I woke to find myself alone. There was no sign of Vincent. A thin strip of sunlight seeped through a gap in the curtains. I rolled over on the bed and glanced at the clock. It read 12:17. Had I really slept half of the day away? I felt better for it, my head clearer somehow. My sleep had been unbroken and Molly Smith and her father had stayed away. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I stood up.
"Vincent?" I called out.
Silence.
Standing alone in my bedroom, I wondered if Vincent returning hadn't been a dream. Had he really come back last night to tell me he thought I was beautiful? Had we really danced together in each other's arms? Had Vincent kissed me then held me in his arms all night long and had wanted nothing more from me? It couldn't have been real. Stuff like that didn't happen - not in Sydney's world.
I padded out of my bedroom and into the living room. There was no sign of Vincent and the room looked just like it had before I'd gone to bed last night. Then, I saw it and my heart fluttered. I crossed the room to the coffee table and picked up the empty Coke bottle Vincent had left behind. He had come back last night. He had told me how he had offered to bring me my iPod just because he thought I'd looked beautiful in the newspaper. We had danced together. He had kissed me, then held me close all night. Vincent had kept the nightmares away like he'd promised he would.
I went to place the bottle back down on the table, when I saw the folded piece of paper tucked inside. At once, my skin prickled all over with gooseflesh as I remembered the bottle in the bottom of the well from my nightmare. Slowly, I unscrewed the lid and tipped the bottle up in the palm of my hand. I hooked my little finger in and eased out the folded piece of paper. Once out, I unfolded it. A message had been written across it.
Hey Sydney,
Gone into work to find more of those missing pieces from our mystery.
I'll catch you later
Vincent X
I refolded the note and placed it back inside the bottle. Why had Vincent left me a note in the bottle and not on the table? Perhaps he didn't want anyone else to come across it and take a look. But who? I lived alone. Then again, perhaps Vincent suspected that my father might come over - perhaps he even had a key and could let himself in. We were meant to be keeping our friendship secret from my father.
Why had I started to think so deeply about everything - stuff that probably didn't even matter? I headed for the bathroom. I was sure the bottle did matter. Not the one Vincent had left on the coffee table - who knows why Vincent did that - I bet he didn't even know himself. That was just Vincent, I had come to learn. The bottle at the bottom of the well was different, though, I reasoned as I filled the bath with hot water. I had seen it in my dream, just like I had seen Molly and her father. Therefore wasn't the bottle somehow important, too?
I turned off the taps, let my bathrobe fall to the floor, then stepped into the bath. Sinking beneath the water, I closed my eyes. If the note did have some bearing on what had happened to Molly, what would it say and who could possibly have written it - and why? The only way to find out would be to retrieve the bottle. But how?
Massaging shampoo into my hair with my fingertips, I pictured the well and how it seemed to plummet deep into the earth. I imagined standing on the crest of that hill again and looking out towards the road and the farmhouse. Was there anything I was missing? After the deep night's sleep I'd had, thanks to Vincent, my mind seemed less foggy. It was sharper than it had been since the accident. In my mind I saw the road, the blood, the dead bodies, broken windscreen, tyre marks, the crinkled-looking ECILOP...
"Tyre marks!" I breathed, sitting bolt upright in the water. "How come there were brake marks on the road by the accident? I never hit the brakes. I didn't see the horse and the cart, so why would I have slammed on the brakes?"
I washed the remains of the shampoo from my hair and jumped from the bath. Throwing a towel about me, I raced to my bedroom, all the while the images of those thick, black tyre marks flashing before my mind.
"I didn't make those tyre marks," I whispered aloud, pulling a T-shirt over my head. I plucked a clean pair of panties from a drawer. With them halfway up my legs, I stopped. Almost like a blinding vision before me, all I could see were those dents and scratch marks at the front and down the side of Michael's father's 4X4.
My father had a knock the other day, I heard Michael say.
Had it been on the same day Jonathan Smith and his family been hit by a vehicle on the road which ran around the outskirts of Grayson Farm? I wondered.
With my hands shaking, I yanked on my jeans, and gasped, "What if...?"
What if the accident had already taken place? What if someone else had driven them off the road before I'd even got there? What if I'd just driven into the wreckage? But the other vehicle would've been a wreck, too, just like my patrol car had been after hitting that horse and cart.
"Not unless it had been a big car," I whispered in shock. "Something like a four-by-four!"