I just meant it as a throwaway question, flirtatious, but to my surprise, Eliza seemed to stop and consider it. “Bookstores,” she said, ticking a list off on her fingers. “Train travel. The way Birdie’s garden smells at the very end of the summer. Old dogs. Staying at hotels for long enough that the concierge gets to know who you are. Chronic insomnia, regrettably. Museums right before closing time. Being the kind of person other people want to tell secrets to.” She leaned into me for real then, just for a moment. “And, you know. Occasional troublemaking.”
When she was done, I just gazed at her for a moment, ensorcelled. “That’s…a good list,” I finally said.
“Thank you,” Eliza said primly. “What about you?”
I thought about it for a beat, wanting to paint a picture that was at least half as beguiling as the one she’d made for me. I should have been able to do it no problem—after all, I’d spent the last three years inventing a brand-new version of myself mostly from scratch—but it was strange to be called upon to deliver an oral report on the person I’d created. I wanted to repeat everything she said, to live the kind of magical, romantic life she’d laid out so cleanly. “I don’t know, exactly,” I admitted, frustrated with my own thick-tongued slow-wittedness. “I guess I’m still kind of trying to figure that out.”
Eliza didn’t seem to be bothered. “Well,” she said, bumping her knee gently against mine, “guess you’d better get figuring, then.”
I was still trying to decide exactly how to respond to that when all at once I spotted Holiday hurtling toward us, her hair a wild corona around her face as she darted through the crowd. “Um, hey,” I said, surprised. For as long as I’d been sitting here with Eliza, I’d forgotten about Holiday completely, and about Wells and the sweatshirt; the sight of her struck me with the same strange, disorienting cognitive dissonance of bumping into your teacher at the public pool. “You came.”
“Of course I came,” she said, sounding a little breathless. When I looked at her more closely, I realized her cheeks were flushed, like possibly she’d been running around for a while trying to find me. “Sorry,” she said, waving shortly at Eliza. “Hi. Linden, can I just borrow you for a second?”
I frowned. I knew she had suggested using tonight to try tofigure out what was going on with Wells, but in that particular moment, abandoning what was happening with Eliza to go snoop around playing detective was the absolute last thing I wanted to do. “I mean…” I hedged. “Can it wait?”
I saw a flash of temper in Holiday’s eyes just then, though nothing about her tone or body language changed at all. “Totally,” she said, all smiles. “I was actually just about to take off, so. I’ll catch you around.”
Right away I felt like a massive, swinging boner. “You know what? Now’s good.” I turned to Eliza. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. “I’ll be right back.”
Now it was Eliza’s turn to smile tightly. “Sure thing,” she said, and I winced.It’s not that I don’t really like you and want to get to know you better,I imagined myself telling her.It’s just that my friend and I think your older brother might have committed a violent felony, and I need a little bit more proof.
Once we were alone, I turned to Holiday, eyebrows raised. “What’s up?” I didn’t quite sayThis better be good,but I was 100 percent thinking it, and from the look on Holiday’s face, she could definitely tell. For a second I thought she was going to give me hell about my piss-poor attitude, but in the end she just turned on her heel and motioned for me to follow her through the teeming crowd, curling her hand around my wrist and yanking when I wasn’t fast enough. At last she tugged me around the side of one of the artfully lit-up cottages, gesturing with her chin.
“There,” she announced curtly. “Look.”
I squinted across the street in the deepening twilight, following her gaze until I spotted them: Wells was standing beside adark blue Jeep, talking to a middle-aged woman I didn’t recognize. “Okay…,” I said slowly, trying not to sound too obviously irritated. This was what Holiday had dragged me away from Eliza to see? Wells talking to some random rich lady? “Who’s that?”
“You don’tknow?” Holiday was disbelieving. “Are you seriously telling me you didn’t do even a cursory Google of any of these people?” She shook her head. “That’s Greg’s mom.”
“Oh.” I stared, suddenly a hell of a lot more interested. “Holy shit.” Mrs. Holliman had the same slightly bland, well-groomed look that all the moms on the Vineyard seemed to have; she was wearing a lightweight maxi dress and a denim jacket, the sleeves rolled up to reveal a pair of tasteful gold bangles around her wrist. “What’s she doing here?” I asked. “Shouldn’t she be at the hospital?”
“Greg has a little sister,” Holiday informed me. “Maybe they came here to try to keep things normal for her?”
“Maybe,” I said. But something about the way Mrs. Holliman was standing—the specific, almost intimate way her body was angled toward Wells’s—made me think that wasn’t the full story. I watched them for another moment: their heads close together, their hands brushing down at their sides. Then, so quickly I would have missed it if I hadn’t been actively staring at them like a giant weirdo, Wells laced his fingers through hers and squeezed.
“Holiday,” I began, even as Mrs. Holliman was pulling away and shooting Wells a warning look. It took a second for the realization to become clear in my head, like waiting for a hi-res picture to load on slow, shitty Wi-Fi. “Doesn’t it kind of look like they’re—”
“Uh, yup,” Holiday agreed. “More than kind of.”
I nodded grimly. “So, not a Hello Kitty collection, then.”
“I mean, could always be both.” She made a face. “How old is Wells again?”
“He’s twenty,” I reminded her, “so it’s not illegal. It’s just…gross.”
“But also weirdly compelling?”
I snorted. “Keep it in your pants, Proctor.”
“I’m just saying!” Holiday laughed a little hysterically. “Good for Mrs. Holliman, I guess? Unless he’s only doing it to get some kind of horrifying revenge against Greg and his dad.”
“You think?” I asked, though truthfully, I’d been wondering something similar. “I mean, Wells is a creep, but retaliatory mom-banging feels extreme even for him.”
“More extreme than pushing Greg into the pool?” She fell quiet, tugging on a strand of her hair. “It does make me wonder if Greg found out somehow, though.”
“He might have,” I said thoughtfully. “If anything would have given him a reason to go back to August House the night of the party, telling Wells to stop screwing his mom would probably beit.”
“You should write Hallmark cards, you know that?” Holiday observed flatly. “You truly have a way with words.” She took my arm again, making to steer me back around the cottages. “Come with me,” she instructed. “I need to go scope out Greg’s house.”
