She shook her head. “I think I’ll stay and finish my tea.”
He frowned, studying her. “You don’t seem at all worried.”
“I have concerns,” she told him. She smiled faintly. “Just not about Janie. I didn’t like her,” she said, sometimes too honest. “I won’t pretend grief I don’t feel. But missing people don’t stay missing for kind reasons.”
Cass gaped at her. Zach looked down. Tosh just turned and walked away. It felt like the judge’s gavel hitting down.
“We’ll see you soon,” Cass murmured, then followed Tosh.
Zach lingered a moment longer. “We define ourselves in the moments we don’t think anyone’s watching,” he said.
“I know who I am,” Harmony replied. “I’ve never tried to fake it.”
He nodded slowly. “I know who you are, too. You can act cold, like none of it bothers you, but I’ve seen you come unraveled. I know what’s inside no matter how hard you try to put on a façade.”
He looked at her a moment longer . . . and she started to crack. He gave her a smile, then turned and walked away. She shuddered.
She sat there alone, listening to the faint echo of laughter from the tables as she fought to hold onto a calm she was definitely faking. Tourists clinked glasses. Servers moved in smooth, practiced lines. Life went on.
Outside, a deputy’s SUV rolled slowly past the windows. Ciscel didn’t look inside, not directly. He checked reflections: glass, chrome, the shine of a passing tourist’s sunglasses. He was letting her know he was still watching. A shiver traveled down her spine.
She pulled out her notebook, her pen hovering over the page. Her hand was shaking slightly. She wrote down the words that wouldn’t leave her head.
The story’s not finished. Someone else had picked up the pen.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The Last Act
A month later, Avalon had already moved on. It always did.
There were no more deaths. There were no more whispers in alleyways. The tourists returned in droves, filling hotels, and clamoring for cocktails. The gossip about the island’s murders became nothing more than a macabre anecdote to share over Mai Tais—Remember that summer Catalina went crazy?
But for those who’d lived it—Tosh, Cass, Zach, Mary, Torie, Janie, and Harmony, and those who were no longer accounted for—the scars were far from healed.
The courtroom in Long Beach was cold and bright, stripped of the island’s warm colors. Everything was gray—the walls, the benches, the sky outside the window. The scent of disinfectant and coffee hung heavy in the air, a smell that clung to dread.
They sat together in a row, a soundless line of unwilling witnesses to what felt like the final act of a play that none of them had auditioned for. Mary had returned, cleared of all suspicion.Officially. She sat with them, shoulder to shoulder. Her hands were clasped tight in her lap.
The deputies had found no evidence linking her to anything. Three local men were still “missing,” but on an island where disappearing was practically a sport, no one seemed eager to look too hard, especially when they’d been a menace to islanders for a very long time. Some absences were easier to live with than answers.
Tosh stared straight ahead, his jaw tight. Cass kept her eyes fixed on the floor. Zach leaned forward with his elbows resting heavily on his knees, silent.
Harmony, as always, remained calm—too calm—as though nothing in the world could shake her. Calm might be a performance, but it was also clarity. And clarity, she’d learned, was the only thing that kept grief from eating a person alive.
Near the back of the courtroom, Deputy Ciscel stood with perfect posture, expression unreadable. Harmony felt his stare long before she turned to meet it. For a moment, she wondered if he was studying Torie . . . or studying her. Ciscel rarely blinked when he watched someone. Surveillance required patience.
When the bailiffs brought Torie in, chains rattling at her wrists and ankles, a hush fell over the room.
She was thinner now, her once glossy hair hanging limp. Her eyes held a strange serenity—a resignation tinged with amusement. When she saw Tosh, a small smile curved her lips.
“Case number 47-93,” the judge announced. “State versus Victoria Lake.”
The lawyers murmured formalities, but the words blurred together. It wasn’t a trial so much as a diagnosis. The psychiatric reports were read aloud, each line carving deeper into the already quiet room. This was a public autopsy of a fractured mind.
It took about an hour.
Torie was deemed incompetent to stand trial—too unstable to understand the charges, too fragmented to defend herself. The prosecutor didn’t argue. The defense didn’t celebrate.
