“Let’s all calm down,” Ethan said, pumping his hands. “Billy, we’ll talk everything out in the morning.”
Billy scowled as Ethan pushed Trevor in the opposite direction, leading him back toward the dunes.
Only Erica remained and when Billy turned to her and saw the desperate, helpless look on her face, it was as if every emotion he had ever experienced exploded from his chest, an eruption he had never felt before. He couldn’t help but burst into tears.
Frankie
Bursting through the front door of our house, I feel like the Kool-Aid Man. “Hello?” I call, panting.
Mom comes rushing into the foyer, her hair in rollers, her phone glued to her ear. “They’re home. Oh, thank god. They’re home.” She gathers Millie and me in a hug and holds us tightly until I wriggle out of her grasp.
“Who are you talking to?” I ask.
“Sally, I’ll call you back,” Mom says, then turns away. “They will find who did this. I promise you.” Mom faces us, worry etched into her forehead. “That was Sally Godwin. Did you girls get my texts?”
“We haven’t looked at our phones, Mom,” Millie says. “We were biking past the Vreelands’ and saw—”
“The Vreelands’?” Lucy emerges from the kitchen holding a bowl of green grapes, her eyebrows so far up her forehead, they near her hairline. “What were you doing over there?”
Millie glances at me, and I stand up straight. “Just going for a ride. But we saw Justin there, walking around like nothing—”
“They let him out,” Mom says, pressing her hand to her chest. “That lawyer of his was able to find footage of him from the cameras around town riding his bike home before three in the morning.”
“So?” I ask. “It’s not like they know a time of death. Billy was floating in the water! That’ll mess with any dead body’s—”
“Frankie!” Mom nearly screams. “Have some respect.”
“I’m just wondering why they let him out.”
Lucy steps forward, closer to me, and chimes in. “She’s kind of right, Mom. What else did Mrs.Godwin say?”
I lean into Lucy, a silent thank-you, and she pats my shoulder.
“If you girls would let me finish, I could explain that the Godwins know that Billy was on the family boat early in the morning, after three. So he wasaliveafter Justin went home.”
“Wow,” Millie says next to me, her voice small, at the same time I say, “How?”
“What?” Mom asks.
“How?How do they know that?”
“I don’t know, Frankie,” Mom says, exasperated. “It didn’t really feel appropriate to question Sally after everything she’s been through. But you girls don’t leave the house unless I say so, okay? Whoever hurt Billy is still out there, and we need to keep you allsafe.”
“But—” I start.
Mom holds up her hand. “No buts. Got it?”
“Got it,” we say in unison.
Lucy looks down at her phone and pops a grape in her mouth. “Erica’s coming over,” she says.
“She is?” I ask, elbowing Millie, who’s suddenly very interested in the hem of her jean shorts. “Her parents are letting her outside?”
“They’re stuck in the city,” Lucy says. “But you know how they are.”
Negligentis the word I would use, though Lucy would probably sayrelaxedto be kind.
Lucy disappears upstairs, and I grip Millie’s hand, but she yanks it away. “I know what you’re going to say,” Millie says softly. “But I don’t want to figure out what Erica was up to over at the Godwins’ house. I don’t care anymore. I just want some peace and quiet, okay? We can talk about it later.”
