“Yes, youdid,” Beth and I exclaim in unison.
Gigi grins. We all share a laugh before a silence falls over us as we regard our hometown from the water. Gigi empties the bottle, filling two more plastic wineglasses with a surprisingly steady pour given all the champagne she’s consumed since getting on the boat. She extends drinks to Beth and me, raising her own after we take them.
“To Courtney,” she says.
“To Courtney,” the three of us echo, clinking our glasses together.
On the beach, I spot Gigi’s three-story childhood home, where she threw countless parties while her mom worked nights as an ER doctor and her dad was away on business trips. Her father, born in Armenia, did a lot of business overseas. Gigi’s beauty, a striking blend of her father’s wide hazel eyes and her mother’s blond hair and full lips, gives her a unique, almost exotic appearance.
“Do your parents still live on the beach?” Emma asks Gigi.
She nods. “Yep. They’re retired now, so they spend a lot of the winter in Arizona.”
I think of my childhood home a few miles inland and closer to Sequim’s quaint downtown, much smaller than the expansive waterfront home Gigi grew up in. My mom still lives there, too, but I haven’t been back in years. I’ve spent too much of my life there already.
I remember those first few weeks after our rafting trip, coming home from school, the sickening feeling I’d get in the pit of my stomach when I turned on the road that wound along the Dungeness River to my house. Knowing the news vans would already be lined up at my driveway, I’d hunker down in my seat and pull on the baseball hat and sunglasses I’d started keeping in my car.
We only had a carport, no garage, so there was no getting around the photographs and accusatory questioning from reporters for the few moments it took me to get inside the house. My mom would stay up until midnight to run out and get the mail, after they’d all left for the day. But sometimes a news van would camp out all night.
That summer after graduation, I hardly left the house, unable to face the scrutiny from reporters—and strangers—everywhere I went. My sister, Kate, decided to stay in Pullman for the summer, where she was going to college seven hours away, so it was just my mom and me.
I gaze in the direction of my childhood home and think of my mom and how hard that summer was for her too. My lungs stiffen with dread at still having to tell her about Matt’s leaving. I still recall the look of shock on my mom’s face the last time I told her something she didn’t want to hear—that I wasn’t going to college.
“What do you mean you’renot going?” Mom looked up from the kitchen table, surrounded by a stack of bills.
“I can’t.” I lowered my gaze to the table, unable to bear the look of bewilderment on her face. “Not after everything that’s happened. I can’t even go to Safeway without strangers glaring at me—or asking what really happened to Courtney.” I gestured to the closed living room blinds, shielding us from the news vans parked in our front lawn. “I can’t even get the mail!”
Mom pushed her checkbook aside. “You have to, honey. Between your academic and volleyball scholarships, you got a full ride. You can’t stay here.” Her eyes darted toward the windows we kept covered at the front of our small house. “You’re not guilty of anything. It’s a tragedy what happened to Courtney, but it was no one’s fault. You can’t let those vultures keep you from living your life.”
Tears blurred my vision as I stared back at her. If only she knew the truth.
I shook my head. “I’ve already decided. I’m not going.”
“Sweetheart.” She pursed her lips and set down her pen. “You’ve wanted to be a doctor since you were little. You were so passionate about becoming an oncologist after your Aunt Karen’s diagnosis. You can’t give up your dream. Throwing your life away won’t bring Courtney back.”
It crushed me to see the disappointment on my mom’s face. I could tell she was devastated by my decision. She’d worked so hard to provide for me and my sister after our dad had left. She’d implored us both to go to college, not wanting us to ever have to struggle like she did.
“I’m sorry, Mom. But I can’t go.” My voice broke. “Not when everyone thinks I’m a murderer.”
But that wasn’t the real reason,I think as my gaze shifts to a kayaker paddling along the shore of the spit. The truth was that I didn’t deserve to go, not while Courtney’s unfound body lay decomposing somewhere in the Olympic National Park. Not after what I’d done.
Chapter Seven
October 2004
“You do it.” Courtney thrust the bottle of Dawn dish soap at me in the corner of the locker room.
In the background, the hiss of showers rose, drowning out our whispers.
“I don’t know ...” I glanced at the door to the gym where Beth and Gigi were still running laps after we’d beaten them in a scrimmage during volleyball practice.
Beth’s words to me in the hallway before first period replayed in my mind.
“I’d be careful, Courtney’s probably using you for something.”
“Using me?” I snapped at Beth.
The bell rang, and the morning crowd began to empty into various classrooms down the long hall. When I got out of Courtney’s car in the school’s parking lot, Beth had given me a death stare. And now she was talking to me like Courtney and I couldn’t be growing closer because she actually liked me?
