That evening, everyoneis too shaken up to eat. we’re huddled at the table as the dying sun casts a golden glow through the cabin. Cecily stares blankly at the horizon as Daisy texts her husband and daughter.
“He said something was wrong with it,” Kai says when she returns from talking to Jax. He’d offered to take a look at the broken Jet Ski. “The throttle was stuck.” She takes a seat next to Cecily.
“Do you think someone wanted that to happen?” I ask.
Daisy and I exchange a nervous glance. I know Theodore and Matthew did business together. He’d likely hosted him on this boat earlier this summer, like he did every year. Could Matthew have gotten access to the Jet Skis?
Or am I being paranoid?
Everyone falls silent, and suddenly the air feels tense, the movement of the boat nauseating.
“What makes you say that?” Daisy asks, looking at me.
I shake my head. “I’m overthinking it.”
Kai lifts her head. “You think it was tampered with?”
“It’s weird,” I say, after a moment. “I can’t help but think someone meant for that to happen.”
They go still. For a moment, no one says a word. Then Daisy speaks. “But…they would have tampered with all of them, not just the one, right?” she says. “It would have been impossible to know which of us would get it.”
I look at her. “Right.” But as I see Jax in the distance, obviously listening in, I can’t rid myself of the feeling.
—
That night whenI’m getting ready for bed, there’s a knock at the door. The space is small, low ceilings and half-sized doors, so I have to close the bathroom door in order to open the one that leads to the main cabin.
I find Cecily on the other side. She looks pale. “Can I talk to you?”
I nod and step back to let her in. “Of course.”
The cabin is so small that I have to sit on the edge of the bed. I’d planned on reading, so the only light in the room is the one directed at the pillow.
“I don’t think you were being paranoid.” Cecily hesitates, bites her lip. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened to your sister, and there’s something that happened the week before she died that you should probably know about.”
“The week before…wasn’t that the Legacy Foundation event?” I’d missed that event because Dani was sick. I remember Cecily, Kai, and Daisy had gotten a table together.
Cecily nods. “You remember Sara, Matthew’s fiancée? She was there…and she was drinking more than usual. I mean, we all were, but she was noticeably tipsy…and not in a good way.”
I picture Matthew’s fiancée tipping back glass after glass at the party. Those events tended to go all night and have an open bar…the looser the guests, the more generous they’re willing to be with their donations.
“Well, sometime after dinner, I went out to the balcony to get some air and I saw them in the corner, arguing. I wanted to listen, so I got closer, and it sounded like Sara was saying something about an affair with a student. How he’d lost his temper and done something awful. And you know those kinds of rumors have followed Matthew around even back when we were at school. And you said yourself Naomi was acting strangely those last few months…”
She goes quiet, and her words hang in the air between us. I can feel my heart thudding behind my ribs. The only window is no bigger than the size of my palm, and I’m suddenly aware of the lack of oxygen.
The way Cecily is looking at me, I can tell we’re thinking the same thing: Could it have been Naomi?
Chapter Fifty-Four
Naomi
May 2023, one week before her death
Learning Liam was working withDuPont feels like a blow to the center of my chest. I can hardly sleep more than a few hours at a time. Nothing feels real. Andwhy—why didn’t I see it? His father had been in Greystone, his mother a major donor to the Legacy Foundation. Why did I think Liam would be different?
I lie in bed with this churning, bitter feeling inside me until with a burst of anger, I send Liam the photo, and a few seconds later, my phone vibrates. I won’t answer. I can’t.
Seizing the phone and silencing it, I hurl it across the room.
