 62 of A Sea of Unspoken Things

Instantly, Smoke stopped barking, turning in a nervous circle as he whined. I came down onto the floor beside him, tucking my legs beneath me.

The pastel pink canvas was stained with mud, the fabric stiff with it, but the black Sharpie designs were still visible, a tangle of swirling patterns that connected and flowed.

I pulled the bag into my lap and slowly unzipped it. Inside, there were a couple of water-stained notebooks with rippled pages and a smaller, toiletry-sized bag. I opened it, fingers sifting through its contents. It was makeup—a blush compact, mascara, lip gloss, and a pair of tweezers. I set it on the floor and dug to the bottom of the bag,where a couple of ruined pieces of paper and a smashed granola bar were buried.

With the large compartment emptied, the small front pocket sagged with the weight of what was inside. The zipper was caked in mud, and I had to fight with it to get it loose. As soon as I did, I opened it wider, letting the light fall on its contents.

There was a phone. And a wallet.

The gut-deep sense that something was very wrong here was coursing through me now. That ache in my chest had turned into a boulder of stone. I could hardly inflate my lungs around it.

I fished out the phone, impulsively tapping the screen and pressing the button on the side to be sure it was dead. When I tilted it in the light, I could see that it was cracked in several places. I unclasped the wallet. The leather was rigid from water damage, but Autumn’s face was peeking out from behind the thin plastic sleeve. Her license.

There was a debit card, a Visa gift card, her student ID from the high school. There were even a couple of mildewed twenty-dollar bills inside.

I dropped it on the empty backpack, pressing my hands together in front of my mouth. Autumn’s phone, wallet, keys—everything—were strewn on the floor around me. But where the hell was Autumn?

The idea was like a gathering smoke in my mind, choking out every thought, every feeling. The wide-open chasm that Johnny had left behind was now howling with a single possibility. A bone-chilling idea—that maybe Johnnywasn’tjust trying to tell me something.

Maybe he was trying toconfess.

Twenty-One

I pounded on Micah’s door with a closed fist, pain exploding in my hand.

The cabin was awash in the 4Runner’s headlights, and I watched my shadow shift on the windows, Autumn’s backpack clutched to my chest with one arm beneath the opening of Johnny’s coat. I was still trembling. Still trying to catch my breath.

I didn’t remember standing up off the floor in the hallway or finding the car keys. I didn’t remember thinking about where I was going or why. It was as if time had stopped completely the moment I unzipped that bag. Like I’d blinked and suddenly appeared here, standing on Micah’s porch in the falling snow. I couldn’t even feel the cold anymore.

Footsteps sounded on the other side of the door before it opened, and when he saw me, the lines in Micah’s forehead carved deep with confusion. He eyed the blue checkered coat I was wearing—Johnny’s coat.

“James?” When he spoke my name, it took on a shape I didn’t recognize.

I just stared at him, willing my lips to move, but they wouldn’t. Theconnection between my brain and the rest of my body had been severed. I had no clue how I was even standing upright.

When I said nothing, Micah pulled me inside. “What’s going on?” He sounded scared. Helookedscared.

Clumsily, numbly, I untangled myself from him, walking to the kitchen table, where I set down the backpack. I was still trying to convince myself that it was real. That I hadn’t imagined it into existence. When I looked at Micah, he, too, seemed to not understand what he was seeing.

I paced back and forth along the length of the table, hands going into my hair. “It was in his house.” I could barely hear myself. My voice was so thin.

“What?”

I gestured toward the backpack, the words unintentionally incomplete. “It was just…in his house.”

“James, what the hell is going on?” He grabbed my wrist and held it between us, forcing me to stop. His touch was hot and burning on my frozen skin.

I pulled from his grasp, putting a few inches between us.

“Where did you get that?”

“I told you.” I tried to slow my words down. “I found it at Johnny’s.”

Micah stared at it another few seconds before he stepped forward and opened the bag. He didn’t react at first, moving around the contents until he saw the phone. When he did, he didn’t touch it. “Is that…?”

“Her wallet. Keys. Everything.” I finished his thought.

Micah ran a hand over his face, palm pressing to his mouth.