Mia looked up. Her gaze met mine. No recognition in her glassy eyes. She looked straight through me, as if she'd forgotten where she was, or even who she was.
"Mia," I said. "What happened?"
Chapter Two
Alemon-scented candle burned on the mantel above the fireplace. Outside, the wind howled through the jack pines along the bluff, rattling the windows like a monster breathing at our backs.
"Mia!" I said again, louder, as I crossed the room.
My voice shook her out of her stupor. A low cry escaped her lips. She clamped her hands over her mouth, moaning softly. I went to her and embraced her, drawing her close. She circled her arms around my waist and clung to me.
I wanted to tell her it would be okay. But I already knew it wasn't true. I felt frozen in place, stricken. Shocked into stillness.
This couldn't be real. Leah couldn't be gone.
"Mom!" Chloe Westinghouse rose and stumbled across the living room into her mother's arms. Her heart-shaped face was blotchy, her big eyes, the same ice-blue as Rowan's, were glossy with tears. Petite, slender from years of ballet and dance, she was doll-like, luminously beautiful. Strands of her wavy honey-blonde hair clung to her wet cheeks.
Chloe burst into fresh sobs. "It's awful, so awful."
"What happened to Leah?" My voice echoed, too loud in the too-big room.
Peyton Alistair sat rigid on the sofa, her athletic swimmer's build hunched inward as if trying to make herself smaller. Her highlighted blonde hair was pulled into a messy ponytail. She clutched her purple Stanley like a lifeline. Swim meet stickers peeled at the edges. "She…she fell. From the bluff."
"When?" I asked. "How?"
Whitney hovered behind her daughter on the sofa, her hands on Peyton's shoulders as if to hold them both steady. Her thin lips pressed into a bloodless line. "They don't know."
"I'm asking the girls," I said.
"It must have happened after we went to sleep," Peyton said. "We did the photoshoot in our dresses, out on the bluff, but then we all went inside to eat and watch a movie. Then we went to sleep."
It was the week before the Sadie Hawkins dance at Lakeshore Prep, the prestigious private school Mia attended on scholarship, along with the other girls in the neighborhood. The girls had wanted a glamorous photoshoot in their beautiful gowns before the dance, and Mia had volunteered to be the photographer.
"Leah, ah, must have gotten up again and gone out to the bluff in the night." Peyton twisted and glanced uncertainly at her mother, who nodded in encouragement. "I didn't see anything. Nobody did. We were all in here, sleeping."
Zara Hayward fidgeted next to Peyton. She clutched a throw pillow to her chest. Her breath came too fast, in shallow little gulps, like she was trying to keep from drowning. She was lean and lanky, dressed in running gear—a garishly cheerful yellow hoodie with black leggings and sneakers.
"I can't stop seeing her," she said hoarsely, her expressive dark eyes too big in her face. "Lying there like that. I keep thinking... what if we'd stayed outside a little longer? Or one of us woke up and stopped her, or went with her. I never even heard anything."
"Me, neither," Alexis echoed.
"Me, neither," Peyton said.
Chloe lifted her head, struggling to speak through her hitchingsobs. "I didn't… I didn't hear anything, either. I—I must've been sleeping—like everyone else."
She shrank back against her mother and let out a low moan. "I could've stopped her. If I'd known—if I'd just stayed awake…"
Rowan stroked Chloe's hair. "It's okay, honey. It's okay."
"Did you hear anything?" Camille asked Mia.
Everyone looked at Mia. Mia shook her head but said nothing. Her shoulders were tense. Her arms dropped away from me, and she pulled back, curling into herself in the armchair.
A pang shot through me. Mia’s eyes were unfocused, fixed on some distant point. What was going through her mind? Why wouldn't she look at me? She was the only girl who hadn't said a word yet.
"Who found her?" I prayed it hadn't been Mia.
"I did." Zara rubbed her arms hard, like she was trying to scrub the horrible memory away, and pushed her long black braids over her shoulder. "I was up early to go running."
