I thought of Mia's closed door. Her furtiveness with her phone. The way she flinched when I walked into a room.
I didn't need a camera to see she was in pain. It was the only thing I saw.
"The point is," Rowan said, "they're all traumatized. Which is why we need to help them through this. Get them back to normal."
"Normal," Brooke repeated. She let out a bitter laugh. "What's normal now?"
"Structure," Whitney said immediately. "Routine. Peyton has state championships in two weeks. I told her that's her focus. College scouts will be there. This isn't the time to fall apart."
I stared at her. "A girl died."
Whitney's voice sharpened. "I know that. But Peyton's future ison the line. Scholarships. Recruitment. You can't just decide to go to Stanford on a sports scholarship in senior year. You start now. She can't let this derail her."
"Derail her?" I echoed. “She’s in eighth grade.”
Whitney smoothed her plum-colored leggings with the palm of her hand and sighed. "You know what I mean."
I didn't, but I didn't argue with her. With Whitney, it was better to choose your battles.
Brooke reached for the half-empty bottle tucked behind the stand mixer. It was a Caymus Special Selection, the label still visible. She refilled her glass. "The worst part is not knowing who did it. If they're still out there."
"They're not," Rowan said. "Security's been tripled. There are cameras everywhere, and police crawling all over the place. Whoever it was, they're long gone."
"What if it wasn't an outsider?" I asked.
Silence dropped over the room. Camille turned away from the window and shot me a warning look. Whitney's smile held, but something in her eyes went flat. "What are you suggesting?"
"I'm not suggesting anything." My voice sounded thin to my own ears. I swallowed and tried again. "I'm just saying, the police are focused on the girls who were there. Not gardeners. Not contractors."
Brooke grimaced. "You really think one of our daughters did something this terrible?"
"I think the police do." I rubbed my damp palms against my jeans. The room felt stifling.
Whitney's foot tapped faster against the floor. "The police are wrong. They're grasping at straws. Looking for someone to blame because they can't find who really did this."
"Who do you think did it?" I asked.
"A stranger," Brooke said immediately. "Someone who doesn't belong here."
"Like who?" Camille asked.
"The construction workers," Brooke offered. "There's that crew redoing the Martin's new infinity pool, only two houses down from Rowan’s. They're here every day. You don't think they're watching our beautiful daughters? Walking around in their crop tops and shorts?"
"They have background checks," Camille interrupted. "The HOA requires it."
"Maybe one of them lied," Whitney said. "Maybe someone slipped through."
"It's April, no one's in crop tops," I said, but no one heard me. Or they chose not to. I hated the way they were looking at me with consternation, like I was the problem, the outlier. Something they didn't understand and weren't sure they wanted to.
I listened to them circle the same theories—the construction workers, the lawn service, someone's socially awkward nanny. Some faceless intruder who'd managed to sneak in from the public beach access. Anything to avoid looking at what was right in front of us.
My gaze drifted across the great room to the opposite window where Camille stood tense, typing something on her phone. A ring light stood on a collapsible tripod, its circular LED face tilted toward a white oak side table. A camera and a lapel mic lay coiled next to a pop filter, and behind it, a carefully arranged vignette: a lavender candle, a stack of design books with the spines facing out, a small potted succulent.
It looked like Brooke had been filming just before we arrived. Her "authentic life" content was shot, lit, and staged with precision.
I glanced at Brooke, at her anxious darting eyes, the tremor in her hands, the single droplet of wine that stained her ivory turtleneck. She was still clinging to false perfection while everything was falling apart around us.
"The detectives will figure it out," Rowan said, bringing me back to the conversation. "Once the forensics come back. Once the autopsy is finished. It takes time. And speaking of time, the memorial is in four days. We need to talk about photos for the slideshow. Dahlia, do you have anything from that night? The girls were dressedup so beautifully. Leah was practically luminescent. I'm sure Mia took some lovely photographs."
