Page 65 of Her Wicker Guardian

“The lamp?”

Another memory from before he came through. I look down at the box lying in the grass beside the house. “Yes.”

Locke turns his attention toward the road again. “He was afraid.”

“Yes.”

“Will he come back?”

I think about the Hollis Springs High shirt, the phone almost certainly in his pocket, his friends, his mother’s store, and how fast a story can outrun the person at the center of it. The careful plan from last night has lasted less than a day.

“Probably not,” I say. “But everybody else might.”

Locke’s attention settles on me.

I don’t need Blair to explain this part. I don’t need another committee meeting.

The secret is out.

Chapter Thirteen

Rachel

The boy has a phone.

That thought wipes out everything else. He has friends, social media, and a mother who owns one of the busiest stores in Hollis Springs. He just saw a six-foot man made of willow standing in my yard holding an axe. And when he froze, Locke looked at me and said, “Rachel.”

“Fuck.”

Locke comes no closer. “What happens now?”

“I don’t know.”

My answer is too fast, and I hate it immediately. Last night seven people sat around the table in my yard discussing how Locke might stop being a secret. We talked about who should meet him first, whether he wanted photographs, what people might call him, what would happen if someone contacted the sheriff or a television station.

We were going to choose.

Now a terrified seventeen-year-old is probably calling somebody before he reaches the end of my road.

I take out my phone.

“Who?” Locke asks.

“Blair.”

He nods immediately.

I call before I can start inventing better options. She answers on the fourth ring.

“Someone saw him.”

There’s a beat of silence, and when Blair speaks again, all the humor is gone. “Tell me.”

“Ben Calhoun. He came to deliver my lamp and saw Locke.”

Blair doesn’t waste time. “What was Locke doing?”

“Splitting firewood.”