11
“You’re going to love Illumination Night, Linden,” Mr. Kendrick promised on the drive into Oak Bluffs later that evening. The sun was just setting out the window of the big car, the late-summer breeze cool on the back of my neck. “It’s a Vineyard tradition that goes all the way back to just after the Civil War.”
“And by the end of the night,” Jasper chimed in from the front seat, “you too will feel like you’ve been experiencing it for one hundred and sixty years.”
“My son is something of a naysayer,” Mr. Kendrick said cheerfully. He’d swapped out his swim trunks and ball cap for khaki shorts and driving moccasins, the thinning patch of hair at the back of his head the only visual clue that he was Jasper’s dad and not his older brother. A sleek silver Breitling winked from his wrist. “And I get it, you know? He’s a teenager; he’s gotta give his old man a hard time. But between you and me, I think he’ll be singing a different tune when he remembers how much he loves the dulcet musical stylings of the Vineyard Haven Band.”
“I mean, that’s true,” Jasper admitted with a snort. “I do own all their records.”
I laughed distractedly, glancing over my shoulder out the back window. We’d split up into two cars, so Mrs. Kendrick was following in the Volvo along with Eliza, Meredith, and Wells. I couldn’t stop thinking about the sweatshirt, turning it over and over in my mind like a Rubik’s Cube with no solution. On the crime shows my mom liked, this would be the point where the grizzled detective would send the sweatshirt off to the lab for analysis, the source of the bloodstain neatly resolved during commercials for cat food and Viagra. But this was real life, and after the adrenaline rush of our supposedly game-changing discovery, it was still just Holiday and me, bumbling around like a couple of amateurs.
We’d wanted actual evidence, and now we had it. But I had no idea what to do next.
“Linden?” Mr. Kendrick said, and I snapped to attention, suddenly aware from the tone of his voice that this probably wasn’t the first time he’d said my name.
“Sorry,” I said, smiling my most affable, dopey-pal smile. “Daydreaming.”
“About Ms. Singh?” Jasper asked quietly. I kneed the back of his seat.
“I was just pestering you some more about the lax season,” Mr. Kendrick continued. “Whose asses are you most excited to kick this year?”
We spent the rest of the ride in lacrosse land, Mr. Kendrick asking about my coaches and talking smack about other boarding schools. He’d played himself back when he was at Bartley in thelate ’80s, and I tried to answer his questions as gamely as I could, but I could feel my blood pressure rising the longer the conversation went on.I don’t know if I’m going to be able to play ever again,I wanted to tell him. AndI don’t even know where I’m going to go to school if I can’t.
Also, not to make it awkward or anything, but I think your son might have tried to murder someone.
“Should be a great season,” I said instead. “I’m really psyched to get back on the field.”
The campground in Oak Bluffs was already mobbed by the time we showed up—tourists mixing with locals, everyone milling around on the springy green grass as they marveled at the elaborately decorated gingerbread cottages. The western sky was streaked with pinks and oranges and purples, and the smell of expensive perfume mixed with freshly cut grass hung heavy in theair.
We met up with the others near the bandstand, the group of us picking our way through a maze of blankets and lawn chairs as we looked for a place to settle down. Clearly, this thing was a way bigger deal than I had realized: people had laid out elaborate picnics on pop-up camping tables, complete with linens, candles, and bottles of wine chilling in tasteful-looking coolers. Birdie had sent us with dinner too: cold fried chicken and a zingy slaw made with purple cabbage; potato salad flecked with green onion and what I thought might have been dill.
Jasper wolfed his food with impressive gusto, then peeled off to go meet up with Aidy, who was hanging out with some friends across the campground: “Don’t wait up,” he said cheerfully, tossinga wave over one shoulder as he trotted away through the dense, moneyed crowd. Meredith rolled her eyes as she watched him go, then turned back to her phone. She’d been spending most of her days at the hospital, where Greg was still unconscious in the ICU; she’d been headed back over there tonight as we were leaving, but Mrs. Kendrick had convinced her to come with us instead. “You’re not helping anyone by running yourself ragged,” she’d pointed out as we’d gotten settled on the blanket, discreetly pressing a plastic cup of sparkling wine into Meredith’s hand.
Now I glanced around for Holiday—she wasn’t, typically, difficult to spot—but in the end she didn’t seem to have shown up after all. I thought about texting her to find out for sure, but there was another, bigger part of me that couldn’t help but feel relieved at the chance to take the night off from our little investigation—not to mention the opportunity to spend some time with Eliza.
She was leaning back on her palms with her ankles crossed, her face half in shadow and half aglow in the warm light of the hanging lanterns. She was wearing a short, patterned dress that seemed to float ethereally around her, her shoulders bare in a way that made me want to put my mouth on her skin. “So, here’s a question,” I began, leaning over and murmuring in her ear as inconspicuously as I could manage. “As much as I appreciate the considerable talents of the Vineyard Haven Band—and believe me, I sincerely do—you want to get out of here and go for a walk with me?”
Eliza’s face broke open into a grin. “Oh god,” she said immediately, holding her hand out so I could pull her to her feet, “yes please.”
We made our excuses to her parents, then headed across the grass, the back of Eliza’s hand brushing against mine as we went. “Not a huge fan of Illumination Night?” I asked.
Eliza shrugged. “I mean, it was fun the first dozen times,” she said. “The last five, not as much.” She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “It makes my parents happy, though. Especially my dad. And I’ve sort of been trying to do more of that kind of stuff lately—make it up to them, or whatever—since…” She trailed off.
“Right.” I wasn’t entirely sure if she meant because her dad had been away or because she was leaving for Paris in a few weeks or something altogether different. It seemed safer not to ask—at least, it did in the moment. Much later, it would occur to me to wonder which one of us I thought I was trying to protect.
“Anyway.”Eliza seemed to sense my hesitation; she smiled a goofy, reassuring smile, reaching down and taking my hand for real. “The company’s not so bad this year, I guess. With the obvious exception of my brother’s boring friend who’s visiting.”
“Ugh, that guy sucks.” I grinned, tugging her over to an empty bench at the very end of the campground. “I can’t stand him.”
“Yeah,” Eliza agreed, settling close enough so that our arms were touching, “he’s the worst.”
We sat there for a long time, the hum of the crowd and the murmur of the music drifting languidly through the deep blue evening; from this distance, the cottages were a warm, glowing blur. Eliza was a good storyteller, unexpectedly funny as she told me about the summers she’d spent with her family at August House: the pranks she and her brothers used to play on Dean andBirdie; the time Jasper hadn’t gotten off the ferry with the rest of them and nobody had realized until he was halfway back to Woods Hole. For the first time since I’d run dazedly out onto the patio the other morning, I wasn’t thinking about Greg at all.
“So how come Jas is at Bartley and you’re back at home?” I asked finally, stretching my legs lazily out in front of me. “Not into the whole boarding-school thing?”
Eliza’s eyes widened. “Ohgod,no,” she said, waving a hand in front of her face like the idea was a visible cloud of stink she could bat away. “I mean, I did it for a little while—some frilly fucking place in Connecticut where my mom supposedly made, like, ‘the greatest friends of her whole life!’ But five hundred girls in plaid all getting their periods at the exact same time? It was…not for me.” She shuddered. “I mean, the plumbing situation alone was like something out of a horror movie.”
“I…would imagine,” I said with a grin. “So whatisfor you, then?”
