The blustery snow outside reminded me of how deep we were in the wilderness. A constant sheet of white. There must have been all kinds of animals out there.
Out in the living room, Kai had lit a fire in the fireplace and opened a bottle of red wine. Cecily poured us a glass.
I took a long sip, inhaling its rich, intoxicating scent. “How did you convince Professor DuPont to invite us? And Lila, for that matter?”
“It was easy,” Cecily said. “Lila agreed to the settlement and said this week would be the perfect way to put it all behind them, that she wants to rejoin the club now that she’s received restitution for what she’s been through.”
Kai pointed to a bouquet of flowers on the mantel. “Like it?”
I followed her gaze to the flowers but didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. It was an expensive-looking white, pink, and green bouquet. “It’s nice.”
With a grin, Kai stood and made her way to the flowers. She pushed them aside to reveal a small video camera she had hidden behind them.
My eyes went wide. “Wow, that’s good. You really can’t see it.”
“Isn’t it?” Daisy said, giddy with excitement.
Cecily looked at her phone. “Theodore says everyone else should be arriving tomorrow night.” She and Theodore had recently started dating. She insisted it was casual, but anyone who saw them together knew that wasn’t true.
“Hopefully the weather cooperates,” Kai said. “Lila’s comingtomorrow too. She can sleep in one of the upstairs rooms, Theodore will be in Cecily’s room, and whoever is left can have a blow-up mattress on the floor.”
“Who else did Professor DuPont invite?” I asked.
“A few Greystone alumni who are involved with the Legacy Foundation, the usual high-net-worth friends he likes to have around,” Cecily said. “But they’re all staying at the cabins on the resort side. This is the only one over here.” She turned to me. “You ready?”
I inhaled a deep breath and tried to relax.We’re going to get him on camera. Send him to prison for good.
Chapter Forty-Five
Naomi
March 2023, two months before her death
“You have to understand, wethought we were doing the right thing.” Daisy’s voice is tense, almost pleading as she explains. She sits across from me at a restaurant in Midtown, where we’d agreed to meet. It’s not unusual for us to get lunch, but normally we’d invite Maya. This time, I told Daisy I wanted to talk to her alone.
“Oh, we were so young, you know…and we thought we were invincible.” Daisy fiddles with the edge of a cocktail napkin. I’d shown Daisy the photo we’d found of the five girls and straight-out asked her what the hell happened that weekend.
“If it was an accident, then why didn’t Maya ever talk about it?”
Daisy looks away as if she might recognize someone at the next table, then leans into her elbows. “Okay, look, he’d been seeing Lila and it had gone south for some reason. He got violent with her…It was so bad we had to take her to the emergency room. We all hated Matthew by that point, for various reasons. But we didn’t want to get the police involved, so we came up with this plan to make him confess, thought we could at least get the administration to come down on him. We figured if we could get him kicked out of Greystone, it would be close enough to ruining his life.”
I look at her. “What kind of plan?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
Daisy sighs. “Fine. But you can’t tell anyone I told you, especially not your sister.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Maya
February 2012, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire
I death-gripped the chairlift asit bobbed up the mountain while Daisy sat, gazing blissfully out at the passing landscape. I hadn’t been raised skiing and didn’t realize how high some of the chairlifts went—and I was quickly reminded that I was deathly afraid of heights. I closed my eyes and took a steadying breath, trying to pretend we were only a few feet off the ground.
We’d woken up early that morning to take advantage of the fresh powder that had accumulated overnight, but the sky was starting to show signs of a storm. There were dark clouds hovering overhead and an icy-cold wind that made the chairlift shudder.
