Rowan gave a mournful shake of her head.
Brooke August stared at me with unfocused, reddened eyes. Her glossy brunette hair tumbled down the middle of her back, a matching sweatsuit replacing her usual Instagram-ready polish. Without her heavy makeup, her bare face looked vulnerable—and scared.
"They're fine," Rowan repeated. "Our daughters are fine."
"You didn't answer my question. Is Leah okay? Was she hurt?"
Brooke made a strangled sound, pressing a hand to her mouth. Iturned to Camille. As a top defense attorney for a private law firm, she was the logical, practical one.
Camille Hayward stood slightly apart from the other women. Her sharp brown eyes scanned me with quiet intensity. She, too, had been abruptly pulled from bed, still dressed in pajamas with a cobalt blue silk headscarf covering her hair.
"The police are on their way," Camille said in a brisk voice. "They'll be here any minute."
I glared at them. It was like they were terrified of saying the words aloud, of making it real. "Just tell me."
Rowan blinked rapidly, fighting back tears. "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry, but Leah is dead."
I felt the world tilt, the ground shifting beneath me.
No.
Not Leah. "What? How?"
"The girls are inside," Camille said. "They're incredibly confused, shaken, and in shock. We're still working out what happened."
"It was an accident," Whitney said quickly. "It was a terrible accident."
I couldn't wrap my head around it. Leah was dead? How could that be? She was just a child, barely fourteen years old. The shy, timid, kind-hearted girl I saw nearly every day, often in my home, whom I'd cooked for and laughed with, who'd spent countless hours in Mia's room. How could she be gone?
My skittering thoughts kept running away from me; I could barely grab onto them. It seemed impossible. A terrible joke that I didn't understand yet. I stared in shock at the somber faces of my neighbors, my friends.
Leah’s mother was missing. "Where's Vivienne? She needs to know."
Camille glanced warily at Rowan, reproach in her eyes. Brooke sniffled. Whitney pressed her lips together and wouldn't meet my gaze.
Rowan raised her chin. "We haven't called her yet. We thought it best that the police arrive first. To know how tohandle it."
My heart broke for Vivienne, but it was my daughter I thought of now. My living, breathing daughter.
Mia must feel devastated. Absolutely gutted. I needed to get to her, to pull my baby into my arms and comfort her, to feel her heartbeat safe against my ribs.
"I need to see Mia."
My legs moved before I could think. I climbed the porch steps with numb feet, pushed past Rowan, and yanked open the massive front door.
Inside, the air was thick with the scent of jasmine and lavender, Rowan's signature scents. The other mothers followed close behind me.
The girls were in the high-ceilinged living room. They huddled on the sofas bracketing the floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace, their hair rumpled, faces tear-stained, several still in pajamas.
Mia sat apart from the others, slumped in a linen armchair next to a white oak built-in bookcase. She wore her favorite Hello Kitty pajamas, her white-socked feet crossed at the ankles.
The color had drained from her freckled face, her expression blank with shock, a terrible hollowness in her green eyes.
Several scratches marred her forearms. Thin, angry red lines.
Scratches that she didn't have last night when she left our house, with her sage-green overnight bag slung over her shoulder and her camera on its yellow strap around her neck.
I inhaled sharply.
