He gives that weird laugh again, the one that makes my skin itch, then turns back to Lo, his expression almost bewildered. “I never even suspected. Not for a second. Do you know what it did to me to confront my mother? To sit there and listen while she cried and told me her biggest shame? Do you know that I still haven’t managed to look my father—the man who raised me—in the eye since I found out?”
August’s gaze swings back to me. “Do you know what it felt like to see that picture of Camile Fitzroy and realize I nearly slept with my ownsister?”
Nausea rises up again, and I make a slight choking sound as I step away from him, from Lo, from all of this. “This isn’t happening,” I hear myself say.
“Your mama said that, too,” Lo says softly—so softly that at first I think I’ve misheard her. But then she adds, “When Marie came. When Landon was dead. She kept saying that. ‘This isn’t happening.’”
Moving forward, the wind blowing her nightgown tight to her body, Lo looks like a ghost again, and outside, I hear a mighty crack somewhere in the distance.
The Witches of St. Medard’s Bay, I think, nearly hysterical now, a laugh or maybe a sob trapped in my throat.
“But honey, I’m gonna tell you the same thing I told Ellenthat night—thisishappening. And you’ll be on the other side of it soon.”
The howling seems to be inside me now, echoing through my skull, and I have this almost overwhelming urge to run outside into the storm, let it overwhelm me.
“My mom,” I say, and Lo nods.
“Yes, your mom. Ellen. She was there that night.”
“Of course she was,” August says as the inn creaks and groans around us. “That’s why you killed him. Because you found out Ellen was pregnant with his baby. With Geneva.”
“And somewhere in… what? Ohio? Your mama was pregnant with you.”
“New Orleans,” August corrects. “That’s where she was living when she met him. Some cotillion thing. She was engaged to my dad, but she was only twenty, and she said Landon was…”
He trails off, at a loss for words, but Lo nods, understanding. “Oh, he was,” she says, almost sad. Then she looks up. “August. Your name. Because—”
“Because that’s the month he died, yeah. She couldn’t give me his name, so this was her own little secret tribute to him, passed on to the son he never got to have.”
He gestures at me. “There’s probably a similar story for you, Geneva. It’s an unusual name, and I’m guessing not a family one.”
A friend of mine said Lake Geneva was the prettiest place he’d ever seen, and I thought it was the prettiestnameI’d ever heard.
“So, what?” I ask August now, my voice little more than a croak. “You found out your dad was murdered—allegedly,possiblymurdered—and you became obsessed with getting revenge on Lo?”
August stares at me with those black eyes, his hands limp athis sides. “I got obsessed with thetruth, Geneva. I’m a writer, a… a journalist, it’s what I do. It wasmy story.Hell, it’syourstory. Don’t we deserve to know it? Totellit?”
I can feel it again, that sense that something inside me is threatening to break in a way that can never be fixed, and I see in August’s eyes that the same thing inside himhasbroken, and broken for good.
“Because of her, both of us have lived a lie,” August goes on, pointing at Lo. “When she killed my—our—father, she killed any chance either of us had of lives not…infestedwith secrets. Landon wanted kids, Geneva. Lo told me that herself, several times. Alison couldn’t have them, and… and if he had lived, who’s to say he wouldn’t have wanted us?”
August reaches out and grabs my shoulders, his hands clammy, and I grit my teeth against the instinct to wrench out of his grasp. “We could’ve been a family, but she took that from us.”
There’s a new sound outside, a rushing, wet sound, and again, that urge to run strikes so powerfully that my legs actually twitch.
But I stand there in August’s grip and shake my head. “That’s insane, August. He—he was married! Besides, neither of our mothers would’ve just—what, given us up?”
“But we don’t know!” he shouts, his voice catching on a sob before it’s quickly drowned out by the storm. The wind is nearly deafening now, and I can feel water against the soles of my feet. It’s seeping in under the doors, pushing against the walls and windows, and somehow, I know that this is finally it.
That the storm that will take the Rosalie has arrived, and it’s going to take me with it. Me, and these two people I’ve been orbiting my entire life without ever knowing. It’ll take us, and all the twisted secrets that have woven the three of us together.Is that why Lo tore the boards off the window? Does she want all of us to die here? Some fucked-up idea of atonement or retribution?
“You know, August, there’s just one little problem with your happy family dreams,” Lo says, and when I open my eyes to look at her in the dim glow of the emergency lighting, she looks older than her sixty years for the first time.
“You’re so quick to blame me, just like everyone else was. Because it’s easy, because it feels good—fuck if I know why, but damn, do y’all love to do it. But no one ever seems to blame Landon. Oh, sure—they’ll say he was a playboy or a philanderer, but those are awfully pretty words for a man who screwed anything that crossed his path. So, when you’re wallowing in your self-pity, maybe ask yourself why Landon Fitzroy hadevvvverythinghe could’ve ever fucking wanted, and itstillwasn’t enough. Maybe ask yourself if all the secrets, all the bullshit, are actually the fault of the man who fathered the two of you, andnotthe girl who eventually decided the world could do without Landon Fitzroy.”
The inn seems to be breathing along with the storm, the walls alive as they shudder under the force of the wind and rain, and Lo stands in front of us, eerily lit and grinning.
“So, there you go, Auggie,” Lo says. “Here is your big ending for your big book. I called Landon down here from his fancy event in Birmingham because I found out about Ellen, found out she was knocked up, and that the baby was his. And when he got here, I took a piece of an old anchor that had washed up on the shore, and I slammed it into the back of his head until he was dead, and I have never,everfelt bad about doing it. Not forone. Goddamn. Second.”
