He took the bag. "Thank you. That's very kind."
Apollo whined, his tail wagging tentatively. Daniel usually loved to pet him and would throw sticks for him to chase while chatting with Vivienne and me. Now, he didn't seem to see the dog at all. The lines around his mouth, which usually crinkled with warmth and laughter, had deepened into something harder.
I peered around him. "Is Vivienne...?"
"She hasn't left her room since Saturday. The doctor prescribed Valium. She can't… she's not doing well." An orthopedic surgeon at the Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Center in St. Joe, he was accustomed to competence, to repairing shattered bones and torn ligaments, to fixing broken things.
Now, he was helpless. He could do nothing to bring his daughter back or ease his distraught wife's pain, or his own.
My chest ached for both of them. "I understand. If there's anything you need. Anything at all."
He nodded, his gaze unfocused. "Thank you, Dahlia. Vivienne and I appreciate that, truly."
I stood there for a moment after he shut the door, staring at the brass knocker. I pictured Vivienne lying upstairs behind drawn curtains, sedated against the unbearable weight of her grief. Every waking moment a nightmare, her only child gone forever.
I imagined them trapped in that house, locked in their grief. I knew what it felt like, the misery within those walls. The despair.
Apollo nudged my hand with his nose. I couldn't bear thethought of going home, of sitting alone in my quiet house with my spiraling thoughts and the ticking clock counting down to tomorrow at 10 a.m.
We kept walking. Brooke's house came next, a modern black farmhouse with huge black windows and a gleaming copper roof. Her Mercedes was absent from the driveway. I knocked anyway, but no one answered.
She should've been home. Brooke was a lifestyle influencer, her Instagram and TikTok accounts showcasing filtered images of her perfect family—vacations to Europe and the Maldives, charity galas for various causes, and glowing moments with her two kids, Alexis and her younger brother, Falcon—each caption an eye-rolling humble-brag. Her husband Jason was a hedge-fund manager with offices in Chicago. He was hardly ever home.
We kept going. I headed west back to Wyld Wood Lane and turned north instead of south toward my cottage. A few houses down, the Everett place sat dark and vacant, a FOR SALE sign tilted in the overgrown lawn.
Apparently, the family had left suddenly last spring before we’d moved in. Something terrible had happened to their daughter, though no one talked openly about it. Just another empty house, another family vanishing under a dark cloud of tragedy.
Apollo and I continued down the street. The morning had warmed, the sun breaking through the clouds in pale streaks.
At Camille's, a modern steel-and-glass house with floor-to-ceiling glass panels for walls, her son Zion was shooting hoops in the circular driveway.
He was tall, wiry, and athletic like his parents and younger sister, Zara. A junior at Lakeshore Prep and the team's starting point guard, he should have been at school.
As Apollo and I approached, he glanced up and gave me a brief wave, then took a shot. It bounced off the rim. “My mom's at work.”
"I know." I hesitated at the edge of the driveway. Camille's husband Jerome often played basketball with Zion for hours in theevenings, though Jerome was at work now. He was a beloved math teacher at Lakeshore Prep. "Is Zara home?"
Zion caught the ball and held it against his hip. "She's up in her room. She's not sleeping or eating or anything."
"Yeah, Mia, too. Well, tell your mom and sister I stopped by."
"Sure thing."
I waved goodbye and continued walking. We passed Whitney's house—no Range Rover in the driveway, no lights on—and kept going.
Near the end of the road, Mrs. Atkins was kneeling in her front garden, pruning daffodils, pansies, and hyacinths with a pair of shears. She sat back on her heels, set down the shears, and shaded her eyes with one gloved hand. "Dahlia, dear. How are you holding up?"
"As well as can be expected." I managed a wan smile.
Mrs. Atkins had lived in Blackthorn Shores longer than anyone, since the 1980s, before it was transformed into a gated community, when the lots were bigger and the houses significantly smaller. Now in her late seventies, she spent most of her days rocking on her front porch, monitoring the neighborhood for infractions, real and imaginary.
"Such a terrible tragedy," she said, shaking her head. "That poor girl. And poor Vivienne. I can't imagine."
"None of us can."
“Just terrible.” She clutched her cardigan closer. Her squinty hazel eyes were bright with something that might have been concern, or more likely, curiosity. "Were you there when it happened?"
"No, I?—"
