“Okay,” Millie says quietly.
At that moment, Mom rushes up, gripping Millie to her. “Oh my god, I can’t believe you pulled himout.”
Hampton clears her throat, and Mom looks up. “Is she yours?” Hampton asks.
Mom nods, then grabs my hand, too. “They both are.”
“Millie’s going to have to come with us for questioning.”
Mom’s mouth forms an O shape, and she looks to Millie.
“It’s okay, Mom. They just want some details.”
“Maybe you should call Dad?” I ask.
Millie’s gaze shifts to me, her eyes wide. “Why?”
It takes a ridiculous amount of effort not to roll my eyes, but sometimes I think Millie lives on a different planet—or has at least never seen a true-crime documentary. “He’s a lawyer.”
“Dad does real estate law.”
Mom’s brow knits, and she nods vehemently. “That’s an excellent idea, Frankie.” Pride builds in my chest. “I’ll call him before I head to the hospital to meet Sally. She needs all the support she can get right now.”
Detective Hampton makes a coughing sound. “Do you need a ride?”
Mom shakes her head. “Her sister Lucy will drive her.”
Lucy’s head pops up from where she sits with Ethan. “Yes, of course,” she says. “We’ll be right behind you.”
Millie starts to follow Lucy and Ethan up the beach, but as they disappear, my heart rate picks up, like I need them to be closer. “Wait!” I say, but they’re already gone. “Mom?” I turn to where she was standing, but she’s already rushing toward the parking lot. I realize I’m alone, a creeping sense of dread spreading through my stomach.
My hands are clammy, and I wipe my palms on my shorts, leaving sweat stains on the cotton. The beach has cleared, and the only people still here are the ones in Pelican Island PD polo shirts and latex gloves. One of them pulls out a camera and starts taking photos, as if to document evidence, as if this beach were a crime scene.
But that’s when reality hits me.
Oh my god.
The beachisa crime scene.
Millie
Ethan hunches over in the passenger seat of his jeep, his head resting in his hands as Lucy drives us to the police station. From my place in the back seat, I watch her reach for him, flutter her fingertips from his his neck to his thigh like she’s trying to find a landing place. Every few moments he lets out a sob, then a whimper, and Lucy clucks her tongue. Her eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror, and she shakes her head to the right once.I’m scared.I lift my left hand to my right ear.I love you.
This silent communication comes naturally to us, an unspoken language Lucy and I developed when we were little, before Frankie could talk or walk or do anything more interesting than coo and wrinkle her nose as she fussed in her bouncer. When she turned six and could finally understand that we were speaking without her—raising our hands to our hair, twitching our mouths in specific directions, looking up at the sky for two seconds exactly—Frankie threw a fit, nearly kicking a hole through Lucy’s bedroom door.
Lucy rolled her eyes and called Frankie dramatic, but I couldn’t bear to see Frankie like that. Instead, I led her into my bedroom, and we sat on my shag carpet until she calmed down.
“Why don’t you include me?” she asked, her voice warbling.
Even with Frankie crying in front of me, I didn’t want to tell herthat I hoped by keeping this secret between us, it meant Lucy loved me most of all. Being older meant being wiser and cooler and smarter and braver. As the youngest, Frankie was malleable and easy to influence, a little doll that I could protect and fawn over but not someone I could learn from or treasure in the same exact way.
But if I felt that way about Lucy—like she hung the moon, the stars, the sky—there was a chance Frankie felt that way about both of her older sisters, one of whom was me.
“It’s important for sisters to have secrets with each other.” I stood up and walked to my desk, pulling out a small pad of purple paper and a pen.
“But it makes me feel bad,” Frankie said.
“Yes, well, that’s okay, actually,” I said. “Because you and I can have a secret, too. Something Lucy will never know. Just for us.”
