She looked at her shoes, clearly ashamed. “Then something happened on the island during the storm. She wouldn’t tell me what, just that you’d humiliated her and she was going to make you pay.”
“The iguanas,” Lizzie said.
Emma frowned. “What?”
“Nothing. But I know what you’re talking about.”
“She was looking for something to use against you after that. She was convinced you and Sarah were together, but she couldn’t prove it. She said she saw you sneaking off somewhere and she was determined to out you.”
“What did she do?”
“After she saw Sarah’s mother slap her she saw her chance. She followed her. She paid her, Lizzie. She paid Sarah’s mother to go to the newspaper with the story.”
The radiator clanked. Someone walked past their door in the hallway. Lizzie heard all of it too clearly.
“Cynthia told me the mom almost backed out the next day. She said Sarah paid her mother to stay quiet,” Emma continued. “Some kind of blackmail thing. But Cynthia promised her monthly payments if she followed through.”
“Jesus,” Maya said.
Lizzie couldn’t find words. She’d known Cynthia was involved, had guessed at pieces of it, but hearing the whole plan laid out made her sick. All this deliberate destruction of someone’s life over a college group project and wounded pride.
“I should have said something sooner.” Emma looked at Lizzie directly for the first time since sitting down. “I should have stopped her. She’s been my friend since freshman year, and I was scared of what she’d do if I went against her. But what she did was wrong. You didn’t deserve it. Sarah didn’t deserve it.”
“Why are you here now?”
“Because I can’t live with myself knowing what happened and doing nothing.” Emma’s voice got steadier.
Lizzie grabbed her laptop and opened a document. “Write down what you told me. Please. I’m trying to gather evidence to refute the story.”
Emma pulled the laptop closer. “Okay.”
She wrote for several minutes. Lizzie watched her fill the page with details that could actually help Sarah fight back if she chose to.
Emma paused halfway through and looked up. “There’s something else you should know.”
“What?”
“The newspaper was already working on a story about Sarah before Cynthia got involved. Some guy at the hotel had been feeding them information about her. Pushing them to dig into her background. Derek something.”
“Derek Mitchell.”
“That’s him. Cynthia told me he’d been trying to get Sarah fired for months.”
Maya leaned forward. “That assistant GM who got her job?”
“That’s him,” Lizzie replied. It was all beginning to make sense.
When Emma finished, they printed the page, she signed her name at the bottom and dated it. “I really am sorry. For all of it.”
“Thank you for doing it now.”
After Emma left, Lizzie and Maya sat on the couch and read through the statement three times. “It’s coming together,” Lizzie said.
“Yup. A bit more digging and then Sarah can actually fight back if she chooses. And you can stop feeling guilty. And maybe get her back. If you want. Lizzie thought about that for a while. It was odd. She should be mad at Sarah for blaming her, but she really wasn’t. She could how Sarah had become so withdrawn, so willing to think the worst of people.
These last few days looking through records and talking to people had made her see Sarah in a new light. And at the end of the day, the only feeling left in Lizzie wasn’t anger or disappointment. It was sadness for Sarah and the pain she’d gone through.
And all Lizzie really wanted to do, was hold her close and tell her that she loved her.
