I stood there clasping the phone to my skull, feeling like I was becoming detached from my body, like my mind was floating upward toward the ceiling.
“Sophie,” her voice purred in my ear. I parted my lips to speak but before I could, she said, “Gotta run,” and ended the call.
She didn’t even have to wait for my reply; she knew I was going to stick to the script. I have no other choice. Graham can never find out about Jamie.
A sheen of sweat coated my body. It was nearly pitch-black outside now, and I could just barely make out Graham’s and Jack’s darkened figures at the tire swing. The dining room suddenly felt too bright, like I was onstage under a spotlight. I opened the back door and stepped out.
The platter of snapper rested on the wrought-iron table, and a team of flies was already dive-bombing the fish before I could swat them away.
“Everything okay?” Graham asked. The tire swing creaked and groaned as he waited for my reply.
I shook my head.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Well?”
“It’s Abby. She’s—” I ran my index finger across my throat as if to slit it, and immediately felt like I was playing a character in a television drama. “Talk about it later, okay?” I angled my head toward Jack.
Graham’s hand flew to his mouth and his eyes filled with sadness. “Sorry,” he choked out. “That’s terrible. Yes, fill me in later.”
We took our dinner inside, away from the hungry flies. Jack slung his dirt-crusted bare feet up on the table while he ate; I didn’t stop him. My mind was racing but also a blank.
After a few moments I couldn’t stand to sit still at the table any longer, so I told Graham I needed to be alone for a moment to call Tina back. His lips shone with olive oil and he nodded and said, “Of course.”
I crept to the back of the house, to our bedroom, and gently shut the door. For safe measure, I stepped into the master bathroom and closed that door as well. I lowered the toilet seat and sunk down on top of it, bracing myself. The curtain was drawn back and a chunk of moonlight sliced through the bare window, casting shadows across the bone-white surfaces of the countertop and floors.
“So glad you called back,” Tina said, almost in a whisper.
“I need to know everything.” My voice halted and I caught myself. “I mean, what all do you know?” I asked more softly, hoping I sounded not as forceful, less suspicious, and more sympathetic.
She unloaded the rest to me, and as she spoke, I raked my bare toe along the cold tile floor, giving my body a calm focal point as my brain exploded with everything she spilled.
She got everything from Callie, who heard it all from Margot.
Abby was found. No, herbodywas discovered by the groundskeeper who tends Margot’s lake house and in-town estate. An older gentleman who’s been with the Banks family for decades. He was cutting the grass on a riding lawn mower at the clearing when he noticed Abby’s body, facedown in a shallow puddle of leaves near the shoreline. He immediately phoned the police.
“Her back; her back was shot clean through,” Tina said, clearly struggling with tears as she spoke. “Cops said it was a shotgun blast.”
I inwardly gasped. A shotgun? How stupid could they be? And on the land no less. But I then reminded myself that I didn’t know everything, that it might not be Margot or Brad at all. Oh,please, I thought, let themnotbe involved.
“The police are still out there, combing the property. Callie said Margot was seriously freaked out. Especially when the police told her and Jed to head back into town for the time being and not return to the lake for some time. For their own safety.”
I didn’t want to ask if she’d talked to Jill. I couldn’t bring myself to think about Jill’s bottomless grief yet.
“I’m so sad about sweet Abby,” Tina said, “and I feel guilty for thinking this way but I just keep wondering—what if it had been one of us instead? I mean, they don’t even have a suspect yet. It’s just too creepy to think about.”
I thought about telling her everything just then, about Margot and Brad, about Jamie, about the text I saw, but I swallowed my words.
“No, I know what you mean,” I said, only because I had to say something. Tina’s logic was not only selfish (like mine has been lately) but also screwy: According to Brad, he dropped Abby off that night at the foot of her drive. She wasn’tatthe lake at the time of her disappearance.
So how had she ended up there?
—
AFTER GRAHAM TUCKEDJack in for the night, he found me in the kitchen, washing the last of the dishes from dinner, and placed his steady hands on my shoulders.
“Okay, tell me what’s going on.”
I nodded and flicked newly formed tears off my cheek, pried open the fridge. I needed a drink for this.
