Zach tilted his head, not buying it. “Are you sure?”
She opened her mouth, then froze. For a heartbeat, she was outside herself, watching her own stillness, her own calm. It felt wrong. A tremble flickered under her skin before she shoved the fear down. She smiled again. It didn’t reach her eyes.
“I’ll be okay when the weariness wears off.” She doubted she sounded convincing, even to herself.
“I don’t like how pale you are.”
“We all look like ghosts,” Torie cut in, cracking the moment.
Harmony tried to laugh. It sounded thin. She stared at her hands instead, pressing her fingertips together until they hurt—just to feel something solid.
Candy’s brow furrowed as if she were listening to something no one else could. Her gaze drifted to the ocean, as if she were trying to answer it. Cass leaned forward.
“We all need to stick together today.” Her voice trembled despite her best effort to sound calm. “I’m scared.”
Harmony nodded, but part of her brain was already rearranging everyone’s reactions into scenes. Grief and story lived too close together inside her now; she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
“You’re the one who’s always happy. I can’t imagine you scared,” Torie said. Her eyes flicked over Harmony’s shoulder—fast, nervous—like she expected someone to be standing there.
“Everyone gets scared,” Cass countered. “Some simply hide it better.”
Silence fell again, stretched tight as a rope pulled too hard. Mistrust had settled in the group like fog, but Avalon was small. Either they stayed close, or they’d shatter alone. None of them wanted to believe that one of their own could be a killer.
A police siren wailed somewhere in town, making the moment feel more brittle. Zach’s gaze flicked to the street, then back to Harmony. Something in his expression settled heavy on her skin.
For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. She pushed her chair back so abruptly that it nearly toppled. Heads turned.
“It’s probably nothing,” Zach said.
“No,” Cass whispered, voice breaking. “Everythingis something now.”
A frazzled local hurried past their table, murmuring into her phone. “Deputy Duong said he believes the killer’s still on the island—of course they are, where else would they go? He said he and Ciscel were out all night, walking the cliffs like they were trying tofeelwhat the killer felt.” Her voice dropped. “I don’t know what scares me more, that they’re looking that hard . . . or that they might know more than they’re telling us.”
Candy’s breath hitched. “I’m done talking about killers,” she said, her usual sunny tone stripped away.
Her fingers worried the edge of her coffee cup, nails tapping an uneven rhythm. She refused to look at the water, refused to hold anyone’s gaze for longer than a second. Harmony wondered if Candy truly didn’t remember anything from that night—or if she remembered too much and couldn’t bear to say it out loud.
Cass reached for Candy’s hand. “We’re safe. We’re together. That’s what matters.”
Harmony slid her hand over Cass’s for a heartbeat, needing the contact more than she wanted to admit.
Torie shook her head, fingers trembling. “Sure. Because staying together worked out great for Lisa.”
Harmony’s stomach twisted. She felt her face tingle; she was certain she’d gone even paler. Zach noticed.
“Harmony, you’re burning yourself out,” he said, reaching for her.
She pulled back before he could touch her, afraid that if someone laid a hand on her, she’d crack apart.
“I know,” she said. She didn’t bother pretending anymore. It was obvious she was anything but okay.
Zach didn’t look away. Heat crawled up her neck. She didn’t want him to see the fractured edges she’d been trying to glue back together for a year.
“I want out of here,” she said quietly. “Please.”
A collective exhale moved through the group. No one argued. They gathered their things with trembling hands and eyes that refused to connect for more than a heartbeat. When they stepped outside, the air shifted, just slightly, as if adjusting to their absence. They walked side by side, but Harmony felt a growing gap between them, like an undertow determined to pull them apart.
By noon, Avalon had already rewritten the story. Maybe Lisa had been sleeping around, and a jealous lover broke. Or maybe, people whispered,it was one of them.
