“Nah. They had their way with me already. Although once I film thisDatelinething, they might come back for more.”
Yup, we even got our very ownDatelineepisode. Or we will in the spring, apparently. A crew is coming down next month to interview Lo and shoot footage around the Rosalie. Theywanted to talk to me, too, but I’m not sure I’m ready for that, not even for my beloved Keith Morrison. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this ordeal, it’s that I’m more like Mom than I ever realized, more content to keep my feelings—and my secrets—close to my chest.
And besides, Lo is a natural at this. Aside from the injuries she sustained during Hurricane Lizzie, she seems to have de-aged a decade overnight. I wonder if finally sharing the truth with someone is the reason why.
Although, so far, I’m the only one she’s shared that truth with. In every interview, Lo has stuck to her original story: she never saw Landon that night; it had to be the storm that killed him; what—or who—else could it have been? When the reporters inevitably ask her about me, about August’s claims, she always demurs.
“Honey, that’s not my business,” she said to the Mobile anchor lady in her first interview.
“I didn’t know a thing about that, so I don’t know what Icouldsay.” That was inPeople.
“Honestly, I think August’s mind just started unraveling, holed up in that room every day,” she told the hosts ofTwo Girls, One Murder.“Geneva might have a passing resemblance to Camile Fitzroy, but do you know how many shiny-haired brunettes with sweet little majorette faces there are in the South, baby? Lord, I’ve seen more girls that look like Geneva in a Target in Mountain Brook than I cancount.”
It’s a kindness I didn’t ask for, but one I’m grateful for nonetheless. Still, I can’t help but tell her now, “You know, if you want to tell the whole story onDateline,I wouldn’t blame you. It’s your story, and it can’t hurt Mom. Not anymore. Not now.”
“And betray my fellow witches? Uh-uh.” She shakes her head.“Besides, I wouldn’t want to give any of them the satisfaction of having me proven a liar.”
She reaches over and squeezes my hand, flashes that big smile. “And I like my version better anyway.”
Then she looks past me back at the inn and raises her voice to add, “It’s a better version, isn’t it, Frieda?”
Edie grimaces as she makes her way over to us. She’s slow and unsteady on the sand, but she makes it to the third chair I’d set up and grips my upraised hand to settle into it.
“If you’re fishing for another apology, you won’t get it,” Edie grumbles, but Lo only shakes her head before reaching across me to pat Edie’s thigh.
“No, the one was all I needed.”
Edie woke up two days after Lizzie and, to the shock of her doctors, remembered exactly what had happened—maybe not the moment of the attack itself, but definitely what had led up to it.
While I’d been at Hope House that night and Lo had been in her room, Edie had come across one of August’s journals that he’d left behind in the lobby. She had been curious, wondering what the angle of the book was, wondering what Lo may have said about her and her testimony, wondering if August had figured out who she was.
Instead, she’d found page after page of accusations and grievances and rage, and—most alarming to Edie—sections that talked about Lo in the past tense, like she was dead.
When August came looking for the journal a few minutes later, she confronted him about it.
“My mouth has gotten away from me before,” she’d confessed, almost sheepishly, and I could picture her, face red, hands planted on her hips, asking August what the heck this book was all about.
He’d calmed her, of course, all easy charm and smiles, and then suggested they talk about it outside, less chance of being overheard by Lo.
August had opened the back door and gestured for Edie to walk in front of him.
It was the last thing she remembered, but it wasn’t too hard to follow those particular breadcrumbs.
Had he meant to kill her? Or was he merely trying to pin something else on Lo, bring me even more fully onto his side?
No way of knowing now, of course. Still, it was a relief to confirm that Lo hadn’t been involved. After hearing Edie’s full story, the nightmares I’d been having about August’s body pinned in the window—his eyes staring and unseeing, the way a flash of lightning gleamed off the shard of glass poking through his neck—finally began to dissipate.
Edie doesn’t work for me anymore—after what August had done, she’ll never be as strong as she’d once been, and her balance is still pretty bad—but she came home to the Rosalie nonetheless. It was one of the first things I’d had the repair crews work on, getting two bedrooms on the first floor ready for me and Edie.
She keeps making noise about finding her own place, about not wanting to be a “freeloader,” but we both know she’s here for good, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Neither would Lo. After Edie came back to the inn, she and Lo sat down on what was left of the porch and talked long into one evening. I don’t know what they said, but when they came back in, there was a peace in both of them that I hadn’t seen before, an ease that reminded me that once upon a time, they’d been as close as sisters.
With my mom right alongside them.
I think of her now as I sit between these two women, think of all the secrets they’ve kept, of all the women they’ve been.
Of all the womenI’vebeen.
