She rolls to one side and tucks her elbow up under her arm. “I left before any of the fighting started. Didn’t even see Justin wail on him. Didn’t even know about Erica.”
“You slept through all of that?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Tossed and turned for a while, but basically.”
“Huh,” I say. “Can I ask you something that might sound terrible?”
“Now I’m interested.”
“Do you think your uncle could have hurt Billy?”
“Uncle Reid?”
“Erica said he spends a lot of nights on that boat. Maybe he was there. Maybe something happened.”
She wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know,” she says. “He was home that night. I couldn’t sleep much after the party and saw him taking a walk around the property in the middle of the night. Guess he was wide-awake, too.”
“He still could have been out there on the boat,” I say. The police were never able to pin down an exact time of death because Billy’s body had been so damaged by the water.
“Maybe, but he was in pajamas. He definitely didn’t look like he had been on a boat.” She shrugs. “Besides, he waved at me through the window. Smiled. Not something you’d do if you killed your kid.”
“True,” I say, hesitant. “I didn’t realize you two were close.”
“We’re not. But my parents are dipshits right now. Gotta hang on to the family that’s there for you.”
I nod like I can relate, but there’s no way in hell I would ever call my parents dipshits even when I’m at my most furious.
“You know, I’m thinking about going to Wesleyan in the fall,” she says.
“Really?” I glance sideways at her. “You were able to figure out the tuition?”
“Yep,” she says, sitting up with her knees tucked under her chin. The wind picks up a few strands of her hair that tickle my shoulder.
“What changed?”
She shakes her head so her hair falls in her face, obscuring her eyes. “It’s messed up.”
“What is?”
“Remember how I told you my grandparents set up trusts for Billy and me?” she says. “And how my parents drained mine?”
“Of course.”
She pauses, sipping air through her barely parted lips. “There was a clause that said if something happened to one of us, the other would get their shares when they turned eighteen.”
“Holy shit,” I say, realizing what she’s saying. “So you get Billy’s? Because he’s gone?”
Olivia winces. “It’s fucked up, right? That I get to go to school because he’s not here.”
I don’t know what to do with that information, because on the one hand, yes, it is messed up. He dies, and she gets what she wants. But it’s not like that was Olivia’s fault.
“Lots of things about this are fucked up, but you being able to get an education isn’t one of them.”
She tilts her head up to the sky, the corners of her mouth turning upward. “You think?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I do. It’s not like you set up the parameters of some random trust fund a million years ago.”
She laughs. “That’s true.”
