“Did you pass out?”
Ellie shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve never been a big drinker. I didn’t even taste alcohol until my twenty-first birthday. So I was not intoxicated to the point that the prosecution was suggesting. I . . . fell asleep at some point. But did I fall-on-my-face pass out? No. I went to sleep.”
“In Grace’s cottage?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you sleep in Grace’s room that night?”
“She was upset. She and Julian had gotten into an argument. Grace asked me to come to her cottage, so I did. I was being a good friend.”
“The fight about Daniel?”
Ellie nodded. “It was probably my fault, the fight they had.”
“How so?”
“I wasn’t keen on how fast things were moving between them. I felt like Grace might be getting in over her head.”
“In what way?”
Ellie shrugged. “Julian was planning to propose. I thought it was a bad idea.”
“How do you know this?” Sidney asked.
“Because he told me. I mentioned that I thought it was too soon to ask her.” Ellie shook her head. “It didn’t matter, he never got the chance.”
Ellie’s eyes glassed over as though she might cry.
“He was gone the next day.”
The Girl of Sugar Beach
“The Proposal” Part of Episode 2
*Based on the interview with Ellie Reiser
The members of the wedding party lay on loungers around the pool and soaked up the Caribbean sun. The guys drank Piton beer and the girls sipped rum runners and mojitos. Charlotte Brooks, the bride, had invited five of her girlfriends as bridesmaids, including Grace and Ellie. In their midtwenties now, they were all at different stages of life. Charlotte was an elementary-school teacher about to marry her high-school sweetheart, whom she had dated since they had all met in Fayetteville, New York. Grace and Ellie were now in medical school. One other bridesmaid was finishing law school, and the others were scattered in marketing and event planning.
Daniel Greaves was the groom. He, too, had invited a host of friends from high school as his groomsmen. Since the group had known each other for years, many of their parents were invited to the wedding, and a few—including the Sebolds—had made the long trip to St. Lucia.
“Ellie,” Charlotte said. “Where did you place?”
“Duke.”
“To deliver babies?”
Ellie smiled. “Yes. OB-GYN.”
“So, if Daniel and I get pregnant, you can deliver my baby?” Charlotte laughed. Too many mojitos.
“Give me a few years to figure out what I’m doing first.”
“Don’t worry,” Charlotte said, leaning back in her lounge chair and crossing her legs. Her Bottega Veneta crocodile flip-flops were covering her feet. “We’ll need some practice before we have a baby.”
“Wear those eight-hundred-dollar flip-flops to bed,” Ellie said, “and I’m sure Daniel will want to practice often.”
This brought laughs from the other intoxicated friends who sat around the pool. The peaks of the Pitons, draped with green foliage and rain forest, rose up on either side of the resort. Petit Piton to the north, and Gros Piton to the south. Massive twin volcanic structures that held Sugar Beach Resort between them.
